Keeping busy and warm

First will touch the subject of weather — cold and maybe snow tonight and tomorrow morning – it continues to be low temperatures for Arkansas – enough said!  But the plus side of the cold weather is that I am in hibernation mode   other than trying to run out every day to go to the fitness center I have been spending time working on 3 projects – and I hop between them off and on all day – quilt on the Christmas Quilt – work on my circles and patches – jump over to the Insanity Revisited and then pick up a book and read a little bit.  This cycle continues all day and into the evening LOL

I got 50 more 4 patches sewed together this morning and have them pressed and waiting to be squared up -

65 to 75 left to make - I normally make a little extra for scrappy quilts so that if a color choice doesn't work out I have a few extra to play with.

Yesterday I was in the mood to get some circles ready to applique and must have done my method for circles on about 20 of them at least. Last night I spent time applique circles while watching the movie "Australia" with Nicole Kidman - I had seen it at the movies last year so it didn't matter if my eyes weren't on the screen all night. I have about 150 circles appliqued I think and maybe about 10 more ready to work on.

yesterday morning I got this block reversed appliqued. It is from Row 9 Block 11 on my Insanity Revisited Dear Jane quilt. I am trying to keep up with this quilt so it doesn't stay on the back burner too long forgotten. I prepped one more block last night for this row - it is another with tiny pieces - 41 of them! I am almost done with row 9 so that feels great.

I need to get background fabric (white on whites type)  for two upcoming quilts that I will be working on all year so I well go fabric shopping from the comfort of my sewing room.  I really like fabric shopping this way – what I save on from not buying lunch and gas for the car pays for the shipping I am sure and sometimes you get free shipping depending on how much you buy.  Round trip to a quilt shop from here is about 160 – 180 miles easily.  Then when you get to the shop you might find out that they do not have what you want or in this case how much you need (about 10 yards each at least) and you end up buying what you didn’t plan on getting instead and still need to find what you did need.  That isn’t easily done around here.  If you go to the Little Rock area there is only one quilting shop!  In a city that size that always amazes me.  If you go the opposite direction to the Fort Smith area there is one shop that I like but she is only open on Wednesday and Saturday for some reason – nice shop (Mama’s Log House) but out of the way and no other decent one in that area.  So if you get to the shops and not find what you want it is usually a totally wasted trip.

Thanks for all the opinions I got on The Quilt Show – some came in private e mails as people did not want “hate mail”   surely people wouldn’t do that!! it is after all everyone’s personal opinion.  I did decide to join for a year – I want the BOM pattern that they have the and joining fee is worth it in my opinion.  I figure the pattern/instructions and whatever videos and tutorials I see this coming year will pay for it.  If I find I have barely used it this year then I will know not to pay for it next year.  There is a group of 12 of us (I think that is the number) on line that are going to be working on this at the same time and sharing our woes and joy over this quilt.