Needles and Pens

Well, the Better Home Challenge wasn't meant to be a quilting challenge, but wouldn't you know I'd find a way to turn it into one? LoL My January home project is the spare room in our basement (which I guess has improved to the point where I can officially call it "The Guest Room" now). It's actually very nearly done, but still needs the decorative touches to finish it off. So this week's design wall project is a quilt for the guest room bed. Here are the fabrics and pattern I'll be using. I wanted something that will go together relatively quickly, and decided on this 9-patch variation. The pink is left over from my mom's birthday quilt, the cream, I bought yesterday (but didn't quite buy enough!) and someone gave me three yards of the green Fairy Frost. It's just been waiting for the perfect project, and I think I found it! This was my attempt to show how well the colors work with the walls and the curtain I made for the room last...

Could it be that we're only one week into 2012? I've been going great guns on my January Better Home project all week, and having a blast with it! I thought it might be a good time to post a recap of what I've accomplished so far. I started off just dealing with the piles of odds and ends. Fortunately, there wasn't much clutter in this room, so that was a pretty easy task. One of the first items on my list was to designate the closet space in this room for one specific use. Everything that was in there belonged somewhere else. It was such a waste of storage space! Here's the closet, before: Now it's been designated the "Christmas closet," for storage of Christmas decorations, wrapping paper, all those gift boxes that were piled on the bed... The timing on this was perfect. I spent a couple of hours one day packing up Christmas things and it was so nice to have a specific place to store it all! There will probably be a couple more bins yet, b...

I thought with all the sewing I did in December, it might be awhile before I was up for any more... but then I remembered the Scrappy Quilt Challenge at Marcia's Crafty Sewing and Quilting blog. I have SO many scraps and small pieces of fabric that need to be used up, so this was the perfect project to get me back in gear for the new year. And the winner gets to have their quilt (up to baby quilt size) professionally quilted by Marcia for FREE! How cool would that be?? I decided to start with this little piece of fairy babies print, which I just love, and some other small pieces that I thought would work with it. (I later came to regret that darker green, but I'm getting ahead of myself. More on that later.) First step was to cut some scrappy strips and my twelve fairy pieces in random squares/rectangles (all rather small because I had so little to use, but I'm glad I was able to put every last bit of those sweet fairies to good use!) Next I sewed one scrappy stri...

I've been visiting some of the other UFO challenge participant's blogs today and some of them have posted compilation photos of all of their projects. I thought it was really fun to see everything they had accomplished in one place, so decided to put a few comps together myself. I honestly didn't realize how much sewing and quilting I really did last year until I saw these come together... Sewing/Quilting UFOs completed in 2011 for the UFO Challenge Projects completed for the 2011 Get 'er Done Challenge (all from "cheater panels") Quilts started and finished in 2011 And then there was the Christmas Sewing Rush of 2011 , of course. LoL I have a short list of quilts-to-do for 2012, and one project I started in 2011 which still needs finishing. Other than that, I'm actually... caught up??? Amazing.

Happy New Year! Ready to start the Better Home Challenge? The first number has been drawn, and it's number 11! For me, that's the spare bedroom in the basement... yuck. At first glance, it doesn't look so bad... Until you actually walk into the room... And around the corner... It actually started out empty, but has become something of a dumping ground... Definitely need some sorting/organizing/stashing in here, plus this room is just so... blah. I'd like it to be a room in which a guest could actually sleep. A little decorating is in order, too. Time to make a list and dig in! If you'd like to join in, show us your January project (on your blog, Flickr, etc.) and link up here. Just be sure to link directly to your project, not to your homepage: Let's see what we can accomplish by the end of January!

My last project for the 2011 "Get 'er Done Challenge" is finished just under the wire. Lucky for me, it was an easy one. Here's the panel before: And after, quilted and bound: Approximate size, 34" x 43" I'm still just amazed at how these challenges motivated me this year. Even when I fell way behind over the summer, it just made me even more determined to catch up and finish by the end of the year. I just made it, but I did it! I hope the Better Home Challenge works as well! This is my last post for 2011, so I want to say thank you to all who have taken the time to read my blog, and to those who have left kind and encouraging comments throughout the year. I wish you all a very blessed and prosperous 2012. Happy New Year!!

Now that all the Christmas gifts are (hopefully) being used and enjoyed, and there are no more surprises to spoil, I wanted to take a moment to share the last of my homemade gifts. (And then I need to get just one more challenge project finished before New Years!) The better part of my Christmas sewing this year involved lots and lots of mug rugs, which I shared in an earlier post ( Mug Rug Madness ). Then came the hot pads for Grandma... Fleece neck warmers for the guys... And the flannel pajama pants that my kids can't seem to live without... Oh, and one more thing, the flannel pillowcase for this: My camera decided to kick the bucket that day, so I'm glad I got at least a few pictures on Christmas morning. lol I think that's everything! And now it's the time of year where I swear off all this last-minute nonsense and vow to start my Christmas sewing earlier next year... ... yeah, right. ;o)