Sew Much to Do, Sew Little Time

So does anyone else have grandiose plans of all the things you will accomplish one you get home from work only to find that by the time dinner's made, kids are in bed and things are organized for the next day that you're too exhausted to even think, let alone sew? This is the story of my life right now. I have so many UFOs sitting around begging to be completed, I could probably never start a new project for the rest of my days and still die with things unfinished! Sigh! I did manage to knit about 10 rows on one of my socks in the last two nights-pretty pathetic though.

Right now I'm in the process of machine quilting my queen size Turning Twenty quilt. I got the Bernina 440 QE with the BSR about a year ago, right after my daughter was born. I did quite a bit of piecing and sewing on it but just didn't have the time to sit down and practice with the BSR. Finally I decided I was going to learn. I had never free motion machine quilted before, so there was a huge learning curve for me. I got tired really quickly of just "practicing" and figured I might as well just quilt a "real" project and let go of the fact that it would not be perfect. At least I'll be able to say, "This was my first quilt I free motion quilted. Look at how much I've improved since then." So I went on over to my LQS and bought some templates and just started. I've quilted all the square blocks with a large flower. I used a variegated thread and I like how it turned out, although there are many zigs and zags where I lost control of the fabric. Now I'm stuck because I like how the squares stand out. So I'm not sure if I should just leave it or if I should quilt something in the rectangles. And if so, what?

In the meantime, I've been appliqueing the blocks for my daughter's Paper Dolls quilt. I started it before she was born, and she's a little over a year now, so this had been a slow project. There is just a lot of applique and I find I get bored of doing the same thing. I just can't work on one project at a time start to finish. So I've been working on some other little things in between the two quilts.

I've been slowly making the Through the Year Quilts from Art to Heart. I made all of them for my mom and mother-in-law and finally started mine. I finished January in time to put it up and now I've appliqued February and just have to put it together and quilt it. Maybe I'll have enough energy to get it done tonight, since February is almost here...


Did it!

Wow, that was easier than I thought!

So I finally decided after many months to take the plunge and start my blog. I am a 30 something wife and mother of two. And I am an avid quilter and knitter. My wonderful husband bought me my ipod for Christmas last year and since then I have been listening to almost every podcast on knitting and sewing/quilting. It was during the last year that I also began reading many blogs. But for some reason I felt at a loss when it came to starting my own blog. It was when I listened to Alex Anderson's BIG announcement in her 48th podcast episode and then in her 50th episode when she talked about learning new things that I decided I would just dig in and learn along the way. So here goes...