Stash-Only September

The following is proof that I do things other than can food, raise children, garden, rant, and cook.

Taaaa Daaaa!!

I'm back in the studio again! Yee haw!

This here, pardners (now I'm all on a cowboy tangent--sorry--I will self-correct), is a quilt I made up with the 12 Days of Christmas panel by Nancy Halvosen for Bernatex. I have a confession: I love these damn panels. I don't buy them (usually) because I never know what to do with them, but I always like them. Actually, I lie. I don't like things like this, and I have no desire to own this, but there are a few panels I have looked at and thought hmmm.....

Usually I don't buy them because they are hard to work with. You either have a panel that's hard to cut apart without ruining it (right? that one you'd destroy if you took scissors to it--I mean, where do you cut?), or it's a panel that's like a whole quilt, and that's just cheating (hence the name cheater panel). But sometimes I've been tempted, and this one tempted me. I succumbed to it without actually knowing what to do with it. In order to NOT have it hang around the studio for months (or years), I tried to figure out what to do with it. The above is what I came up with. Basically I used the panel as the centers of a log cabin block, put in some sashing, and made the border with extra strips from the blocks. Nicest thing was, I used my stash to do it. Yeay! So anyway, making this quilt from my stash leads me to Stash-Only September, when I will spend this month making things only from what I have. And I'm not even going to cheat by not sewing--I will, in fact, sew a lot, and hopefully get a lot done.

So there you have it. A challenge for myself. I have a lot of fabric stashed away, so I should be pretty busy. In fact, I have this fabric to get to next, since I was going to make it for my kids for the winter time. I'm still thinking on that one. And no, I did not get the panel. I wasn't loving it. But I did get a bunch of other fabrics from that line, and I'm stymied. Oh well. It'll come to me.

I will keep you posted! Expect to see more!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oh, and as an aside, my daughter did finally open up about school. Yesterday at dinner, she sat and told us about her whole day. I mean, her. whole. day. For 45 minutes, and that was mostly because she kept telling the story and then saying "wait, wait, I forgot something", and then would go back over everything she just said, adding tiny details here or there. I just sat there with a huge doofy grin on my face because I was thrilled to hear it. I didn't even know what part of the day she was talking about sometimes, but it didn't matter. I was thrilled to hear every "wait, wait, I forgot something". It was good. So, Cathey, turns out you were right. She had too much to process that first day. The second must have done enough for her that she felt ready to tell.

Either that, or she just kept talking so that her brother wouldn't get a chance to talk about HIS day.....