Stick a Fork in Me.....

......I'm so done. We drove back over to Orlando this morning to get in just one more morning of theme park fun before our cousins go home. Anna was on her sleepover, so it was just three of us today. Then I had to book-it back home to meet the bug guy at 1. We had barely finished lunch before Sydney was off to play with her friend next door. I was a little ragged around the edges by then and puttered about with my puzzle for most of the afternoon. Between kid stuff of course.
I wandered into the sewing room after the kids were in bed again and got the second week of my calendar quilt put together. It is mostly theme park and swimming related to represent how my time was spent last week. I went ahead and cut out a few blocks to prepare for next week. chess fabric for Monday when Ryan starts his camp and ice skating fabric for Anna's lesson in the morning. I don't have any space shuttle fabric, but Endeavor is due to launch at 7:17 in the morning.
I also got some of the sock monkey blocks put together. I decided to try out the "quilting in sections" that Amy has had such good luck with. If I separate the top into quarters it works out to a nice, easy to manage size. l also pulled out the fabric to cut out the last of the Christmas Lights squares. I might finally get those blocks squared up and collected together to await the next step.

Little Bits

I was following links on a blog from my bloglines list and ended up at a site that had a link to a calendar quilt challenge. Most of the blocks they showed were made of strings that were 1 inch by 10 inches I think. One string is added each day of the month and then all of the blocks are sewn together to represent a year. The fabrics can be from what you are working on that day, or the season, and embroidery can be added on special days. While I didn't care for the shape of the sting blocks, I thought it might be fun to try a similar idea with 2 inch squares. They could be sewn into rows of 7 to represent weeks and then groups of 4 to represent months. Although I'm not anywhere near the beginning of a new calendar year, I just celebrated my birthday, which is the beginning of MY year. I don't know if I'll follow through for an entire year, but here is the first week of my 38th year. The little present represents my birthday. Most of the week was spent on the Things Quilters Think quilt, but I spent some time at the end of the week working on the sock monkey happy blocks. Next week the colors will shift to a more pastel palette. I guess it's a more systematic way to approach a charm quilt.
I decided that paper piecing was the only way to make the flying geese work out for the Tea Rose Sampler Quilt. I drew the pattern out on graph paper and then traced it onto tear away stabilizer. After that I spent most of the day puttering around the house doing organizational things. It is now possible to locate things in the pantry and the CDs are no longer mixed in with the DVDs. Little bits of order in a world full of chaos make me happy. What makes you happy?