What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Look, you guys -- all of my Spirit Song Birds In the Air blocks are sewn together!  The top row of three 16" blocks are connected, and the remaining three rows have two blocks connected and one more block needing to be attached.  This phase is going MUCH more smoothly now that all of my seams are nestling nicely again, but alas -- my studio is not at all puppy-proofed, so I'm not getting in much machine sewing time these days!

Spirit Song Quilt Coming Along

My progress on the Spirit Song Dress Code quilt has slowed way down because I'm at a tedious point in the construction.  After spending so much time planning my mix of colors and prints in my design software, I barged ahead with my piecing without bothering to create  a pressing plan...  So now as I'm joining the 4" inch Birds in the Air blocks together to form the large 16" composite blocks, none of my seam allowances "nest" where the blue triangle points touch one another.  As you can see in the completed block below, that happens EIGHT ...

I'm still plugging away at my Spirit Song quilt top, albeit intermittently.  So far I have four of the twelve 16" blocks completely assembled:

Four 16 Inch Blocks Assembled, Eight More to Go

Hello and happy Monday!  The "little one" (my 6' tall 16-year-old son) is back to high school today, but I still have my 19-year-old son home for a few more days before he heads back to college.  Now that it's Epiphany and Christmas has officially ended, Bernie is taking down our Christmas trees today.  I've been sewing 4" Birds in the Air blocks together over the weekend for my Spirit Song quilt (whose color palette was inspired by the contemporary choir dress code colors for which I never have anything to wear).

First 16 inch Block Sewn Together ...

So, in the midst of my sadness over losing my dog to cancer, I have not yet loaded the Jingle quilt that I was planning to start quilting between Christmas and New Year's.  That is a challenge that requires more positive energy than I could muster right now.  Instead, I've been piecing more of those Birds In the Air blocks for my Spirit Song Dress Code quilt, which is a total tangent (squirrel) from the projects I'd intended to be working on and finishing right now, but it's cathartic.  I had intended to use these HST ...

Alright, you guys -- my #1 priority quilting goal for the month of December is to get as much of this Christmas themed Jingle project quilted as I can.  It's not loaded on my frame yet, but here's what I've accomplished since I posted about it a few days ago:

• Located a package of Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting in my stash that can be cut down for this quilt
• Ordered and received a package of Quilter's Dream Wool batting to layer over the 80/20
• Located the 108" wide backing fabric and prewashed it in ...

It has been awhile since I've had the luxury of sewing for relaxation, for myself, without any deadlines or external demands.  You guys -- this is so much FUN!  I snuck back up to my studio after dinner last night, thinking I'd just putter around for 30 minutes or so, and before I knew it, it was after eleven.  

These are all 4" Birds In the Air blocks right now, nothing is joined together.  I'm still deciding if I like the mix, adding in new fabrics, and rearranging the blocks on the wall.  Although this is a scrappy ...

Good morning!  I finally got caught up with everything else in life that needed doing last week -- whew! -- so I rewarded myself with several hours in the sewing room, chopping up fabric with my Accuquilt GO! cutter and then sewing the triangles together.  Here's what I've got up on my design wall so far:

Spirit Song Blocks In Progress On My Design Wall

Good morning!  I finally got some sewing time in last night, giving me something to post about today.  I've been busy with some travel lately, and the recent migration of my old Bernina 7 Series Yahoo group to the new Groups.io platform has been taking up a lot of my time as well.   If you own or are interested in learning more about Bernina sewing machines or software products, consider this my personal invitation to join me and 7,000 of my dearest friends over at the new BerninaLand forum on Groups.io, which you can find here ...