A New Toy for the Sewing Room

 

        

While I was absent from the blog, I certainly was not absent from my sewing room!  Although I did work for almost 2 months quilting Vintage Tin, I did break the monotony of that project with a few small, but cute projects …. you know, to keep me from burning out on sewing altogether.  This was one of those projects. 

           

I had purchased this pattern over a year ago from Crabapple Hill designs and had really wanted to make it right off the bat, but I had a difficult time finding a galvanized pail in the correct size to fit the pattern, so the project kind of sat on the shelf waiting for me to come across the pail.  The pattern calls for a 10 quart galvanized pail.  None at Lowes.  None at WalMart.  None at Feeder’s Supply or Orscheln’s.  They had some really cute pails at the Dollar Store, but none in the right size for this.  Ummmmm I finally looked on Amazon.com and there it was.  Purchased this and a couple of books and got free shipping!  Could have saved all the gas I wasted in my search!

                     

This lovely little bucket is lined with 2 tiers of pockets inside.  You can see some ink pens peeking out of the first tier and the large gaping pocket is in the second tier.  Additionally, there is the center of the interior free for large or bulky items ….. that’s where you see the tape measure.

                             

The outside pockets will accommodate magazines and large envelopes.  There is a magazine in the outer pocket on the picture up top. 

I love my new toy.  I can carry it anywhere I want to work …. out on the patio, the porch swing, on sewing retreats and to friends’ homes.  And it will carry anything I need to take!  And it only took an afternoon to make.  Call me a happy camper!

 

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

    

Goodbye Google Reader …. Hello Bloglovin’!

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5198763/?claim=6kzvhgddrwb">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>


It’s a sad day.  I’ve used Google Reader for as long as I can remember ……. even before I had a blog!  So, to see it go is kind of upsetting because I’m so used to things as they have always been.  BUT ….. as of next Monday, Google Reader will be gone.  Poof!  Up in smoke.  GONE.  So I have decided to try out Bloglovin’.  So many of my friends in blogland have already done this.  It must be painless.  We. Shall. See.

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

I’m Back Again ……. And with a finish!

I want to thank all my friends for sticking with me and my blog during my long absence.  For those of you who do not know, my dear, dear husband who had been sick for such a long time, passed away last month.  It has been a very hard adjustment for me and I thank you for your patience.  I am trying to get my life back in some kind of order and get back to doing the things I love, blogging among those things.  And on that note, I want to present to you my version of Vintage Tin …….

              

This post is going to be picture heavy …… I have lots of photos of the individual blocks since that is the only way the embroidery shows up. 

              

Vintage Tin is a pattern which was designed by Meg Hawkey for Crabapple Hill Designs.  If you are comparing the two, you can see that I have changed the arrangement considerably.  My quilt did not use all of the embroidery panels that Meg designed for the quilt, but I have them embroidered out sitting there on my sewing table.  I may at some later time use them to make pillows or something else.

        

            

         

The quilt measures 96 1/2“ long and is 89” wide.  I used about 15 skeins of DMC black embroidery thread for the embroidery and over 4000 yards of Superior Rainbows thread in the quilting.  I began work on this quilt last August and it was completed the end of May of this year.

 

 

 

       

Thanks for sticking with this post through all of the photos!  I am back to sewing, so I hope to be posting to my blog more often. 

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop

Welcome to the last day of the April Showers Blog Hop and welcome to my blog!  Hasn’t this blog hop been amazing? ….. So inspiring!  A big thank you to Madame Samm at Sew We Quilt and to our cheerleader, Erin, at Sew at Home Mummy 
The theme for the April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop is anything you find inspiring for the month of April.  what do I think of when I think of April?  Rain. Rain. and even more Rain!  And Easter.  And flowers.  And warm weather – NO MORE COATS!!!!!  I always think of those cute little vintagey Easter chicks and ducks when I think of Easter.  So, I put on on my mug rug!
             
 
I thought and thought long and hard about how to fashion my mug rug.  I looked at embroidery designs and vintage illustrations …… all kinds of things.  And I came up with absolutely NOTHING.  So, I turned to my stash of orphan quilting blocks and my scrap bin in hopes of cobbling something together.  I found the little 16 patch block in my baggie of orphan blocks and it looked promising …… blue, which I always think of April as being a ‘blue’ month.  And then the white fabric had little blue droplets on it ….. just like rain.  So I grabbed it up and decided to use it for one side of the mug rug.  All I needed to do was look for a little embroidery to go with it.  I found the little drawing of the chick, downsized it on my printer to the perfect size, and then spent a couple of hours with needle and thread embroidering it.  I added in some raindrops to make it more April like (at least in my mind it’s more April like).  A little border from the scrap bin, some rick rack edging for the ‘cute factor’, and there you have it.  My mug rug.  I hope you like it as much as I do!
                 
