Check-In for last 2 weeks of our break

This the last of the pictures I took at the Ricky Tims' seminar - it's his teaching sample of his Kool Kaleidoscope on the design wall. It looked pretty simple to do and I may have to try it one of these days. The picture has nothing to do with this entry really, I just liked the design and wanted to share it. I managed to do morning pages every day for the last two weeks, although Christmas morning and one other day were kind of abbreviated. I enjoy the process of writing things down - have always been a list maker and love to handwrite letters which tend to be a stream of consciousness, so I don't find the morning page process that different. My journal pages for this 2 week period seem to be rapidly becoming more about the Journal Quilt Challenge than anything else - guess it's a creative outlet so it's okay.

The week before Christmas I managed to finish up a number of projects and get them mailed out - the 4 wallhangings for my nieces which were a new technique for me, something a friend did and I decided I wanted to try out. I also finished up cutting the Nov. & Dec. blocks for my block of the month pal on the Forum, and go those mailed to her along with her quilty gifts. Ethel wanted her blocks in 30s fabrics, which was a learning experience for me this year as 30s repros are not my favorite fabrics. My goal for myself for the year was to make a block myself each month from the same pattern that I sent her, but to do it in a different color combination than the block I cut for it -- and my December quilty gift to her was some border fabric for her to finish the quilt with and the 12 blocks that I made during the course of the year, so she could make herself a larger quilt if she chose -- or two quilts. My learning experience was pretty much what I expected would happen - I decided that I like 30s fabrics better once they are cut up and put into a block -- on the bolt at the LQS, they just don't do anything for me -- but they will never rank in the list of my favorite fabrics. I enjoyed the learning experience though and I guess that's what counts most after all. Now I'm anxious to see Ethel's finished quilt and see how how she decides to finish it.

The week before Christmas, my artist date(s) were (1) a trip to Quilter's Bee, one of the LQSes in the Valley -- where I bought the end of the bolt of a cloud fabric that they had one sale (I'm going to try over-dyeing and/or dye painting it to see if I can get a sunset effect for my January journal piece) and a set of Setacolor Soleil fabric paints; and (2) a stop at Target to pick up some Sterilite containers to organize my thread collection for this journal quilt process, and some of the other bits & pieces I'm collecting that may get used along the way -- while I was there, I also bought myself a box of crayons, regular Elmer's glue and the new gel glue to try the glue batiking technique and a couple of bleach pens. Artist child has no complaints about lack of new toys this week! This past week, I again indulged artist child with abandon - ran to Bernina Connection on my lunch hour one day and bought more fancy threads (had a 20% off coupon so I figured better now than later) and another bobbin case for my Bernina. I'll do a separate post about the continuing saga of my journal piece, but needed the extra bobbin case to play with bobbin tension on my tree. I also signed up to take a beading class at Quilt University since I haven't done a lot of beading and embellishment on my quilts in the past, so I thought I could learn some techniques. Yesterday I went to the Bead Museum STore and bought supplies for the beading class -- what fun that was! -- and hit GoodWill on the way home as well. It was half price day at GoodWill, so I had some fun wandering around trying to find inspiration. I got a large piece of good quality wine-colored cotton velveteen for $1, a wineglass that appears to be an antique to me, not just a Libbey's glass, for $1 & 3 t-shirts for myself - then as I was headed for checkout, I wandered through a final rack of t-shirts and found a t-shirt from Machu Picchu - top spot on my life list of things I want to do. It has a fairly small motif on the front - aerial view of Machu Picchu with a black bird flying over it (condor perhaps?) under a wide blue sky. It got my to thinking about how I might remove the motif and somehow incorporate it into one of my journal pieces this year, perhaps embellish it, who knows what else?! Total cost at GoodWill - $11.50 - and artist child is happy again!

Whew, long post, and next week we're back at work on AW. I hope you all have a very Happy and Productive New Year!