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Happy New Year!!!

If you have been following me for a while, you know that I am not a resolution maker.  Studies show that most resolutions are broken by January 16.  Really?  Not even a whole month?  I have a word for the year.  My word for the year sets the tone for goals I set throughout the year.  I don't just 'pie in the sky' a word.  There is a lot of thought and prayer that go in to the choice for the year.

My word for 2022 - RESET

Sometimes I just don't feel like I've accomplished much when it comes to my quilting.  I have so many patterns laid out that I want to make, but I've been challenging myself to finish some of my old UFOs and flimsies first.  Then, I take a step back and look at what I did get done, and I don't feel so bad.  

The first UFO I got done this year was Christmas Ribbons.  You can bet I had it on the bed for the holidays!  I loved this fabric line.

 I was going to name this blog post "Lesson Learned".  When I first opened the shop in 2003, Jinny Beyer fabrics were a 'big thing'.  I ordered the entire fabric line.  The shop was smaller and the only wall space I had to hang samples was the distance between the top of the fabric racks and the ceiling.  I was scrambling to get samples made and found this pattern that showcased all of the fabrics in the line.  It was perfect and I was excited to get it made up and hung.

A group of ladies came in to scope ...

 Hello friends and beautiful people!  I pray you had a Merry Christmas!  Ours was full of faith, family and friends.  Thursday night we had our large family dinner with the kids and grands.  Friday night we had friends over for dinner before we all headed to church for our Christmas Eve service.  It was quite relaxing.

I did finish quilting and binding this quilt called "Fancy Baskets".  It is another older Thimbleberries pattern with Thimbleberries fabrics.  The fabric line was called Cottagewood and I really loved it - especially the plaids.  (We do have one pattern left on our website, and ...

 This one was waiting to be custom quilted.  I've always known how I wanted to quilt it.  So, I waited....I finished quilting it last week and got it bound last night.  I was originally going to bind it in the green.  After I quilted it, I felt like it needed a *pop* of color, so I grabbed a red!

Believe it or not, I am all caught up on my Christmas longarming.  All of my customer quilts that were needed for Christmas have either been picked up or mailed and business usually dies down for the rest of the year.  It's a time to get caught up and catch my breath before the first of the year.

I loaded more of our allover designs on the Facebook page and am getting ready to load some more fabric and patterns on the website.  Then, it will be time to start paperwork for the accountant.  I love year-end!  Truly I ...

Remember the Quilt Diva UFO I got quilted earlier this year?  This quilt was designed by the same designer.  It's called Pumpkin Divas.  This was another quilt that we had just as much fun picking out the fabrics as we did making it.  (Look at the 'stars in their eyes' fabric in the glasses.)  Adding the buttons and turning a couple of them into spiders - well that just added to the whimsy of the quilt.  It's been hanging in the shop as a flimsy for quite a while.  I pulled it down off the wall to get it ...

 Another flimsy is a flimsy no more!  When Kim Diehl's Sage and Sea Glass Stars line came in, I just saw this design as a good way to show off all the fabrics in the line.  I love scrappy.  For whatever reason, this one just screamed farmhouse decor to me.  Maybe it is the muted colors.  This line didn't feel like a 'typical' Kim Diehl line, but I did love it!

It was fun matching up backgrounds for the star blocks, but I had to let me OCD go when I worked on the nine patches.  For a ...

I giggle on the insides when I catch myself using phrases or sayings that Pops used to use.  When I started quilting this topper, I knew I wouldn't get it done in time for Halloween decorating.  So, I knew I was going to be a 'day late and a dollar short'.

Now that the house remodeling has progressed to a good point, I really want to get back into decorating for different holidays.  Non-specific quilts are a good addition for this.  What do I mean by that?  For example, red & white quilts can serve for multiple holidays.  They can ...

One of my favorite things about being a longarmer is when that quilt is loaded and you start quilting it, there is a 'change' that happens.  The top comes to life as it morphs from being a flimsy to a quilt.  When I am custom quilting I let the quilt tell me what it wants - usually....if a customer has a vision for what they want, I try to make that a reality.  