Thanks for stopping by my blog!  I hope you will come back and see me.  AND  don’t forget to visit the other bloggers on the April Showers Mug Rug Blog Hop!  Here’s a list of links :
Thursday April 18
Merry Gay @ Merry Gay in Stitches
Mary @ Sew Maybe I Can
Joanne @ Everyone Deserves a Quilt
Linda @ Buzzing and Bumbling
Mary @ NeedledMom
Sherry @ Peanuts Patchwork
Fredrika @ Feltfree på Åsly
Shauna @ Welcome to Shauna's World
Sharon @ Dancing thru Threads
Madame Samm @ !Sew WE Quilt!
Happy Hopping Everyone!
Merry Gay

Too many projects .....

I have so many projects on the go right now that I can't make sense of them all on my workspace! I'm trying to get them finished as fast as I can. I'll post pictures as I get them done.  Stand by .....

Enjoy, Merry Gay

Finally! A new post!

I didn't realize that I haven't blogged on a whole month! Surely I can do better than that. My life has been such a roller coaster lately that I've lost track of just about everything. But I promise to try to do better.

I haven't sat at the sewing machine much, but I did manage to finish the Vintage Tin quilt top and have ordered the backing and batting so that it can be sandwiched and quilted. Yay! I am so happy to have one close to finished! If you only knew how many tops I have stacked up ready to be quilted!

I am still slogging away on this embroidery project ... The embroidered borders for Bluebirds. Pictures will be found down below. If there is a way to embed the pictures into the paragraph using Blogger app for android, I haven't figured it out yet! I used to think I knew about technology... "used to" being the operative phrase here. One of these days my son will come home and teach me! Anyway, the Bluebirds quilt embroidery COULD BE finished by Easter if I really threw myself into it, but with my life being so topsy turvy right now, I'm thinking it will be more like 2 weeks. ;-)

In the mean time ....

Enjoy, Merry Gay

Eye Candy Gram - The Neverending Border

I haven't had a lot to show the past week or so. I've been plugging away on the neverending quilt border for The Bluebird Quilt. I figure that I'm about half way finished with the embroidery. I am also working towards finishing up a quilt top this week and it is one that I haven't shared with you yet. So I will have a big surprise to unveil! So stay tuned!

Enjoy!  Merry Gay

Design Wall Wednesday …

It’s BOM time!  I’ve been working on 2 Block of the Month quilts, The “Aurifil 2013 BOM” and “Jingle Belle”.  I don’t actually have them on my wall, but there isn’t anything there, so I’ll have to show you work table shots.
               
This is the February block for the Aurifil 2013 BOM, all lain out ready for me to stitch the next time I sit down at my machine (tomorrow).  I’m excited about watching this quilt come together.  It’s going to be done in Christmas colors for my bed.  Actually, so is the February applique block for Jingle Belle.
           
I’m using the same colors in each of these quilts, so by the end of the year, I’m probably going to be sick of red and green, but I will have 2 quilts to show for it, so I won’t have to make another Christmas quilt for a while.

I do have other things that I’m working on.  There is the seemingly never ending embroidery around the perimeter of the Bluebird quilt.  And I haven’t even shown you the Crabapple Hill BOM, which isn’t a quilt at all, but one of those perpetual wall calendars with cute little embroidered blocks that you can move around from month to month and year to year.  I’m really going to enjoy having that! 

Oh, and the 2 French Cottage Garden quilts/bedspreads. I am going to finally finish one of those ….. well the top anyway (I won’t quilt them until they are both done) probably in the next couple of weeks.  I have to tell you, I love love love the way those are turning out,  But I’m so sick of making pinwheels.  It feels like I’ve made a   thousand of them.  I’ll post a picture of the one I have finished when I finally do get it finished.

So, for now, that’s enough to keep me busy.  Hope you enjoyed taking a peek.

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

No New Pictures

Well, my camera broke.    So I don’t have any new pictures to show you.  Not that it would matter if I had a camera since I’ve been bogged down with hand embroidery for the last 2 weeks and will probably continue to be bogged down with it for the foreseeable future.  That’s what happens when you decide to heavily embroider the entire outer border of a quilt.  I keep telling myself it will be SO PRETTY when it’s finished that it will worth all the work.  We shall see. 

