What's New?

Fall is my absolute favorite season, and I'm happy to say that it is finally hitting the Sacramento region!  While most of our trees have been picking up a little bit of color since mid-October, we've been having some unseasonably warm days lately, making it a little difficult to get into the autumnal spirit of things.  As of Saturday, however, the temperatures have dropped back down to where they should be, and we've some great, gloomy, rainy days -- and even some snow as low as 1500 ft!  Yay!

While this time of year is usually my favorite to either snuggle in with two puppies and a great book, or to hunker down in my craft room for some quality sewing time, lately, I seem to be off my groove.  Hubby and I are making some changes on the homefront, so we've spent most of the last week and a half in a frenzy of Spring-Cleaning-like activies.  I spent a good couple of evenings cleaning up my craft room, ironing and putting fabric away ... and I even tackled my crazy "shove" closet.  Everything is all neat and organized now ... but other than that not much has been going on, craft-wise.

I did happen across a stash of fat quarters that I purchase along with my sewing machine back in 2007, along with my first attempts at "quilting."  I had to laugh, because the blocks were really awful!  I hadn't invested in a rotary cutter or rulers yet, so I traced the shapes onto the FQ's (with no idea that grain direction made a {BIG} difference), and cut them out with scissors!  I hadn't quite figured out the whole 1/4" seam bit on my machine, so those first blocks were incredibly wonky, none of my seams matched up, and most of the blocks were about 3/4" (or more) smaller than they were supposed to be!

Unfortunately, I didn't stop long enough to take pictures ... I was really in "purge" mode at the moment ... but my first blocks really did make me smile and appreciate how far I've come!  I also have to say a big THANK YOU to all of you fellow bloggers - I've learned so much and been so inspired by your shared creativity!

While no significant new sewing has been going on, I have decided to use some of these scraps from my first blocks in a new quilt I'm working on.  My plan for 2011 is to do a series of quilt patterns using modern fabric with traditional quilt blocks.  The first pattern in the series should hopefully be releasing in the first part of January ... provided that I can be a good girl and finish all of my Christmas sewing in a timely matter.

Unfortunately, my super secret Christmas projects haven't received any love, which is scary since Christmas is only like 5 weeks away.  Yikes!  I have several open evenings this week, and a 3 day weekend following all of the Thanksgiving festivities, so I have no excuses for not having some sneak peak pictures ready soon!

I have made some progress on this month's Le Petite pattern (Butter Churn by This and That Patterns ...

... but after playing around with some of the square blocks and the little "ribbon" squares, I decided to make my piece a little bit bigger and completely re-worked the outter border, so that the finished project is about 40" square, instead of the 20-something" square shown in the pattern.  Leave it to me to make a project more complicated, especially when I'm on a tight time frame with other projects!  Oh well, it'll all work out.  It always does.

Happy Sewing!!