Where did the month go? By looking at my blog you might think…uh nowhere. Fortunately I was crazy busy and therefore neglected my happy little updates. Firstly, I worked on three secret projects, two of which I can reveal in about a week the other is a Christmas present so no peeking! Secondly my parents in-law came to visit for about a week which put the den out of commission which is where I sew.

Here is a picture of my mother-in law getting her first motorcycle ride on my mom’s Harley Trike, driven by our good friend Merlin who was visiting my mom.

On to the sewing that did get done and can be shown:

Firstly, there were bee blocks

These are wonky butterflies. You can find the tutorial on redpepperquilts.com The finished quilt looks something like this

I am thinking a larger butterfly might make a good scrap buster…and heaven knows it is time to do one of those.

Nextly, we have the ever popular book case block

I think I may have been less successful with this block as my contrast seems lacking. She provided about half of the fabric and requested we add some neutrals with words on top which I think is a great idea but I am not sure my execution was spot on. I hope she likes it anyway, the outliers can always go in the bottom corners.

Lastly, on the block front is the San Diego Modern Quilt Guild 4th Quarter Chariy Quilt.

I made two blocks for that. It’s called chicken….something…hold on I’ll look it up…ahh, it’s called urban chicken, the tutorial can be found here

That’s all for the blocks I can show. Another particularly productively happy time I had was a retreat sew-in at a local Quilt Shop called Rosie’s Calico Cupboard. I sort of stumbled into it and got what I now find out was a coveted spot. They had put in the newsletter that they would be making this quilt called Chains of Hope

or you could work on your own thing. What I didn’t  know is this group of ladies is pretty tight and they bring their own projects and share, like a little guild. Soooo I was the only one working on Chains of Hope. The retreat was Friday night, all day Saturday and all day Sunday. There was food there was drinky drinks (hiccup) and much good cheer.

Yup even a tv…there was much sports watched. I only watch mixed martial arts (seriously) so I was not sad that my back was to it. You can see the back of my machine there next to my water bottle

There is some of my progress

…and a bit of a closer look.

Of course once the sew-in was over the project had to get shelved as there was the secret Christmas present to finish, the in-laws and finally, the beginnings of my first Christmas quilt!

I tried to pick something that would go together quickly, this is my progress as of last night. It is a Henry Glass fabric called Holiday Frost (except the green which is a Moda called Christmas Countdown). I went the super easy route and took the free pdf pattern to whip this sucker together with little concern for the design process, not that I don’t love the design process but Thanksgiving is over dude, I gotta get a move on! Of course the pattern is seriously lacking. Each block is supposed to be 7 3/4″ no problem right? Well, the fabric character squares are about 6ish” (not square) and there is not enough room around each of them to get all of the blocks cut to size. I ended up cutting the last two rows as big as I could and adding fabric…yeah extra random seams. Additionally I am finding myself cutting many more squares and rectangles than they have published. I am starting to get a little tired of setting up my cutting station in the kitchen because this *&%@! pattern was not properly tested. Grrrr. I do have a potentially cool back planned but it will have to wait because I am out of green, which is also my main border color (front and back) fortunately I got a great cyber Monday deal on it from Fabric.com….love their inventory.

And that’s where I am 🙂