Harry Potter Project of Doom

I'm so excited to be working on this (these) quilt(s). Soo excited. If you read back, I started working on two of these quite a while ago - one for my best friend, E, and one for myself. Yah, they got backburnered, at least until Jennifer decided to bring it back as this year's quilt a long. And I now have pictures of my blocks so far! Yay! 

I have decided to do a lot of extra blocks, some of which I am designing on my own, and some that are designed by other quilters on this same journey. So much fun. And I've really been adding a lot of blocks to my quilt. The plan for the original pattern was for a 5 by 6 grid of blocks. Yah. I surpassed that a while ago during my planning. But it just happens that there are a lot of wonderful blocks out there just screaming to be included. So they are getting included. Such is life. 

So that middle block, the one of the finished blocks I have done? That was the one released for this week. And after dealing with trying to piece together my crazy patterns I'm testing for myself, it came together soooo quickly. As in, it took me about a half hour, at most. It was such a wonderful break!

Doctor Who *bouncy bouncy*

I am so excited about these. So excited. I have been working on and off on these embroidery blocks for what seems like forever. And I realized that I don't have any photos of those blocks here. Bad AJ. But, of course, now I do!

Really, truly back

So over the past month, I have started and not finished quite a few posts about moving and trying to get back to quilting and all that jazz. Yah. It just didn't happen. I moved out of my old place, which was infested with mold, into a new, much brighter space that has, gasp, a craft room! It is still in a state of major mess, but this weekend I finally got to my sewing machine and was able to work on some sewing for the new Project of Doom Quilt Along.

I'm super excited and it has been a lot of fun to watch everyone work on their quilts. It started the first week of January, but I haven't been able to get working on the blocks until now! I have been working on designing patterns requested by other quilters, so I have been participating, just in a slightly different manner. I will be blogging about those in the days and weeks to come, so stay tuned! But, I do have pictures of some of what I was working on this weekend for you, but, as I have been writing this and fighting with the photos, they don't want to do things properly. I won't torture you with sideways pictures, so I will have to retake them tonight and add them later.

And so while this post is woefully lacking photos (the best part of blogging land in my opinion), I am glad to have gotten started back on these blocks and blogging. Can't wait to enjoy the process!

I think I'm back...

So, moving to Washington, trying to balance a variety of jobs, cultivating a relationship that up to this point was mostly long distance, getting my teaching license transferred, and taking care of my pup has kept me busy over the past almost year. On one hand, I feel bad that I haven't been updating everything, but at the same time, I haven't been doing a ton anyway. I have been keeping up with swaps, which has been good, but even then, it has taken a lot of time to get my place set up and even some sort of clean. And by clean, I mean I no longer have paths running from the front door to my bedroom and kitchen. I have really wanted to get my house to a place where I can have friends over, but I think I'm still a bit away from that.

New news, I am in the process of updating my website! Well, the one here. It's going to be slow going, but I think it will be good. I also think I will work to keep things updated on here, even if I feel like I don't have time, just because time will slip by so quickly and I will look back and want these memories.

Thanks for stopping by and sorry there aren't any pictures this time around. Maybe I will post some tomorrow.

AJ

Black and White and Read All Over!

Next up are the squares I have been working on for my black and white quilt through swaps. As I said in my previous post, I make sister squares to everything I send out. It's a great way to add to my black and white quilt.

I do think I am going to have to make sure I intersperse my squares with other ones so that I can break up the fact that I use a lot of the same fabrics. I mean, it makes sense. I have these and I don't go buy new fabric each time, but I should at least not put them right next to each other. 

Swapping time!

I have been really enjoying doing swaps with Swap-Bot. I haven't been taking pictures like I did when I first started, both blogging and swapping. Some of the funnest swaps have been my color your block (or your color my block, I can't remember) because I do a test run with my colors first, then I get to make the block for my partner. It's a good encouragement to keep working on blocks for my black and white quilt. My quilt will be made up of the blocks I make, as well as the blocks I receive from swaps. Below are the pictures of the blocks I sent. The blocks I made for myself will be another blog.

This in a full quilt would just be lovely. The recipient asked for purple, then an accent of yellow. I hope that she likes it. 

This one I liked because of all of the oranges. I still don't know though if I like the red as the trapezoids, or if I would have liked it more as yellow. The yellow is also really cool because it is a really awesome VeggieTales print. Made me smile :-)

Yes, this one is black and white. It's an extra for some of the black and white swaps that I do occasionally. It will be getting sent out as soon as there is another swap!

And that's it for today. Lots of pretty squares!

Aiming for Accuracy!

So, one of my summer projects has been the Aiming for Accuracy QAL. I'm excited with how it has been turning out. It is being hosted over at the Quilting Gallery. The link is over in my sidebar. This started out as a gift project, but has since been changed into just a fun quilt to make. It's also really helping my quilting in general. My accuracy has been improving, as well as I have been finding some pretty awesome tools that help with the whole accuracy thing. So, here we go! At the end is my digital design wall, which is wonderful for getting a sense of color balance and such.

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Design Wall

I haven't gotten around to the square for this week, but thankfully, I have until Friday to do so, which means I can take a few days.