Whirlwind Month!

The past few weeks have been just short of insane!  I definitely took a couple of tiny steps forward and a few huge leaps backwards as far as projects are concerned.  I managed to make a bit of progress on the last couple of steps of Frolic! before leaving town for a rug hooking retreat. I am working steps 7 & 8 simultaneously, trying hard to keep track of all the sets (this is definitely a time when chain piecing is NOT my friend).  The reveal was posted while I was away so I hope to have time to assemble a couple of blocks soon to see if all of these colors look cohesive in the final product.  They are looking like a bit of a hot mess right now....

And then there's my OMG goal - Maggie Macguire.  A complete FAIL!  I had set a target of getting 12 flowers done.  I do have more than 12 prepped, but I am slow at EPP and didn't have nearly as much time to work on them while traveling as I had hoped.  I only have 3 flowers to show for the month.



I had a fantastic time at the rug hooking retreat and made a lot of progress on my Fraktur Floral rug. I had been stuck on colors - the leaf colors completely died when I started adding background - so I was happy to be able to figure it out and move forward.  The retreat is attended by a great group of ladies and there are so many amazing rugs!  I will have to share some of my favorites from the rug show in a later post.



The dark green was exactly what this rug needed.  Looking at the picture now I think I will remove a bit of the dark that is surrounding that bubble on the upper left.  I am trying to bring just a little more of the dark into the top to balance the values...



So while I can report great progress on my rug (I actually filled in even more of the background since I took the photo), I offset my forward progress by purchasing two more patterns.  One I can sort of excuse as it is for a class later this year that I had previously committed to, but the other was completely new and not in my plans.

Then there were the new quilt project starts.  Irene Blanck will be returning to teach her new basket design in October this year.  She sent us the pattern for the center baskets in advance so we can get a head start.  I decided that I want to do mine in Japanese fabrics.  I completed two blocks and prepped a third. I also prepped my first two blocks for Afternoon Delight but didn't make any progress on getting them stitched.



Just three days after returning from rug hooking I was off to Ireland for work. I was busy with work all my waking hours there (other than dinner which was with my coworkers) so there was not much sight-seeing other than the rides to and from the sites.  Sadly the only photos I took were from the plane.



I did learn a bit more about Irish culture during the trip. Like the fact that they don't use much salt (at least not compared to the US) - they put the salt in the shaker with the fewest holes - and they have no idea what the corned beef is that Americans eat on St. Patrick's Day.  They have nothing like it there (which I think is brilliant because I can't stand it!). 

While I was traveling home a friend found an antique quilt on Marketplace that I felt needed to be added to my collection.  I picked it up in St. Louis on Saturday and it was much filthier than it looked in the pictures (to be fair, the description said it needed a good cleaning).  I set out to clean it, my first attempt at cleaning one myself (terrifying!!!).  I soaked it overnight in Retro Clean.  The water was disgusting!  I then washed it with a little detergent and spread it out to dry.  It has a rust stain that faded quite a bit but is still very visible - I may try to treat that next - but overall it came out great.  The binding is very worn and there are a couple of small tears in the outer red border but the quilting is amazing!  There is a small amount of sun fading on one motif.  Not sure how it was folded to only fade in one small area?



I hope that January will turn out to be my least productive month of 2020 and that February will be much better!  Now I just need to figure out what I want to focus on next month....