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Calling all quilting enthusiasts! Have you ever wanted to showcase your quilting skills while diving into a fun and creative challenge? Our Astrodelic Quilt Challenge is here to offer you just that! 

The Astrodelic Challenge isn't just about making beautiful quilts; it's also about the excitement of competition and the joy of creativity. Our most popular beginner-friendly pattern uses the strip piecing technique, making it easy to create blocks as a canvas for your imagination. It's perfect for a relaxing weekend project or anytime you want to add your personal style to each stitch and seam. You ...

Here we are at that magical day of the year when there are only 100 days left in the year!

What are you going to do with them?

I always tell myself: “They’re gonna pass anyway, you might as well try to make the most of them!”

You can either still be right where you are today, or do lots of stuff to move yourself forward by the end of the year.

So yesterday, I sat down and made my usual list of “100 Things To Do in the Next 100 Days”:

I’ve lost count of how many ...

 Are you ready for a new challenge prompt? Did you find time to play with prompt #1? Here's what I came up with...

 The other day over lunch my friend Chris and I were celebrating the near completion of a recent collaboration (more on that soon!) and wondering what we should do next. We tossed around lots of ideas and finally landed on a fun improv challenge. It will allow the two of us to make quilts simultaneously following the same biweekly prompts. It will be fun to see how different our quilts end up! Here's the really exciting part.... we'd love for you to play along. 

Every other Monday Chris and I will each be spinning a wheel we've ...

Rose Marie and I are finished swapping our Round Robin quilts back and forth. It didn’t take us 20 years this time, but it HAS been four years since we started!

I could have sworn I posted about Round Two when we got done, but I can’t find any evidence of that, and here we are, close to the end.

Here’s where they were after Round One, which was the first round after the center blocks we first swapped.

Mine:

Rose Marie’s:

You can read more about Round One HERE, and also from that post, there ...

Here we are once again at that point in the year when there are only 100 days left! (And it’s the first day of fall, my favorite season.)

What are you going to be doing with them?

I’m once again making my list of “100 Things To Do in the Next 100 Days” in the book I had especially made for that purpose:

I have yet to ever get all 100 things finished, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. As I was making out the new list last night, I realized that so many of the ...

 A couple of months ago our guild issued a quilt panel challenge. You could choose a panel from the guild's community service stash or use one you already had...... and do something modern  with it. I'm not a huge quilt panel person to be honest. So I grabbed this one from the community service fabric and set to work.

The panel is called The Dress, by Laura Heine. I looked at it for a long time and finally came up with a plan.

I sliced both pictures into 2 inch columns, identically. Turned one set upside down, then ...

If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you’ve probably heard me say more than once that I have to make things into a game for myself to stay motivated sometimes.

In fact, in my recent article on Battling Burnout in Love of Quilting Magazine, one of the things I suggest is making things into a game for yourself to help you stay on track.

I’m always trying to come up with new games to keep from getting bored, and last week, I landed on a good one, so I’ve decided to share it with ...

Now was the time to make this ...

Time to announce the winners! Altho . . . I say we are ALL winners just for doing the tasks, because we now have a fresh start on the new year, and it always feels so good!

Personally, I’m not a huge winner, because I failed at some of the tasks. I DID work on paper clutter, but as usual, still have a long way to go.

I did not get my ironing board cover changed, because I discovered that with my still-not-recovered broken elbow, I can’t run the staple gun! So . . . I’m hoping to swindle My Cowboy into helping ...

Here we are at the final task already!

I hope you’ve been accomplishing a lot of good things in your sewing spaces. Every little bit helps — trust me, even when it doesn’t seem like it, it WILL eventually add up. I look around at how far I think I still have to go, but can look back and remember when it was so much worse, and realize it just takes time. But time is not unlimited, for any of us, so I know I need to keep chipping away at it.

Our final task is to:

Organize one ...

We’re off to a great start! Some of you have your paper under control, and the rest of you seem to have a plan, so I can hear lots of progress being made! I’m off to a slow start, but I’ll pick up the pace here soon.

Meanwhile, it’s time for Task Two — are you ready??

Here we go . . .

Pick 3 easy tasks that need doing

This one may make you think a bit. And it’s a bit tricky, cos it’s like doing three tasks in one. But . . . these three tasks should not be ...

Are you ready? It’s time for Task One. I’m actually more excited than ever to do these!

I had a hard time deciding which one to put first. And then I decided that I’d do the one that needs doing worst first, because that gives me more time to work on it until the 7th.

And what is that task, you ask? Well . . . it’s:

Deal with the paper clutter

Yes, after all this time, paper clutter is still a problem for me. I DO have to say, however, that I am down to only 2 small ...

Lucky 13!  Who’da thunk this would be so popular and last so long!? I do know that I still need it. It’s such a great feeling to start off the new year with things all organized and fewer projects hanging over my head.

What with the regularly scheduled Studio Organizing Challenges, I once again made some good progress around here, but wow! I have a lot of stuff! And a lot of stuff to still deal with!  How about you?

Some of it just takes time to do, especially once you’ve gotten the easier, quicker stuff off ...

 I'll be honest, I haven't participated in the Modern Quilt Guild's fabric challenges in recent years. Often the fabrics they use just don't speak to me. This year was a different story. When I saw the Wyndham Artisan Cottons they were offering up I hurried to sign up. In addition to the fat eighth bundle I received from the MQG, I ordered 2 yards of one of the "neutrals" allowed, the black gray. I had no plan. So, I started making an assortment of triangle blocks, using the neutral as the background. 

After mulling them over ...

Grafitti in Erie, Pennsylvania

 So I have a secret.  Well to be honest, it's not really a secret to anybody who knows me....I'm a bit competitive.  In fact, I'm so competitive that it could get completely out of hand.  About 10 years ago, I decided that I would no longer compete in anything...at all. That said, I do allow myself to compete

  The 2021 Calgary MQG Community Challenge Quilt,  with the signature "YYC" graphic was recently displayed at the Calgary Stampede.  Here's a few pictures from set-up.

It doesn’t seem possible, but as of tomorrow, there will only be 100 days left in 2021. Each year, I make a list (well, several lists) of “100 Things To Do in the Next 100 Days”. I keep all my lists in this book:

I always make one list starting on January 1st, a second list starting somewhere in the middle of the year, and the final list always starts on September 23rd. It’s fun to see how much I can get done in the final 100 days of each year. I’ve been doing this since 2009 ...

 I always look forward to the announcement of Pantone's color of the year. This year's colors really resonated with me...

Illuminating and Ultimate Gray. Both beautiful, separately and together. In fact, I have decorated my guest bedroom and bath in these colors. So it felt good to dive in and use them together in a small quilt. Small because the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild will be displaying them in the display case at the library again this year, as we did in 2019.

I actually made my quilt several months ago. After I pattern tested my friend Jane ...