January Blues

 Hello there and a happy New Year to you all!

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The house looks so bare with all ( most) of the decorations taken down and I don't care for it AT ALL! I asked my husband to just leave the Christmas lights on the house for now, until I get sick of them, which may be never ( or Easter~who knows?). I did squirrel away the fairy lights that I used over Christmas and am seriously considering hanging those in my quilt room to make it look cozy and festive all year round,, and very briefly thought of  leaving a few smaller evergreen trees clumped together on the landing to make a little make-do forest, but then practicality got the better of me and they were put away until next season.

Over the Christmas holidays we got to spend lots of time as a family and it was wonderful! So creating got put on hold until this week, when routines returned somewhat to normal.

I decided to pull out a not-so-old UFO to work on in January:

I think I started this quilt 2 years back? It is from the book by Susan Smith, called Somewhat In The Middle ( click).

The pattern I'm working on is called The Garden at Ederveen and  I love it because the little tulips done in blue just give a Delft Blue tile vibe that I couldn't resist. ( The rest of the book has some great quilts too, but this is the one I just HAD to start with :D ).

I had already made a whole load of the little blocks, but not quite enough for the 49 the original pattern calls for, so I decided to make do with what I had ( and had to make just one extra) and change the pattern just a little bit....sorry, Susan!

I also cheated quite a bit and used fusible applique ( EEEEK, the horror!), rather than needle-turn applique simply because needle-turn and I do NOT get along ( nope, I have tried it a few times and I just do not care for it). So anyway, all my shapes are fused, and I zig-zagged the circles on my sewing machine, but then DID handstitch all those shapes down with my all-time favorite thread ( click).

So now that I have completed my blocks, I am figuring out how to finish the rest of the quilt top...the measurements in the pattern don't match my blocks anymore, so I saw this as an opportunity to make a few ( ahem) changes. 

I thought a border of flying geese in dark blue would look very nice, so pulled out my trusty fabric cutter  ( click) and started cutting and sewing A LOT of geese! 

I think those flying geese will look very nice surrounding the "tulip garden", but I only have a little bit of the dark blue left and I'm not sure there will be enough to go around....so now I have to decide whether to add in another color blue, or maybe some red ( because #redisbest!), or maybe do something else altogether....

More updates on this to follow in a future blog post!

Have you gotten back into any fun projects? Please share what it is you're working on in the comments!

Alright, that is all for now. 

Until next time~happy creating!

Monique