Planning for the new year

There are several quilts I already have in mind for this year. I'd like to make a Swoon quilt and I'm thinking of this purple palette. I can't decide if the colors are too saturated, though.

I already have a  quilt in mind for the new Malka Dubrawsky's A Stitch in Color prints. I'm planning to make a wonky log cabin pattern I saw in an old issue of Stitch magazine.

Finally, I want to make a quilt out of orange, teal, and brown, inspired by the fourth fabric in bottom stack. The fabric is from the Michael Miller Spa collection.

Sewing kit

Here's another little item just for me. I have been wanting a little needle holder but instead ended up making this rather large sewing kit that was part of the 12 Gifts of Christmas blog hop. I got to use the Michael Miller hedgehogs and dumb dots that I like so much. Between this and the shower curtain, I was stitching 1" squares all weekend. However, for these I used Elizabeth Hartman's fusible interfacing method. I really like this method a lot because it allows for very precise piecing. The corners of the blocks all meet very beautifully, and it is faster than piecing individual blocks.

A New Shower Curtain

Our old shower curtain was getting quite yucky, so when I saw this one made by Rachel Hauser at Stitched in Color I had to attempt to make it too. This booger has 438 1" squares! Mine is not pieced so beautifully as hers; I think I need to invest in a 1/4" piecing foot. But I'm still reasonably pleased with how it came out and it cheers up the bathroom quite nicely. Of course now I need to make matching curtains!

Finally, a quilt for our bed

This quilt is for our bed! I started it a few months ago but kept getting distracted by quilts for other people--it is much more fun to surprise people with gifts. It is made from natural linen and a layer cake of Basic Grey's Curio line. It's hard to see in the picture, but the linen is quilted in vertical lines and the blocks are quilted in horizontal lines. Boy was that a pain to do! The pillow and shams were made exclusively from scraps leftover from the back and two squares leftover from the layer cake. I even got positive comments from my husband, who rarely comments on my quilts at all!