In the mean time, however, I was asked a couple of weeks ago by a blog reader to give everybody a peek at my sewing space.  That is complicated since I have recently moved all of my ‘stuff’ from my sewing room into the dining room so I could spend more quality time with my husband and also get some sewing done at the same time.  But I have pictures of my sewing room before all this happened, so I will show you pictures of that.

Ready?  Here goes ………

              

This photo shows the desk I use for my sewing machine and it also accommodates my laptop.  I can multi-task using this setup ….. you know read blogs/ e-mail/watch Netflix while I sew.  It worked so well for me.  I haven’t been able to get this kind of thing worked out in the dining room where I sew now.  That kind of makes me miss it.  I also had my ironing board situated so that I could sew a seam and then just spin around and press it on the ironing board without having to get up which was really nice.  Just one more thing … I had that wing back chair!  I loved having my dog (sometimes more than one when I had more than one) right there with me for company.  Alison is sitting there in this picture and she passed away a little more than a year ago.  I still miss her.  Anyway,  I digress …..

             

Here is another view from the bedroom doorway.  This is a smallish room.  It had been a dressing room before I transformed it into a sewing room.  Let me tell ya,  I did a whole lot more sewing here than I ever did dressing!  LOL.  I still keep some clothing items in the dresser, and the light is so good in here that I always put my make-up on in here. 

            

This is yet another view …. a straight shot from the bedroom door into the hallway.  It shows the little cabinet that I use to store buttons and fabrics, stabilizers and embroidery supplies.                                                         

  

These pictures are taken of my sewing area as it is now in the dining room.  These pictures were taken at night, so it is much darker, but on any day this room is always darker than in my actual sewing room.  I do have a wonderful view of my back yard though.  It works almost as well as the old set up and my husband appreciates the fact that I have rearranged everything for him.  And that is really all that counts in the long run.

I hope you have enjoyed the short tour.  I will be back next week with a new post and some new pictures!  I’m working on getting a new camera (wink).  Until then…..

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Do You Dare? …

       

To Dresden!  I do!  Enthusiastically!  I am so excited to be a part of the Dare to Dresden blog hop organized by Madame Samm over at the “Sew We Quilt” blog and Christine at the “Quilt Monster in My Closet” blog. 
                       
Last summer, I started playing with my EZ Dresden ruler and made a bunch of Dresdens.  I appliqued them all down onto some plain blocks.  Then I decided that it was just too darn plain!  Even with fancy sashings, it was just too plain.  So I dug into my folder of applique shapes and came up with this ………
                       
Much better, I think!  Now make 12 of these babies and design some sweet borders to finish it off ……
   
  
                   
I used two sashings with a contrasting corner post around each block.  To join the 12 blocks together, I used a wide fuchsia mini dot print with a 16 block corner post.  This quilt was time consuming, but it was truly a pleasure to design and assemble.  I enjoyed every minute of it.  Thank you for stopping here and looking in on my Dresden creation on the Dare to Dresden blog hop and hope you will come back again.  Please do click on the following links and check out what the other Dare to Dresden hoppers have to share with you!

January 30^th, 2013

Charlotte H @ “that Other Blog”

It Seems to be Sew

Merry Gay in Stitches

Water Penny

Granny Good Stuff

Under the Presser Foot

More Stars in Comanche

Sew Me Something Good

The Day Before This Day

Farm Road

Livin' Blue Quilter

I Piece 2 Mary
Kwilty Pleasures
Espritpatch
Nutz4Redwork

Till next time …….


Enjoy,  Merry Gay

The Liebster Award

                  
I was absolutely thunderstruck when I discovered that my dear blog friend, Janice Ferguson, had nominated me and my blog for The Liebster Award.  Janice blogs at Janice Ferguson Sews, and if you haven’t read her blog, then you need to check it out.  I love reading her blog.  It contains a wealth of information about heirloom sewing and beautiful pictures modeled by her precious grandchildren.  I feel like we have become friends, even though we have never met.  One day I do hope to meet her.
The Liebster Award is, according to what I read on Janice’s blog, “…given by bloggers to up and coming bloggers, most of whom have 200 followers or have been blogging for less than 6 months.  It is to show newer bloggers that they are appreciated and help spread the word about new blogs.  Liebster translates to “dearest” (or favorite/best) in German.  It is also known as the “Love Blog Award”.  It’s been fun to get to know some bloggers better and is a great way to pass the love on”.
Liebster awardees are given a list of questions to answer about themselves and we are to add in some personal tidbits about ourselves as well, so this may be way more about me than you ever wanted to know.  So please feel free to skip this post altogether unless you want to spend a fair amount of time reading my blog.  Here are the Liebster rules:

