Moooooove Over, 2018!

There's a new sheriff in town. 2019...it's here, Baby! I spent the last day of 2018 finishing up the cow for And On that Farm.

But not so fast there, Cowboys and Cowgirls. Let's just back up to the beginning of New Year's Eve, shall we? I was able to stitch this close to the end of the end of the end of the names for the Shop Hop quilt.

I'm thinking Shop Hop might be the first finished flimsy of 2019.

It was a pretty day yesterday. The sun was shining bright and the air was clear as could be. The mountains were in fine form.

Mike and I ran a few errands in town. Checking the mail on our way back, I found this May/June 2018 issue of Quiltmaker in my mailbox, a gift from my friend Nancy.

Nancy thought of me because of this project, and what a cute project it is! All embroidery with some crayon thrown in.

And there were a lot of cute projects in that issue, so thanks for thinking of me, Nancy. I'll give your magazine a good home!

After that, I got to work making a couple of salads for our family get-together later today. First on the list was my mother's version of the classic 7-Layer Salad. People have different ways of making this salad, and I like my mother's version. Also, I made a Dill Potato Salad, which I completely forgot to photograph.

Here's today's menu. You can find the recipes for several of these dishes, including both salads, at this old blog post from New Year's Day six years ago!

With the salads and the shrimp cocktail sauce made, I went back to work on the lastest block for And On that Farm. The large sunflower was finished, but I needed to finish up the smaller one. These won't be fused to the quilt until the whole thing is finished and sewn together.

Next, I started on the cow. First, the eyes.

Then, the nose.

Smitty held the instructions down while I worked.

It didn't take long before I had the whole beautiful bovine finished.

And then, just for grins, I laid the sunflowers out beside her to see how the whole thing will look eventually. She'll also have a cow bell embellishment added at the very end.

There's just one more section to do on this before I'll be ready to sew it into a flimsy. After that, a rather complicated border, but we'll just save that for another day.

There are four of my oldest projects nearly close to being finished during 2019. If there's time today, I'll be making the last block for It's Raining Cats and Dogs. Mainly though, today's agenda is more cooking. I'm making the Maple Baked Beans (recipe included in that link I gave you above), and an apple crisp for dessert...always a good choice. There's a little bit of tidying up to do, but then it'll just be good to get the family together again.

I said it before, and I'll say it again...Happy New Year, Everybody. Let's all make a lot of quilts this year! Whaddaya say?