Studio Post #39 - More Stockings and a Purse

I'm blogging this on Tuesday because I've been sick with some crud that I cannot shake! Last week, I attended a day and a half of a three day retreat. I was not very energetic or ambitious, but I got some stuff done.

Goal one was to make more Christmas stockings for our church project of blessing local teens. Here are some of the ones I got done at the retreat. The fleece stockings are so easy! (Plus, I'm trying to use up my fleece.)

Goal two was to make a replacement for my "sub bag" that I've worn out. It's a handy place to hold pens, post-its, bandaids, lip balm, etc. while I'm teaching. My original one was wearing out (and it's already been patched up, plus I've replaced the strap twice). The first one I didn't box the bottom corners (giving it less capacity) and I haven't added the strap yet. The blue one is functional. I'm not super thrilled with how it turned out, but it will work!

My original goal was to work on the wedding quilt for Morgan and Angela (married in 2016!) but I felt crummy enough (and made enough silly mistakes) that I'm glad I just left it in my car.

I'm so thankful that I rarely get ill. It is unusual for me to be dragging like this.

2024 Studio Post #3 - MQ Intown Retreat

Now, technically, this doesn't really count since I wasn't in my studio! However, I spent a lot of time sewing last week!

I had been participating in the 2017 Mystery Challenge. I wanted so much to keep up and get it done, but life got in the way. Then as I was trying to play catch up, I got to directions I struggled to follow AND I saw other peoples' finished quilts. 

Mike Ellingson was the designer and he's amazing. It was called "Go with the FLW." Initially, I thought it was "flow" without the "O," but I learned it was FLW for Frank Lloyd Wright.

In any case, I had made all the blocks using his directions through month 7. Then I had started month 8 and . . . paused. Here's what the finished quilts looked like.

 

I just wasn't in love with it. And my fabric choices were odd, since I did a mix of scrappy and brights. (The directions gave some color / hue info, but our choices were ours!) 

After it sat for about six years, I opened the bin to see that yes, I had done a lot of work, I still didn't understand the month 9 directions, and I didn't want to make Mike's design.

There were things I loved and things I didn't love. I decided it was my quilt and I had already done a lot of work on it, so I brought it to the three-day in-town retreat and played with what I could make. Here are a few shots, but I didn't get it completely done. It took a surprising amount of time to go from lots of partial pieces (strips of flying geese, some courthouse steps, half-square triangles, etc.) to an almost finished top.

 

I've got more done, but I'll wait until I finish the top to post more. The retreat was 9am - 8pm on both Thursday and Friday and 9am - 5pm on Saturday. I stayed overnight at my girlfriend Jenifer's house so I wasn't driving as far. 

I'd write more, but I'm tired and I have a lot going on tomorrow. It feels really good to have gotten a lot of sewing done. I'm super excited to finish this top and schedule time to quilt it.

I've fallen behind on the declutter challenge, but I don't like to be stressed out, so I'll just try to get a little done each day.