• Post 11 things about yourself
• Answer the 11 questions asked by the person who nominated you
• Make up 11 questions for the bloggers whom you will nominate
• Choose 11 new blogs and link them to your blog post

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Here are 11 things about me:

1. My house sits on a large lot and at one time most of it was taken up by flower beds.  I raised daylilies and had over 200 varieties in my yard.  They were gorgeous for about a month out of the year.  The rest of the year (except for the winter months) they were just green plants that required a whole lot of work because of the horrid bermuda grass that I constantly battled.  This was a time that I spent most of my waking hours gardening pulling grass out of places that it wasn’t wanted.  Finally, after about 8 years of this, the bermuda grass won the battle when I decided that I was not going to devote myself to daylilies any more, no matter how pretty they were.  I was not sewing a whole lot during this gardening period.  However, I did knit a fair amount of socks during this time. 
2. Years ago, my Grandmother got me addicted to the pickles that she made in her kitchen.  For a long time she made all the pickles for my entire family.  Then when she retired from Queen of Pickle Making, my mom and I picked up her crown and started making them.  We did this for years.  Then my mom died and so now it’s just me.  I make pickles every summer for my house as well as for all of my children.  See, I got my own kids addicted to pickles as well!
3. I went to college at The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) and shall remain a card carrying Ole Miss Rebel fan until the day I die, and when that day comes, drape my casket in a Confederate flag and somebody please sing “Dixie”. 
4. I also received a degree in Interior Design from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.  I have never really put all that hard work to good use, but all of that art school training does come in handy when I am designing quilts!  I guess you could say that I have received a lot of pleasure from that degree because I love designing quilts and have made that my hobby/passion.
5. I love dogs.  Right now I only have one, Sophie Belle, who is a German Shepherd mix that my husband and I rescued about a year ago.  Before that we owned were owned by 5 (yes FIVE) beagles who were hunting dogs that I made into house dogs.  See, we owned the mother, Freckles, and she had these puppies ….. Allie, Carole, Prissy, Elvis and TwoTone.  By the time they were old enough to wean, neither me nor my husband wanted to part with any of them.  We were in love with our dogs.  So, we sent them to rabbit hunting school (yes, there is such a thing) in Kentucky and they came back to us raring to hunt.  They lived in a kennel in our yard/garden at that time and it was at this time that we realized what we already knew but had somehow forgotten ……….. WE HAD A BUNCH OF TOWN RABBITS LIVING IN MY DAYLILIES!  And every time one would present itself in sight of the pen, we had 5 howling, chomping at the bit ready to hunt beagles (with those LOUD voices!) raising the ruckus.  Which did not set well with our neighbors (did I mention that this invariably happened at 3 AM?).  The police were making house calls here ALL. THE. TIME.  So I moved them all into the house and potty trained them and we all lived happily ever after.
6. I don’t think I could live without a tall glass of sweet iced tea either in my hand or on a table beside me.  I have to have it. It’s an addiction.  Nuff said!
7. I love to read.  I just finished reading the “Game of Thrones” series.  Now I’m ready to start something new.  But before I start a series, I’m going to read Stephen King’s “From a Buick 8”.  My son gave me that book a few years ago for Christmas and I read probably about a third of it before I put it down to read something else and never got back to it.  So now I’m going to start from the beginning and read just that till I get it finished.  Next I think I’ll try the Tudor series from Philippa Gregory.  Janice Ferguson said that it was really good on her blog and I loved ‘The Tudors’ on tv, so I’ll give it a whirl.  I am assuming that it’s about the same Tudors!  LOL.  We shall see……
8. I love baking and at one time came really close to opening a bakery here in Sikeston.  We had a bakery at one time (still have some that profess to be bakeries, but sadly are not even though they think they are), but it closed and now there is absolutely no place left to get really good cookies and cakes.  Well, except for my kitchen! (Insert sly smile here). 
9. If it were up to me, I would have the satellite tv disconnected at my house and rely solely on Netflix for that sort of entertainment.  I have no use for tv, except for Downton Abbey, and I can subscribe to that and get it on either my phone or tv.  I always watch Netflix on my laptop with ear buds while my DH watches tv.  I can always find something good to watch on Netflix.  That is rarely the case with tv.  OK.  Getting off my soap box.
10. I am scared to death of flying in an airplane.  I didn’t use to be, but after an absolutely hair raising flight home from Las Vegas in 1995 (I’ll swear I can still recall every last detail of that flight) in which I made a ‘Deal with God’, I have never been on another airplane.  And never will.  This means that when I finally take that trip to Italy that I’ve been dreaming about for the past 5 or so years, I will be making that trip on an ocean liner.  So much more romantic/relaxing/chic than a trip by airplane.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself.  Just don’t mention ice bergs!  LOL
11. I love music.  Every kind of music ….. except Country Western music and I can’t stand that.  My favorites (because there isn’t just one) are The Beatles (of course), The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Michael Jackson (the musician, not the pedophile), Carly Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Kenny Loggins ……. I could go on and on and on.  I have almost 5000 songs on my mp3 player.  It takes me a while just to choose an album to listen to! 

