Progress and New Beginnings

Happy New Year!!

I started the new year with quilting. On January first, I had figured out again what I had intended as a filler between the already quilted circles, when I last worked on this, about a year and a half ago.

Quilting in Progress – back of the quilt – ignore the basting glue stains!

I am free motion quilting along acrylic templates, and it is slow going, with lots of repositioning, both intentional and by accident :-(.

Close up of quilting on a test sandwich. The template moves around a pin and a circular spacer template.

It isn’t much fun to quilt this way. Lots of stops and starts, lots of irregularities and mistakes, some ripping. But I am very happy with the density and the overall look. So, I will quilt this filler between the circles. It will take some time to finish, but I am hopeful it will be finished in 2022, before the 10th anniversary of my FIL’s passing. (The top is made of his shirts, ties and pajamas).

Before I returned to quilting, we had a very quiet Christmas. No visits, no visitors, no fancy dinner, no fuss! We love it that way, so we are making the best of the pandemic while we can. It was the first Christmas in our new home. The first Christmas after The Man About The House lost his last parent.

We were still without the new sofa, roller blinds and curtains, and we couldn’t find all of our Christmas stuff. There are still boxes and stuff in the living room that need to find a place elsewhere. So it felt a bit like a rehearsal for ‘new home Christmas’.

We celebrate Sinterklaas on 5 December as our December gift giving fest, with special candy and pastry. I received Christmas decorations, and we each got new books, so we were prepared for a lovely Holiday break, in pajamas.

Old Christmas tree with some new baubles, a piece of new kitchen on the left, and a piece of me in Christmas pajamas on the right :-)

On 25 December, just before midnight, I finally finished a felt Christmas wreath I started in 2015. That put an end to the annual tradition of me working on it around Christmas, all the while grumbling and cursing! I hated, hated, hated the stupid kit.

I picked it myself of course, and I have to remember I hated the quality of the components, or else I will surely accidentally buy another one! The designs are all so cute! (Be warned if you google Bucilla Plaid felt kits!)

Felt Christmas wreath nearing completion

The finished product hanging on the fridge – new couch in the living room

After Christmas, we got new curtains, new roller blinds, new comfy couch, new cushion! The walls around the windows are painted a very pale lilac. Opposite walls are yellow. The jade green is a totally new color injection, and we love it!

So, we are looking ahead to a new year of mostly working from home, additional home improvement projects, finishing a quilt and figuring out a good quilting setup, improved logistics and organization of my office / quilting room / chocolate storage room while doing that.

XXX Annika