Hopfaldera

Hot pads à la Suzuko

I made two hot pads and/or potholders. I was inspired by two books by Suzuko Koseki: Patchwork Style and Natural Patchwork. These are great books, with lovely inspiring images and doable patterns. Suzuko is a patchwork and fabric celebrity: she designs fabrics that are very popular, lovely, and pretty hard to find (although it is possible on Etsy and her own Japanese website).

While I was making these pads, my sewing machine broke down.... A loud noise from the bobbin holder and lots of heaped up thread. OMG, it was a scary moment, because I can not live without my machine, really not! I took a deep breath, read the manual a bit, and screwed the machine open. Okay, there was a lot of fluff there, so I cleaned it out, even using the vacuum cleaner (the manual suggested this), and after that the machine worked like a charm! Pfff, maybe I should clean it more often... haha, maybe!

Haus Sweet Haus

I made this stuffed house toy from a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love by Hillary Lang. I made the front Friday afternoon, and just finished it with the backing, ribbon gusset and stuffing this morning. Not hard at all! It´s a little break from making Farmer´s Wife Quilt blocks. I have about 10 new ones finished eventhough the quiltalong is officially on a break. I´m just always afraid I´ll get behind eventually so I frantically am trying to make up for that in advance. I´m sure I´ll take a break from them in the future, but for now I have 3 new blocks planned out fabric-wise.

I wanted to say Happy New Year too. Happy Chinese New Year: Xinnian kuai le! May the dragon fire us up to do wonderful things this year!! I'm planning plenty of them, not only Farmer's Wife's blocks, I'll tell you later.

I also made one!

A Blogger's Choice Fat Quarter Bundle. 

There is a contest going on, on the Quokka Quilts blog. You can select 12 prints and 3 solid fabric colors from the Fat Quarter Shop and then you might win your own chosen bundle! It was fun to choose the fabrics, I just chose what I liked and what I thought would look good together.

Here's my bundle:

 

Resolutions

 

My quilting resolution for this year is to finish these projects. They include things that I have finished piecing and need to quilt, two are blocks that are made for me by fellow bee members and that I want to make into quilts, and a couple are in progress projects that I really want to finish.

If all works out as I see it now, I will have 7 quilts and 2 mini quilts at the end of it. Cool!!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy 2012 everyone!

Here are some photos of our New Year's Eve. One before midnight and one after.