Busy As A Bee

So the entire month of November seems to be a total blur to me. I cannot believe we are already in the third day of December. Goodness me. Before I know it, I will be on a plane heading down to Georgia for the holidays. So maybe before that happens, I can complete a few projects both in the knitting and sewing departments.

As many of you know, I enrolled myself into an official quilting class back in October. My last post showed some of the completed blocks that I had done. The class lasted for seven weeks and finished right before Thanksgiving. I spent many days and nights to complete the quilt top and backing in time for the end of the class. This is what it looked like hanging up on the wall in the classroom...


The finished quilt top is around 56" wide by 84" in length. My instructor told me she was so very proud of me. I am proud of myself too. I told my instructor the very first night of class what I wanted my project to be. She looked at me like I was being over ambitious but she encouraged me nonetheless. I think I truly surprised her and my classmates by walking through the door with my finished quilt top. During the final class, my classmates and I pin basted my quilt pieces together. The quilt now has around 300 pins in it and waiting for me to sit and quilt it all together. When things quiet down in the new year this will be one of the projects to complete.

I am now working on a second quilt, but this one isn't for myself. I was approached by a co-worker asking if she could pay me to make a quilt for her. I looked at her, smiled and said, "You know it won't be cheap. A quilt takes a lot of time and effort." She smiled back at me and said, "Oh honey, I know that." After hearing what she wanted and she hearing my price (which I thought would send her running) I am now working on a 40"x40" quilt for her. This is the fabric I chose...


My co-worker told me of the colors she liked (pink, red, turquoise, yellow) and that she wanted flowers. She gave me a couple of items that she wanted to incorporate into the quilt if I could. I am going to make them into appliques and add them to the black/gray squares. The green fabric will become sashing between the squares and as a border. The other three fabrics will make up the other squares. I currently have everything cut out and have started sewing the pieces together. I would like to try and have it complete before I go on vacation in three weeks but my co-worker told me not to stress myself out over it. So I'm not.

On the knitting front I am still plugging away on a few things. I focused myself today on cataloging my yarn stash to get myself ready for the 2012 Stash Down I am doing with Michelle starting in January. Our goal is to get our stash down a considerable amount by Rhinebeck in October. So I spent my afternoon putting everything into Excel for easy tracking. I was quite pleased to see that the total yardage amount wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It still fits inside of 2 plastic tubs, so it can't be that bad, right?