A finish...but not quite mine!

This lovely string quilt is a recent finish for my friend Lisa.  I'm blogging it here because most of the string blocks in it were made by yours truly - she won them in a giveaway on my blog about four years ago.   It's great to see stuff finished, and if it's stuff that I had a hand in, in some way, well, that's even better. It looks fantastic, I think, and will really suit her house, which is an actual log cabin in the mountains of Colorado. Read more about it over here on her blog...

Cross stitch update

This perhaps doesn't look like a lot of progress this week, but there are actually four rows of stitches in this border in addition to the lettering, so it takes longer than you might think.  Tempting though it is to carry on working until it's finished, I don't think I will, because it will actually take quite a while. I'll switch to my garden sampler and then come back to this next week. I do think that will be the last week, though!

Not giving away...

Yesterday I showed the tops I gave away in 2012 (or which were made in 2012 and are sitting in my charity stack) and there were lots of lovely comments about them.  Today, I thought I'd show the ones I didn't give away.  This one above was originally going to be given away, but I decided I liked it too much for that.

A top made from Block Lotto blocks I won.

A French Braid top.

Another small one - probably a baby quilt in time.

Scrappy stars - this was sort of a challenge, to use my 5" squares which were acquired from Karol-Ann's stash (plus others)

Baby quilt in hand dyes

and one in purples and pinks.

"Slash-a-stash" quilt in low volume fabrics.

Brown and black string hearts with alternating blocks.

Project Linus 2012

As those of you who read here regularly know, I like to make blocks and sometimes make them into tops much more than I like to finish quilts.  And I am trying to reduce unnecessary stash & especially scraps. Consequently, I make a lot of small quilt tops which I donate to a Linus coordinator who is a friend of a friend, who is happy to take tops and organise them getting finished into quilts.  I also donate tops & blocks and things to my blog friend Sarah's quilt ministry.  In 2012, I donated 35 or so tops to these causes.  Here's a post showing them!

In 2013, I am to donate at least one quilt top per month to some sort of charitable cause - some months, there may be more, of course. Depends on my sewing time!  And in 2013, for the first time in a while, I am working full time again...


October

September

August

July

May

April

March (I originally made another top in March to donate, but decided to keep it, as I liked it a lot!)

February 

January 

Block lotto blocks

Finally took the chance today to finish making blocks for the Block Lotto - while making these nine for the drawing, I also made some more to make into a Linus top - more on those later...  Still not completely thrilled with the lack of contrast in the green and white one at lower left, but it should look okay when put in with a number of other blocks.  Plus, I needed more green!

All around the world

I worked on a couple of different things today, but this is the one I've photographed (the other things aren't quite done). Yes, another batik TATW block - I'm really liking these, though it's still a challenge to get the contrast right.

ABC ATCs: GHI

Here are a few more in the series of alphabet ATCs - we have G for Gondola

and gingerbread.

H for Hand

and I for island.  Not very inspired words, perhaps, but I am trying to work from stash, so it's sometimes a little challenging when I have to work to spec.  Making cards for their own sake is much easier....