LATE Happy Valentine's Day!

   

 We have a Valentine birthday in the house, and this year it was one of those "ZERO" birthdays, so that's why I'm late! Names and numbers are withheld to protect the innocent. We had a wonderful time-- are these little happy moments more precious after the past year? I think so.

     We finally got a good snow cover-- there is nothing like having a view of a winter wonderland from the comfort of your warm home when you know you don't have to go out! 

Well, I guess I was tempted to go out and get some of these lovely pictures. My mom had a shore house back in the day-- during a hurricane, you'd be sure to find her on the beach-- I guess the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.

We had to shake all the trees and bushes-- they were about to break under the heavy snow. Those birch aren't supposed to look like that!

Then look what I found-- YES! It's the comical stalk from last summer-- I either forgot, or couldn't bear to trim down my little branch that gave me such amusement over the summer. It was bowed into a lovely arch. This was a new rose bush, so I now have probably completely ruined any potential it had by allowing it to grow so lopsided. The stalk will definitely have to go in the spring, but it will be fun to see what happens with that bush next-- it definitely has a sense of humor.

    And just like that, I finished 49 blocks of my Alaska quilt! I'm usually a quilting contrarian, and would work on something like this over the summer, but it was fun to take the last block out for a little photo shoot! Do you quilt with, or against the seasons?

     Somehow, I cracked the code on the eight pointed star and it just all came together. Now it's time to assemble-- this is the part of quilting I like least-- sewing those long seams with all the matching points... it's PIN, PIN, PIN, OUCH! This is the view, unassembled, from a drone over my bedroom floor (this thing is BIG) and will you please let me know if you see any mistakes in layout!

     I'm going to put Alaska away for a bit, and I've already picked out a pattern for my February 2021 Tablerunner-a-Month challenge. I have been getting the Fat Quartershop's Sew Sampler subscription for quite a long time. Every month, you get a little fabric, a pattern, and a couple of notions. Don't laugh-- until I joined the Sew Sampler Facebook page, it never occurred to me you were supposed to make the pattern with the fabric! 

   In January, I received a honey bun of Basic Grey's new CIDER fabric-- so delish. And the pattern looks super easy. Whaddaya know? That PATTERN uses that FABRIC-- what a happy coincidence! This is what a fabric pull looks like in my studio-- no judgment please-- how else are you supposed to see if the mix works?

   The reason I am doing the tablerunner challenge-- it occurred to me when I was decorating for Christmas-- I have NOTHING nice here-- over the years I have tended to give most of what I sew away, for fear of being buried. So I am going to make two little side table pieces and one big coffee table piece with my honeybun and extra grunge fabric from my stash-- specifically for a non-holiday, generic look in my living room. Let's see what happens!

    On the embroidery front, I finished another set of five cross stitch states for a total of fifteen. Once we get half way, we're going to set our states in white sawtooth stars on a blue background-- I'm thinking the border with have red and white stripes. 

Carefree Highways

For Once Upon a Time, Winter this week--
the fairytale forest animals are making some strange sounds! 

So thats what's happening in my neck of the woods.

We'd love to hear what's happening in yours!

xox

Carol