Thinking and Planning......

One of my best quilting friends and I are in an annual Shoebox swap and have been for yrs now.   It's a swap where each person decides on 2 colors (or prints) of FQ's that they would like to receive at the end of the swap yr, and a couple (or more) other things are included in the box.  I almost always end up buy half-yd pieces and then splitting them in half.

This year, due to circumstances, my friend and I ended up with the box I had prepared for my swap partner last year.   The fabrics the original intendee had chosen were snowmen and red/white fabrics.

So we decided to challenge each other to make something from them this year.   It only has to be a top, not a finished quilt.   

In looking through the most recent Hancock's of Paducah catalog I found inspiration for the Red on White and White on Red prints that I had bought.   It is the Near and Deer quilt that you can see by clicking here.      To the right is my interpretation of the layout for it that I've come up with in colors.  The sketch isn't full size, but gives the idea of how I'm envisioning this quilt to look when finished.

I'm planning on donating the finished quilt top to American Heroes, hence the color scheme.

Gratitudes:

1. Beautiful, warm weather

2. Good suggestions for places to hike reasonably close to where I live from friends here in the area

Quilts for me and plans for 2017

For a while it has seemed like I never have time to make anything for myself.  Between all of the commissioned quilts, scrubs, and other commissions and all of the items I make either for donation or for gifts there just doesn't seem to be anytime left over for me.

However, I did finally realize that I did get two quilts made for myself this year.  The first being the Row-by-Row quilt that I finished up in July and more recently the quilt I entered into the design contest.   While I didn't win either of the prizes for the contest it was entered in, I did for the first time really use some of the many fairy frost fabrics that I have collected for several years.

I do have one project in very slow progress at this point, and that is my quilt for the Stretching Art challenge for 2017.   The plan for it is finally coming together in my mind, now to get it into fabric and completed in time for the challenge.

So for the coming year I'm going to plan for a couple, maybe 3, projects for myself.

1. The first project I'd at least like to get the top together for is a butterfly quilt using hankies that were my paternal grandmothers.   Blocks that I'm thinking of includes ones such as in the pics below-

2. The second is a t-shirt quilt for myself using shirts I've had forever, some of them never worn, and most of them I can't wear now.   Will need to work out a  design plan for it first.

3. The final one I'd like to at least start is working on a quilt out of the snail fabrics that I've collected over the last 5+ yrs.  No design for this in mind tho, so it is last to be thought about.

In with all of these will also be the commissioned quilts as they come in and the scrub tops that need to be made and shipped off, along with anything else that comes up along the way.

Gratitudes:
1. I get to have dinner with an online friend who I've been participating with in a long-running quilt challenge for a number of yrs now this week.   =)

2. Winter is here!