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Here are 11 things Janice asked me:

1. What is your favorite blog post?  Oh my.  Let me think.  I have several favorites, but if I had to choose one I would choose the one called “Snowbound” followed closely by the Bluebird pillowcases one called “Vintage Bluebirds”.  The Snowbound quilt has turned into one of my very favorite quilts.  It lives on my bed after Thanksgiving until I put the Bunny Quilt on around Easter.  And the Vintage Bluebirds were a pair of pillowcases which started my whole embroidered bluebird phase.  I am currently trying to finish up a quilt top that matches these pillowcases.  I would have had it finished except I decided to embroider the little flying bluebirds and floral ribbons around the entire quilt border which has turned into a very time consuming process.  I have also received so much feedback on these 2 quilts.  Not only in comments, but in private e-mails, so I know that these posts have been some reader favorites.
2. Are you involved in your community?  Not so much.  And it isn’t that I don’t want to be, it’s just that I don’t have the time for that.  I have never talked about it on my blog much, but my DH is very sick and I stay at home with him pretty much all the time.  I get out once a week and go to church and that is the one thing that I do for myself consistently.  But my priority is staying home and that’s what I do.  Plus that allows me much sewing time, so I can get a lot done. 
3. What do you do (or would you do) if you have free time?  Well, I do have lots of free time.  It just needs to be spent in the house.  I watch Netflix and embroider much of the time.  My DH has a hospital bed in our living room, so it’s easy to find a nice place to sit and do this.  Our dining room adjoins the living room and I have moved my sewing studio out of the room it was in and into that room, so I have my machines and cutting boards and all the tools I need right in there.  It works for me and my life right now.  If I were to get out of the house and do something, I think the first thing I would do is join the Y and enroll in some group exercise classes and get involved with my local quilt guild.  I would try to get out and have lunch once a week with my girlfriends.  And I would do some travelling. 
4. What is your favorite family activity?  Well, our family activities are somewhat limited right now.  We used to love to go fishing.  I would pack a picnic and we would put all the poles and the bait, the cooler and the blanket, the bug spray and anything else we would need for the day and pick out a lake to go to.  We always had a good time.  The kids caught fish and frogs and turtles, learned all about tadpoles and baby birds and other things.  It was a great experience.
5. What is your favorite blog comment?  Well, I don’t get a great many blog comments.  Janice is my most frequent commenter and I appreciate that.  It’s always good to get some kind of feedback from your readers.  I do love and appreciate each and every blog comment that I get and I want to thank everyone who does comment on my blog.
6. Do you collect anything?  Well, besides yarn and fabric (they don’t count, right?) I have a nice collection of paintings.  I started collecting paintings when I was in school at the Ringling School of Art and I have just never stopped.  And I also enjoy going to tag sales and auctions and finding nuggets of treasure here and there.  I’ll tell you what I used to do with my mom when she was alive. Sikeston has many old historic homes which were home to some really nice people that both my mother and I have met or known throughout the years.  Every so often somebody would die and there would be the estate tag sale or auction and we would go.  We would find something really nice and buy it and that would be the thing that we would remember “Miss ? by.  It was nice.  Everytime I see some of the things I have bought this way, I will think of that lady.  And now that my dear sweet mother has passed, (I was an only child and so I have all of her things) I have all of her things that we collected together so I can play ‘I remember the day we bought this …..’ game.  I am so grateful to have done this and have these memories.
7. Do you have a sewing support group?  The only support group I have is online.  Well, and my family.  They are the recipients of most of the things that I sew, so they support me a lot!  They will often support me by providing me with a list of things that I can sew for them.  Sometimes with pictures attached!  I feel loved and appreciated.
8. What is your fondest memory of the last 20 years?  My fondest memory ……. oooooo I have so many of these.  But the one that comes to mind right now is the day before my mother died.  We went shopping out of town the day before she died.  And we went to Steak and Shake for burgers and fries.  We did that many times, but this time we bought one of their big (as in giant) fountain style milk shakes, which we never did before because they have so many calories.  But this time, we decided to forget the calories and just go for it.  And we didn’t order one and split it which is probably what we should have done.  But we ordered a whole one each.  And we sat there in that booth and ate our burgers and giggled over drinking those big ole shakes and how we were going to regret it tomorrow.  She had a stroke and died that night and I’m so glad that she spent this last day playing with me and that she left me with this last memory …… a really nice one.
9. Are you happy with your location?  If you had to move, where would you choose?  This is a good question.  I do not know really.  I’m happy here …. sure.  And if I were to leave here, I don’t know where on earth I would go.  I can tell you a lot of places that I would NOT go, but I don’t really know where I WOULD go.  I know that I would not want to move just to be moving.  I would want to have a reason for going.  That’s the thing about life, sometimes you just have to let it lead you.  If I am meant to go someplace else, I will end up there.  Without getting preachy, I will just say that that is how God works.  It’s kind of a little miracle how it all happens.
10. What do you think is the most important component of your blog?  Well, that would have to be pictures!  My blog exists to show people what I make.  What I’m doing with my time.  How I interpreted this or that pattern.  How and what I created.  My blog is kind of a diary of the things that I make.  I don’t think I’ve ever shared a tutorial on my blog.  But I could if someone wanted me to show them something.  It’s just never come up.  But pictures would be a big part of that too.
11. Do you have any pets?  Yes I do!  I have my big, beautiful, wonderful dog, Sophie Belle.  And I also have an elderly cat, Munchkin.  He doesn’t get a lot of press because he lives outside.  But I see him every day and he is also a big part of this family.