This time of year there aren't a lot of customer quilts that I get to show you, because they are intended Christmas gifts and we don ...

One year.  That's how long it took me to quilt this quilt.  I don't call it my Lifetime Achievement Quilt because it is hard or anything special.  I call it my Lifetime Achievement because I am proud of myself for persevering.  This quilt has been on and off the longarm for one year.....  I would work on it for a bit.  A custom quilt would come in from a customer and I would take it off long enough to take care of the customer.  Then - back on the longarm it went.  

I like wholecloth quilts as a longarmer ...

In my quest to finish up more of the UFOs, I grabbed this little guy off the hanger.  He's been hanging out and beckoned to be ready for the holidays.  The name of this pattern is Straddlin Santa by The Wooden Bear.  

It's no secret that Fall is my favorite time of year.  I've talked about it many times on my blog.  When it comes to ordering books and patterns, if there is a pumpkin on it I am a sucker!  As I was shopping for new fall fabric lines, this free pattern showed up.  I instantly saw a cute table topper or wallhanging, and since it had pumpkins....I had to order the whole fabric line!

There are a lot of quilts hanging in the que that hang there for a long time.  I have it in my head that I want to custom quilt them.  I don't want to tie up the machine for that long because of customer quilts, so they just sit there.  I've always had it in my head that I wanted to custom quilt Eureka.  It told me it wanted lots of feathers.   Momma was in the shop about a month ago and was looking at it.  She thought it would look great in her lake house.  (That's ...

If you Google "Quilt the Seasons", you will see that a LOT of designers have coined a book with this name.  (I know it is hard to come up with something unique, and I get it.)  By far our most popular book was the Quilt the Seasons book by Pat Sloan.  We whipped up samples of a few of the projects to sell the books and sold out of books long before we even thought about getting them quilted.  Sadly, the book is no longer available.  I regret not grabbing one for myself.  :(

I've mentioned this before...we keep ...

Everyone who knows me well, knows that Fall is my favorite time of the year.  I love the smells, the textures, the tastes....  putting the garden to bed (pardon the pun) is always bittersweet.  I've picked just about all I am going to pick.  I have canned, dehydrated and froze about all I am going to preserve.  Seeds are saved.  What I have not done is clean up the beds and prep them for Spring.  I choose to pick a few Saturdays where the air is crisp and my body feels the need to be out there.  If you ...

When the kids were little one of their favorite movies was the Land Before Time series.  I think there were 3 or 4 movies and my kids had them all.  Even as small kids they would quote lines from those movies.  (They still talk to each other in movie lines as adults!)  The boys had dinosaur sheets on their bunk beds and we had all the soft plastic hand puppets that came out at the same time.  Kids are always fascinated with dinosaurs.

You can imagine how tickled I was when this quilt came in to the shop for us ...

In the 18 years that I have had a shop, there is one thing that has remained constant - having a nice variety of greys and a nice variety of yellow is never as easy as the other colors of the spectrum.  I don't know why that is, but it is.....

For that reason I had ordered in this line months ago:  Songbook Praise & Joy  

 The more quilts I longarm from this designer, the more I love them.  The same designer who brought us the cute hedgehogs and koalas also designed the quilt I am showing you today.  This customer chose the 'dog paw bone' allover and wanted a dark blue thread.  This quilt is absolutely adorable for the dog lover!

 Hello beautiful people!  How are you adjusting to the time change?  

My weekend was phenomenal.  I got to spend it quilting.  I longarmed all day Saturday and actually started piecing another quilt Sunday.  I'll post pics later this week....

Today's post will be short and sweet.  In celebration of St. Patrick's Day, I will be doing a "Luck of the Irish" promotion.

Everyone who spends $50 on books/patterns/kits will go in a drawing for a $50 gift certificate to the shop.  Here are the rules:  $50 in merchandise purchases, not to include shipping.  Orders placed ...