finally!

I spent most of my crafting weekend quilting. And it felt great. :-)

I managed to start on my new cross stitch piece - Garden Flowers from Stone & Thread. It's kinda funny, now that I'm a rug hooker I look at every cross stitch piece as a potential rug and this would be a perfect design for one. You will see that as I get more stitched in.

I finally finished Paintbox Stars! It only took six years. :-) I purchased it six years ago for a guy I was dating at the time and even managed to cut it out. I dropped the guy and put the quilt pieces back in my stash where it didn't see the light of day until this January. I knew that once I had the blocks together it would be just a day and it would be together. And that is exactly what happened. I worked a little on the blocks every evening over the past couple of weeks and on Saturday I spent the day and got the entire thing together. Unfortunately I can't take a decent photo because this baby is big! It's a king size top and I won't be able to spread it out until I can take it outside and that won't be until spring when the snow melts. :-) I love the idea of seasonal decorating and this would make a great summer time quilt - it looks very Fourth of July to me.

As I mentioned on Friday I did take a couple of hours that evening and went through my quilt stash. I figured I had a couple of kitted quilts that I could sell. Well I only found one that I didn't want anymore along with a used BOM quilt pattern from Thimbleberries called Safe Haven that I might be able to sell. I do have four quilts that I still want to finish or start. One is Moon Glow from Jinny Beyer - this quilt has been around forever and I have even finished six blocks. As you can see from the photo below, it's not my style at all but the challenge of putting it together still appeals to me so I'm going to hang onto it. In any case, I only have half of the kit that I could sell and I didn't think I get very much $$ for it at all. I also found a beautiful fall quilt that I still LOVE and is totally still my style and colors but I put it back and still don't plan on doing anything with it yet. There was also two other smallish quilts that I found. I had purchased both at the International Quilt Show that is held every April in Rosemont Illinois. I have a hard rule that says if I purchased a quilt kit or large quanities of fabric and if I have not finished them or used the fabric I can't buy more at the next show. I figure that way it will keep my stash from getting out of hand. And so far it has worked - until now. Somehow I managed THREE kits from prevous years in my stash! I did start one - it's the wall hanging quilt with the baskets that I started a couple of weeks ago and since I decided to do a slightly different color way for the rest of it I'm letting that be ok. Of the other two, one is a flannel quilt made up of pastels. I had intended to make it has a baby quilt for a nephew but I never got around to it so now I'm keeping it. It's small and will be very quick and I have seven weeks to start and finish it. The other was a quilt kit from the McCall's Quilting magazine that I used to receive in the mail. It features fabric from Cherrywood Fabrics. They make the most amazing sueded hand dyed fabric in the world. The feel of it is wonderful. I purchased two kits three years ago so I could practice my machine quilting skills on the finished tops. I did finish one top but somehow this one got pushed to the side. So I stared it yesterday. It's small, 36 x 42 and I will only need one more good day of quilting to finish the top. The colors are so pretty and I still plan on machine quilting it.

So that was my weekend. :-) I had a blast and got a huge project done. Enjoy your week. I'm going to try to get as much stitching and hooking in as I can. Clancy and I have an agility trial this weekend so no crafting time at all so I need to make up for it.