Busy doing what I like!

After several days of distracting myself with holiday activities, I finally settled down a bit. All it took was for me to clean my kitchen counter-top off! We have an island style counter and it catches a lot of clutter. It took half an hour to do, but it is now cleaned the way I WANT it kept! lol We'll see how long that lasts.

In no particular order, here are some of the goings on in my studio or my "TV sewing" projects.

My current hand project is a hexagon table runner made from leftover hexagons from the big quilt. I have it hooped in a 14" hoop and am practicing my stiching on it for when I start the big quilt.
I think my stitches are pretty good! They should be VERY good by the time I start the bigger one. At least that is my goal!!!

I have started cutting out the little squares for the Cathedral Windows Quilt. (2.25" sq) I want to layout the colors before I sew them in place so that the quilt has a more planned feel to it. I have made too many scrappy quilts and not given much thought to organized color schemes.
I have all the original 3.5" squares now cut down to size for this quilt. I am experimenting with different layout ideas. The fabric to the right is from my scrap stash of batiks and I hope to incorporate them in this quilt too. I have a lot more vibrant colors to pull from as well. Some of those are shown here:
As an added bonus, for you detective/sleuths out there, there is a STRONG hint of what I am going to do for the Keepsake Quilting Bali Challenge in the photo above. :D


Last, but not least is a quick shot of the House Medallion quilt in the frame. I worked hard to get the tension right, before starting this. I want to teach myself to be better and better at using this setup. I have black thread in the bobbin and white in the top for the white parts. If I wasn't fussy with the tension, the black bobbin thread would muck up the white fabric on top! I did a lot of reading on tension issues after the last time I tried using this frame. It made a difference! I am pretty happy with how this has started out...and so far, NO loopys!!!!

I have also discovered, doing straight lines is not easy for me on the machine frame. I am glad I have pieces like this to practice with. There are no plans for another quilt, in the near future, that will be machine quilted on this frame. I AM thinking about doing more charity quilts though, as they are a GREAT practice opportunity for me!

We actually have had a few snow flakes in the air today! Hubby worked from 2pm yesterday until 8am this morning and is sleeping. Son is playing on his computer, designing things for his robot. I am going to cut out more squares and more muslin to make more 'pillows' for the Cathedral Windows Quilt. Did I mention that my pattern uses THIRTY yards of muslin for one quilt?????????? wow.....