We're All in our Places, With Sun Shining Faces

Did you sing that song in kindergarten? We sang it every morning. Today I'm referring to Big Bertha being back in her place.

I think one of the things I really loved about the workshop last week was that I only had to pack up the sewing machine a few times. The workshop was three days, and we were allowed to leave all of our belongings in the locked classroom at night. In the morning, we were able to just come in, sit down, and start sewing. Some hard core folks seemed never to leave their machines, except possibly to eat a meal, and then they were hard at it again.

Personally, I find packing up the machine and all of its accessories to be such a hassle, that it deters me from attending classes that last just a few hours. I felt that way about my smaller machine too, and so it isn't just the weight and size of this one. And as I'm writing this, I'm thinking that packing and unpacking, in general, just isn't my cup of tea. Even when I'm doing something really fun like going scuba diving in the Caribbean, I generally hate the task of packing and unpacking. But I digress.

Yesterday I spent several hours in my sewing room, but I did no sewing. I was just putting things back and getting reorganized. While I was gone, I finished the fifth of the quilting snowladies blocks:

And I just want to say, check out that satin stitching on the earmuffs! I picked up embroidery again after decades away from it when I started making this Winter Wonderland quilt way back in 2009. 

My embroidery back then was less evenly stitched and my satin stitch was positively terrible. For me, nice even satin stitching has been the most challenging thing to accomplish, and so I'm pretty darned proud of my earmuffs on this snowlady. Be sure to feast your eyes. One of the things I love about needle arts in general is that we practice simply by doing. Do it, enjoy it, improve. It happens automatically. No extra effort required.

I'll be linking this one to Slow Sunday Stitching.

And since I must at all times have some hand work, I made up the next block for the Vintage Tin quilt:

Oh yes, and I wanted to show you the one and only pattern I purchased at the quilt show. I absolutely could not resist this little doll quilt-sized quilt. (And since someone has already asked me for the name of the designer, I'll just update right now to say that this quilt was designed by "Waltzing with Bears". You can find the pattern right here.)

When I make this, I'll probably add an "S" to the word "cat". Cute, huh? Maybe it's just because of Smitty's spots,

but I've become more aware of patterns with spotted cats on them.

Today I'm going to top stitch the blocks for the Yard Art quilt. I had planned to do that before I left last week, but then I got anxious about the time I needed to pack and accomplish some other things on my last day at home. As it turns out, it's probably best that I waited because I was busy with other things all day.

And then I'm going to start on the project I've selected for Sharon V's new challenge, Let's Book It. 

Sharon got the bright idea to challenge us to actually make some of the quilts from the books we have on our shelves. I chose a table runner out of this book:

It's called Outback Sunset by Judy Hooworth.

Some of you clever folks from down under recognized this as a reference to the beautiful sunsets in Australia. Bill Bryson described them so beautifully in his book, In A Sunburned Country. If you've never read Bill Bryson you really owe it to yourself to read one of his books. This is one of my favorites.

Here's a picture of the whole table runner:

I have some fun fabrics picked out, and so I'm anxious to get started on it.

With five days left in the month, I'm feeling good about my chances for actually finishing up almost everything on my January To-Do list. It was an ambitious list. Could be that I'm being overly-optimistic, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? And with February being a short month, January feels downright vast in its temporal length.

Oh yes, and I'm doing laundry. 

Thought I'd bring you down with a giant crash after all of that optimism.