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Make up 11 Questions for my nominees:

1. What do enjoy doing in your spare time?
2. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?
3. Do you have any pets?
4. Of all the places you have been in your life, which one is your favorite and why?
5. Would you share a favorite recipe with us?
6. If you could go to any restaurant, which one would it be and what would you order?
7. If you could go into your sewing room and start a new project just for yourself, what would it be?
8. If you could add a new tool or machine to your sewing room, what would it be?
9. Do you dream of attending a sewing retreat?  Where or which one?
10. What new sewing technique would you like to learn?
11. If you could change one thing, in yourself or your life, what would it be?

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Choose 11 new blogs and link them to your post. This was the hardest part of the requirements for me.  I simply do not know of that many new blogs.  Most of the blogs that I follow are those who have been around the blogosphere for a longer period than I have been around!  I went through my blog list and most of the blogs I follow have hundreds of followers, so they were to big and too well known to use.  And it probably wouldn’t have done any good because they don’t follow my blog and they would have had to follow my blog to know that they had been selected.  Hmmm.  I’m kind of ‘up a creek without a paddle’ here.  So, I chose two blogs that I follow that qualify and do hope that they will answer all the questions and play along.  This has been fun!
A Serenade for Solitude
Pitter Putter Stitch
 I apologize to everyone who read this far for taking up so much of their time.  I did write a lot!  LOL.  I promise I’m not usually this long winded!
Enjoy,  Merry Gay

Miss January

             

This is the January block for the Aurifil 2013 BOM which has been organized by Pat Sloan for Aurifil.  Each block in this series is going to be designed by a different designer!  This one was designed by Erin Russek.  She is the lady who designed the ‘Jingle’ medallion that I had up on my blog a couple of Design Wall Wednesdays ago.  ANYWAY, this is going to be a lot of fun.  You make the block and then post a picture of the block you made over on the Flickr group that has been set up for this BOM.  There will be commenting and chatting on the Flickr group and drawings for prizes.  Prizes are always fun, don’t you think?  And at the end of the 12 months, you have a nice quilt.  I’m making mine in mostly reds and greens since I want a new Christmas quilt.  Month 1 down, 11 more to go!  Wheee

Enjoy,  Merry Gay