Design Wall Monday January 7, 2013

A big Happy New Year to all!  Life is almost back to normal, which means tax season starts for me this week.  Here's a look at what I've been doing:

I enjoy the Grandmother's Choice block of the week published by Barbara Brackman--she tells the story of the suffragist movement less than 100 years ago. Here is the current row:

A new block and history lesson appears each Saturday.   She is also starting a new Civil War block of the month project I am trying to convince myself NOT to do, but I still might: .Civil War Dixie Diary--after all, it's only 12 blocks and you decide if you'll make them 12" or 8", and there's only 12 of them--see, I'm talking myself into it.

A class I'll be teaching soon is the Trash 2 Treasure Pineapple quilt using Gyleen Fitzgerald's book and ruler.  I've got these 30 blocks sewn together--just from my stash strips.  With a project like this, I cut strips to the sizes needed from any fabric I'm working on so I keep feeding the project box.  Then when time permits, I make more blocks:

Lastly, here's my latest "new" project, a hand pieced block called Victorian Antique Star:

I got turned on to this when I happened on the blog of Barbara Chainey, a terrific English quilter I met a few years ago when she taught at the International Quilt Festival in Houston.  It uses a terrific template from Matlida's Own, an Australian company.  I plan to teach this in May or June--the perfect traveling project, once your pieces are cut and marked. 

My biggest challenge since Christmas is learning Windows 8 and trying to figure out my new desktop computer--we're still trying to determine if it has "issues" or it's just "operator error".  Time will tell...

Take a look at Judy L's design wall Monday blog to see what others are doing. 

Are you a Downton Abbey fan?  I saw the DA Revisited special in early December and told my husband I was sorry I'd missed the first 2 seasons.  Bingo!  Santa provided them on DVD and I got to watch both seasons, almost back to back.  Last night was the start of the n3rd season and there was a great special before it on the actual Highclere Castle, where it is filmed--very interesting!

Have a great week and let's quilt!

 Barbara