A Long Time Coming

I have finally finished my longest running top!

The center of this piece was finished a very long time ago.  It wasn't speaking to me then, so I put it in the closet and it slowly faded from "in progress" to "unfinished".  Every year or so I would pull it out to try and decide what to do with it, but I would ultimately return it to the closet untouched...

But this past week I decided that enough was enough and it was time for this to work it's way out of limbo.  Some simple borders finished it up nicely, and now I'm wondering what took me so long!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Woodland Sampler - Three's a charm?

With the completion of the August block, 2/3rds of the year are finished.  I've also been working on this piece for two years.  Might year three be the charm that finishes it up?  I hope so!

All of the remaining blocks have been outlined and are waiting to be filled with cuteness!

Linking up with Slow Sunday Stitching and Let's Bee Social.

Neutral Expansion

My design wall is growing!  Almost half of the log cabin blocks are made, and cutting for the second half has been started.  And the best part is that I'm liking the design more and more as it develops.  Win!

I have also learned that six blocks is a much more reasonable stack to chain piece than twelve!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Neutral Experiment Part One

The first set of blocks for my neutral quilt.  One third of the way there!

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Woodland Sampler - July

I finished another month on my woodland cross-stitch.  More than half the year is done now!

The flowers ended up slightly different from the pattern.  I chose a pale pink floss for the flower heads instead of using white, and I redesigned one of them.  I don't know what happened to my ability to count while working on this block, but I sure need to be more careful in the future!

In addition, I went back and changed April's antlers.  I am much happier with Mr. Jackalope now!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Something New

After putting the last stitch into my Atoms and Oranges quilt, I dove right into the next project already sitting on my to-do list.  (A very strange occurrence!)  Working with only calm tones is a bit of a challenge for me, but I want to see what I can do completely outside of my normal rainbow color range!

Test block\Block one: Success!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Atoms and Oranges - A Finish!

When approaching the end of Atoms and Oranges, I wasn't sure how I wanted to set up the last few circles for quilting.  I've had mixed results clearing my fabric of various types of chalk and pencil marks; especially the colored marks, which I would have needed to use on the white sashing.  I thought about how I had used masking tape to line up the corners of the diamonds and wondered whether I might be able to do something similar here.  And then it hit me: what is a lint roller except a big wide piece of masking tape?

So I carefully peeled a sheet off of a lint roller, lightly traced my circle onto the back of it (trying to avoid sticking it to my cutting mat), cut the sheet along my traced line (occasionally stopping to remove tape from my scissors), and stuck that bad boy right at the first sashing crossroads.  It worked like a charm!

With this little trick in my pocket I cruised right through the last bit of quilting, and am now pleased to present a finished Atoms and Oranges!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Fabric Friday, and Finish it up Friday.