Finishing up, messing up

Three things to be happy about:
(1) a brand-new year
(2) cozy firesides
(3) surveying the horizon

If you survey the horizon here, there's snow a-coming!  As I type this the weather wizards are calling for a monster winter storm with wind and below freezing temperatures.  At least 2 inches in this area, enough to shovel.

I did finish putting on the two inner borders of "the quilt" and it looks really nice!

I slept under it last night just because I could.

I did a pretty good job of aligning the red cross pieces; my next and final step will be to add one more outer border, probably in red.

The red inner border is 2 inches, maybe I'll make the final outer border 3" just to set it off a bit.  After that, it's off to the quilter (eventually)!

I mentioned before that my bee is doing a 10th anniversary block swap... I managed to mess up two blocks today, including this (potentially) nice looking lady in the red hat!

You're probably wondering "What's wrong with it..."

Well, nothing actually!  Except I don't have an applique pressing sheet and I got the bright idea to put the pieces on a piece of deli paper to fuse them together, then I was going to move it to my background and stitch it down ... piece of cake, right?

Well, what do they say about the best-laid plans???

The fusible stuck FAST to the deli paper and I couldn't pull it off - what a mess!  Back to the drawing board for this one... although I probably COULD just dot some glue to the back in strategic places and stitch it down... hmm....

Then there's this one - I just plain ole don't like it!  The pattern in the fabric is too too large for the size of the piece.

I may need to go with either a solid fabric or something with a very small pattern, which I probably don't have because I've always bought large flamboyant patterns. Don't ask me why, that's when I was a young and foolish quilter fabric buyer!

For the design I have in mind a piece of African fabric would be great, but hardly any of that comes in a small pattern - everything is either large or larger!

The swap isn't supposed to be a secret one, so I think it should be okay to share my progress with you.  The blocks will be swapped at the April meeting, so we'll have time to finish the quilts for the center's community day in June.

That's it for now, I hope you didn't get snowed in too badly in your part of the world.  Stay safe and warm, sew forth and sew on til later...