Happy New Year!

I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas (Hannukah/Yule/Kwanzaa/Festivus) & New Year!  Of course everyone is talking about New Years resolutions, and there's no exception here.  Since sharing it is supposed to make you more accountable, I guess I ought to, right??  Here's my little countdown list:

#5   Blog at least once a week!  I've really been slacking lately with my blogging, but I'll show you why shortly.  I really feel the need to blog regularly, and I want to get into a routine with it, so I don't have an excuse.

#4  Game night at least once a month with the kids.  Don't get me wrong, we spend quite a bit of our free time with the kids, but I want to have at least one night a month where we play a board game (or two).  This New Years Eve we played Monopoly and Life and had a ton of fun, and I think we need to do that more often.

#3  Work on at least 1 project a week.  I tend to do lots and lots and lots of working on projects, then I have dry spells.  I want to even this out a bit, and work on at least one thing a week, even if I don't complete it.

#2  Excercise more.  You knew it was coming.  This is big on my list.  Again, I might start this for a week, maybe even two and then stop.  But, I seriously need to lose some weight, and we will be joining the YMCA within the next 2 weeks to work on this.

#1 You guessed it: Eat healthier.  Over the last year or two, our food choices have been getting worse and worse.  We've really gotten away from home cooked meals a lot lately, and I want to get back in the habit of cooking nightly.  And by cooking, I don't mean throwing a frozen pizza in the oven!  I want home cooked meals at least 5 nights a week.  I will add more fruit and veggies to our diet.  And no more fruit snacks for the kids!

Alright- you didn't come here to read about my resolutions.  If you've made it this far without running away crying from boredom, I congratulate you.  So, without further ado, the latest project I finished was a purple and pink twirly skirt for Miss Maya (aka Misses Boss). 

1. Pouty Girl, 2. Silliness, 3. Seriously mom?, 4. Just let me watch Spongebob, 5. Slow Twirl, 6. How many pictures do you need to take?

This was made from the tutorial here at the Polka Dot Chair.  I didn't have the full yardage in any one fabric, so I ended up using 4 fat quarters, plus a little more for the waistband & ruffles.  I had some sparkly pink ric rack that I had no idea where it came from or what I was going to use it on, but Maya loves it.  Also in the pictures are leggings made from some clearanced Target socks, tutorial is here.

Lastly, here is the project that's been keeping me away from the computer:

This is my first lap-sized quilt made for my mom for Christmas.  I was very rushed, and had to cheat to complete the binding Christmas Eve, but I did it!  The fabrics in the 9-patch blocks are from Rural Jardin by French General for Moda fabrics.  The rest of the fabrics were just picked up from JoAnn's, except for the top 2/3's of the backing which is a sheet from Target.  I worked on it nearly every night from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, many times into the early morning hours.  It is definitley not perfect, but I love it and I can't wait until I have one made for myself.  The pattern is a slight variation from the one here, the difference being I discarded the border for time constraints.   

Completed, Finally.

It took me about 2 months, but it's done now.  The Hooty Hoot Kangaroo Quilt for baby Kenny (Kenny is the son of some friends of ours, now about 7 weeks old).

I was just about in tears when I finished it, I was soooo happy and excited and proud to have it done!  I learned a TON from it.  It was my first venture into free-hand quilting, and let me tell ya:  That is not an easy thing to do!

I can't even tell you how many hours I spent ripping out stitches gone wrong because I didn't realize that despite how good the stitches looked on the front, they looked horrible on the back (the picture above is just one example... there were SO many spots where the stiches pulled on the back!)

I based the quilt off of the cover quilt on the book "quilts, bibs, blankies...oh my!" by Kim Schaefer.  Instead of applique blocks, I used blocks off of the Hooty Hoot Kangaroo Panel, adding borders to make them 12" square.  Originally, I was going to do a pieced border, just like in the book.  I based my binding choice off of that, but the quilt already seemed huge at that point so I cut out the pieced border & now I wish I wouldn't have because the border blends in with the binding.

Fabrics used:
Hooty Hoot Kangaroo by Doohikey Designs
Kate and Nate by Sherri Berry
Love U by Deb Strain

I can't remember the border or binding fabrics, unfortunately.  The backing is mostly some mottled blue flannel from Joannes, with a strip of the Kate and Nate flannel, so its super soft and cuddly. 

This is my favorite block with echo quilting in it... I added some quilting in the waves, and I just love how that turned out.

Things I learned:
*Cleaning your machine is important. 
*How to clean a machine (ugh!)
*Needle choice really does matter
*So does thread choice
*My old machine does have a feed dog guard, so I didn't have to keep taping and untaping a piece of cardboard over them
*Instead of spending money on a single hole throat plate, an index card taped onto the feed dog guard with a hole poked through it works just as well. 
*Check the back of the quilt before quilting the entire thing
*I need a better labeling marker!

What's next you may ask??  Well, Christmas is right around the corner... I may be showing peeks of what I'm working on, but I don't want to make it too easy for anyone to guess what they're getting for Christmas, so I may be a bit secretive.  Hehehe.