Losing My Marbles

This is the quilt I've decided to make to start off the new year!  It's Losing My Marbles
by Kaffe Fassett.  The pattern is in his book, Quilts in Italy.  I bought a kit from
Glorious Color and am now awaiting receiving it.  This will be fun!

I've decided to applique the circles using used dryer sheets and have several friends
saving theirs for me as I don't really do that much laundry.  This is how it works:

1. Trace the pattern you want to applique on the dryer sheet.  I place the sheet
on a piece of sandpaper which helps stabilize it.
2. Place is on the right side of the fabric and stitch all the way around.
3. Trim the dryer sheet/fabric.
4. Slit the dryer sheet.
5. Turn it inside out.
6. Applique

It's a little more time consuming but it's worth it.  The quilt has 115 circles and I
expect it will take me a while to finish it.

December's Monthly Goal Finish

I have assembled all 48 blocks into 6 rows of 8 blocks each for my Jacob's Ladder quilt. Because some of my grand-children were ill on Christmas Day, we've extended our Christmas celebrations into next week.   I still need to assemble all the rows to have a completed quilt top and, if I'm lucky, I'll have it done by the end of the first week of 2019. I love the colors in this quilt as well as the scrappy pattern and look forward to hand-quilting it. See Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal- December.

Getting Ready for 2019

I'm going to clean up my blogs a bit and try to post more often. Even though I keep track of the books I read on Goodreads, I thought it would be fun to also list them here monthly.  I'd like to see how many and what books I've read each month.  My goal is still reading at least 150 books a year, although I generally read quite a few more.  But as we never know what the year will bring, 150 books seems like a reasonable goal to aim for.

Knitting has taken a back seat to quilting the past few months.  I do hope to join a knitting circle in January which meets several times a week at The Stitching Parlour in Brownsville.  I'll probably only go once a week which should be enough to get me started knitting again.  I'll start with knit baby/preemie hats and maybe some simple socks, perhaps with self-striping yarn.

Now, quilting is something else.  I hadn't quilted in a long time when I started again last August and I have a lot of quilts I want to make.  I'll continue to make doll and small quilts and talk about those on that blogpage but I'll write about the larger quilts I'm making on this blog.  I've signed up for some online quilt-alongs, some free ones on Facebook and some from Temecula Quilts.

Perhaps I'll add some weekly or daily features on some of the blogs to help keep me on track.  I'll have to think more about that.  

December's Monthly Goal

I actually have a number of monthly quilting/knitting goals this month even though it is a busy month because of Christmas.  And my birthday (the 16th).  And my wedding anniversary (39 years on the 21st).  But I have chosen one monthly goal (see: See One Monthly Goal for details)  and that is to finishing assembling my Jacob's Ladder quilt top.  Here is a photo of one block.

I need to make 47 more. Well, we'll see how far I get!
See One Monthly Goal for details.

New Focus!

This blog has been dormant for a while so I'm going to turn it into my quilt blog.  I have a blog for knitting socks, one for charity knitting, and one for doll quilts but none for just general quilting, but now I do!  I hope you enjoy it!