Done!

Little hearts in time for Valentine's Day.

Those letters in the border fabric make me smile. Between being a teacher and loving to write, they felt perfect. I also got nostalgic remembering being in grade school and sitting at the kitchen table writing the names of all the other students in my class on their Valentine's cards. Those really cute cards we all signed way back when and stuffed in the shoe boxes we had decorated with construction paper? Do kids still do that?

Look at that puppy face. Adorable.

One last picture, for perspective.

And, hey, appliqué!

GO! Hearts

I've taken on a February quilt challenge that said to make a small quilt with hearts for the month. I have to admit, my taste for hearts is relatively limited. Pink is out of the question. But since I take it as a given that French General is always a good thing, I decided I'd give it a try. And look, little hearts in pretty fabrics!

I might be going the long way around on this one, too. I could have just fused them. But I really want to work at least a little (a very little?) on my appliqué skills. I counted on  hearts being easy enough even I could handle them.

My circle venture used that wash-away appliqué fiber I needed to pull out.  This time I'm trying  C&T's paper. So far I think it has a nice texture to it, firm but relatively thin.  It even has the advantage of being lightly fusible. I'm liking that. I won't know what I fully think till I'm further along the project, but so far, it's a win.

I ran some of the paper through the GO! using the 2" hearts die.

And then I fused the hearts to fabric and did some turn under with a glue stick.  I was sitting upstairs tackling this project in the evening and at one point my husband looked over at me and said, "I don't know what you're doing over there but it looks like a real pain in the neck."

It's not like I disagreed with him. But, nevertheless, I soldiered on. So, first there was this little guy:

Adorable. It's enough to make me rethink my general antipathy to hearts.  And it really wasn't all that long before I had my collection of twelve.

Now I've got them tentatively laid out. I plan to sew them down using red thread with a button hole stitch. Odds I can get this done to have up for Valentine's?

And while that's going, I also decided to hop on Barbara Brackman's Western Women sampler for the year. Here's block one:

Yes, French General always looks good, but those Civil War reproductions? They speak right to my heart. Will I bring in more colors with the next blocks or make a quilt of blue and brown? I don't know yet, but I sure do love those soft tones.

Snow Day!

The other day I posted that pretty dusting of morning snow:

Today that same part of the yard looks like this:

And then there's our deck:

So, no teaching today! (Still grading though . . . of course).

I am just about done with cleanup in my sewing room from that broken light bulb. I have to admit, every once in a while I just run full head on into my own neurotic self. Broken glass! Broken glass everywhere! Mercury! Ack! Ack! Ack!

So, I'm not quite ready to sew in my sewing room yet. Perhaps later today. I can hope because -- hey! it's a snow day! If I can't play a little hooky in the sewing room on a snow day, when can I?

Meanwhile, I've pulled out an old (so old) hand quilt project.  I was just pondering how old -- this goes back to when I was first learning to piece, so I'm guessing I may have started this 20 years ago, maybe a year or two longer than that. I have cheating in mind. If I just finish hand-quilting the sashing, then I'll give myself permission to machine quilt the borders. Because, honestly, I am never going to hand quilt those borders in order to finish this thing.

I still like it though. The bear paw remains one of my favorite blocks. I think I see another bear paw mini in my near future. Meanwhile, here I am trying to remember how to hand quilt!