2017: The Year of the Samplers

What a year! This has been a wild year. My twins turned one in September, and having twin babies has been amazing. Amazingly difficult, amazingly wonderful, and truly an amazing blessing. I never could have imagined how wonderful twins would be. And how exhausting.

Of course, twin babies means that my sewing time was limited.

There is a time and season for everything, right?

Still, I've managed to sew quite a bit. I finished only two quilts and two mini quilts, so it doesn't show, but I did.

I bound the two quilts at a neighborhood sewing retreat. The first is my Shimmer quilt, and it lived on my couch this past autumn.

The second is my Vintage Holiday Christmas quilt.

The first mini quilt I finished is my Beauty and the Beast mini quilt meant for a Disney Mini Quilt Swap I had to drop out of, due to my killer twin pregnancy. I started it in 2016, but it got put on the back burner.

The second mini quilt I finished is a gift for my brother who moved across the country. I thought it would be nice to send them a Christmas table runner, and I hope they love it!

I completed three bags and a wallet. You can read about my diaper bag here,

and I made two mini shoulder bags you can read about here (they match; one went to a dear friend who lives in France and I kept the second).

And I made a wallet to go with it.

I made myself a shirt. I want to start garment sewing more (I find clothing shopping aggravating: I'm tall, and struggle more than I would like to find clothing that fits well). It was good practice: I used a pattern I've sewed before, and fabric I had in my closet for years, so it was a good project, and I'm mostly happy with it. The fabric wasn't an ideal choice for the pattern, but it's okay.

I finished a quilt top, a Swoon 16, but haven't finished a very ambitious back using hundreds of tiny HST cut offs from the top. So it's waiting...

I finished a leaders and enders top as well, the Argyle Medallion pattern from Scraps Inc. Vol 2, and it's currently at a quilter's. I can't wait, I'm having it custom quilted and I just know it's going to be amazing. I used all scraps, except for a few strips of low volume prints for the flying geese since I didn't have enough scraps the right size.

But, I've declared this the year of the sampler because I've got a number of samplers underway.

I finished my Summer Sampler quilt top and am trying to decide whether to get it custom quilted or use an all-over pattern.

I'm preparing to start free motion quilting on my six-inch sampler (my first time doing a larger-than-mini quilt!) and I've kept up with the Bernina Block Party. I also have a number of blocks sewn for my Patchwork City Sampler. And, I made a bunch of six-inch blocks out of Sweetwater fabric for a contest on Instagram (which I totally won!) and I plan (eventually...) to turn that into a quilt. So, that's a total of FIVE sampler projects this year.

It's been a big year! I sewed more than I expected to. And I look forward to 2018! I have a lot of garment sewing planned, and that'll definitely be a stretch for me!