What happened while MIA?

For just about the last quarter of 2017, I went MIA from my blog. I keep saying that I'll get better at posting to my blog but I can't seem to find a time that life isn't busy! School has been busier this year from the start. 

I was doing a pretty decent job of keeping up with challenges and QAL's until November, then I was fell behind on all of them. 

However, I did get some quilting and other projects done during this time!

I did finish my 15 minutes of play quilt which is now named 

Thank Your Lucky Stars. 

In my last post, I had started quilting around the 20 different colored blocks and star points. I finished that quilting and started the negative space quilting. 

I quilted a swirl inside each star block and a braid between the blocks. 

The backing is a multi-colored print I found at Joann's. 

The binding is scrappy. The finished size is 54.5" x 68".

This quilt will be gifted to someone special.

I also made a gift for our nephew's baby boy. This traveled to Norway and was well received!

The blanket is fleece with a crocheted edge and the bib is made from a recycled men's shirt. The bowtie used scraps from a previous quilt. The pattern is found here. 

I spent a week in Austin with my daughters and SIL for Thanksgiving. My hubby and our oldest daughter flew down on Wednesday. It was fun to all be together. 

My DD2 has been learning indigo dyeing. Together we did a batch of tea towels and napkins. This is a fun but bit complicated process. I'm thinking of trying to do some fabric dyeing come summer and warmer temperatures.

Here are the folds we used.

My napkins.

My daughter's tea towels.

It was night by the time we finished the dyeing.

Christmas was around the corner and I needed to make my ornaments for the year. Based on a log cabin kit we bought while in Vancouver, I made these from mini wooden logs I found at a thrift store. 

I also made some hoop quilts for 2 special sister friends in my life. 

 The pattern for the gnome was found here. I made a slight adjustment to eliminate the ears. Hand embroidered, God Jul! (Merry Christmas in Norwegian)

I shrunk the pattern and added the tree from here. 

Another quilt that I made and gifted to a good friend was Flight.

This is a wall hanging quilt. Size 13" x 20.5"

The pattern is found on Craftsy.

I quilted around the plane and then I added some night sky constellations.  

And finally, yesterday I worked on my little spools for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the last stars for the Milky Way QAL.

Blacks and browns!

All the little spools, neat and orderly...arranged by color. 

Acrux star in peach.

Deneb star in gold.

9 Milky Way stars!

I added a scrappy star with fabrics from some of the previous stars. 

I like this a lot however I ran out of the gray background fabric. I need to go and look/shop for a gray that will match. I don't remember if this was a Kona or...? 

I still have a few blocks to finish for Grandma's Kitchen.

Linking up to ScrapHappySaturday over at So Scrappy.

Thanks for reading to the end! I know it was heavy on the pictures and words but that what happens when you go MIA for a couple of months. 

In the next few days, I will be contemplating what projects, QALs, and challenges I will be doing in 2018! 

What will you be joining! I'd love to hear! 

Hope everyone will have a warm and prosperous 2018!

January Goal Üpdate

January has been a good month for sewing for me! I had the first week off of work because my school didn't go back from Christmas break until January 9th and January 16th was off as we observed Martin Luther King, Jr Day. 

This added up to lots of sewing time toward reaching my goals!

On my January 4, 2017 post I listed several of my goals for 2017. 

I joined the One Monthly Goal challenge over at Elm Street Quilts and chose my delectable mountain quilt as my January goal: 

My goal will be to finish the blocks, decide on a border or not, and get it to the flimsy stage.  

Not only did I meet my goal but I surpassed it! 

It is amazing what a deadline (and a lot of sewing time) can do for you! 

I finished all the blocks, decided on a 1/4" inner border of purple and a 2" outer border of black, sandwiched, quilted and bound this quilt!

The only thing left is to label it!

Although we have had very few sunny days,

 I took advantage of last Saturday's sun (we have not seen the sun since) 

to do a photo shoot. 

Presenting Splendid!

I quilted this quilt with organic straight lines about 1/2" apart from the top to the bottom inside the borders.

The outer border is also quilted in organic straight lines (seen in detail photo above).

The backing of this quilt was pieced with a fabric I had in my stash and the remaining scraps from the floral print. I really like how the back coordinated together!

The binding is left over scraps from the backing of my 

Diamonds in the Rough quilt.

This quilt finishes at 55 1/2" x 65"...a nice nice throw. 

Another of the goals I mentioned was #5: 

learn to crochet a border around it (flannel) for a sweet receiving blanket. 

Taking a break from the crochet blanket that I have been working on at my Knitting Club, I started crocheting an edge around a piece of flannel. I have made several crocheted edged fleece blankets using yarn but not flannel using pearl cotton. Some differences are: fleece doesn't ravel and with fleece, I rotary cut holes along the edge with my skip blade. 

I started by squaring off the flannel, then rounding the corner and finally serging around the edge. 

With pearl cotton and a steel hook, I started crocheting the edge with a stitch that kind of looked like a rose bud.

The pattern I followed said that you could push through the fabric with the hook but I found it difficult so I used a large needle to start the hole. I crocheted every 1/4" (eyeballed) around. It used a lot more thread than I thought that I actually ran out of pearl cotton. 

I couldn't find the same color so I used a coordinating color. Why not? We make scrappy binding for our quilts! Can you see the 3 colors I used?

This baby blanket finished at 33 1/2" x 38"

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal ~ January Goal Finishes 

over at Elm Street Quilts. Linking up at Em's Scrapbag ~ Moving it Forward.

How did you do with your goals?