Late In The Year

I would have posted before now, but I didn't have a photo of any recent work although I was busy in the studio last week.

Here, instead, is the photo I'm using for my end-of-year one and possibly two quilts based on a digital image. This exercise is a preview of what I'll be doing next year for my personal quilting challenge -- making two different quilts each month based on one digital image. What you see here is the sun reflecting on the water on Lake Como, at Bellagio, Italy, taken two plus years ago. I have one quilt in the works now, to be quilted this week, and I'm quite sure I can complete a second one before year's end.

I'm essentially finished with my Fiberactions "initiative" challenge quilt, just need to put the finishing touches on tomorrow. But it's all quilted, the faced edges are completed, and it's basically ready to go. We'll be revealing our quilts on January 15, on our personal blogs as well as on the Fiberactions blog. If you're interested in musings a few of us have posted recently, about our process on this challenge, you can go to the blog now.

We have a new family member in our home -- new kitty Kirby, and I'm glad to say BeeGee has already taken a shine to him. Thank God, that's what I was hoping for!

As soon as I got real comfortable with my new Singer Confidence Quilter sewing machine, my Bernina came back from the shop. It only took 3 1/2 weeks -- not long considering the hassles I had with the dealer -- and it's running fine now and staying ON! The L-board went bad, that's the electronic gizmo that keeps the machine on instead of shutting itself off. There's definitely no substitute for a Bernina, but in all honesty there are things I like more about the Singer. In short I will say this: if you're a new quilter looking for a good machine with a lot of features and an unbeatable price, definitely check out this model Singer.

That's all the creative news fit to print. I'll be back in a day or two with this week's 10x10" quilt, the penultimate in my yearly series.