Well, I finally bit the bullet

Happy National Quilting Day!! Unfortunately I didn't get to sew as much as I wanted to. I would have loved to have stitched the day away, but City wanted to go looking for cars so that took up part of the day. I can only complain so much though because the car is actually going to be for me :cD and I definitely want to be involved in the process! Not exactly sure when we will actually purchase the car, but it is on the agenda for sure, and that's pretty exciting. I did get to work on my newest project a little bit though, and I am hoping to get more done here yet tonight after the mouselings are in bed. There are times I'm glad that I am quite the night-owl ;)

So, about that Cathedral Windows quilt...... I have always wanted a completely hand made quilt. No machine stitching at all. Zip, zero, zilch. Well although I know it isn't technically a "quilt" I've decided I'm going to do my Cathedral Windows quilt entirely by hand. Why? Well, I started stitching one using the tutorial from Hyena in Petticoats (the picture above) where she machine stitches the base squares together, but after trying to do the stitching of the window part the way she did, it just wasn't working for me. So I looked up a more traditional style of doing the windows and decided to just blind stitch them down. The instructions I found said to hand tack the center of each square to make stitching the windows easier. Which it was, but then when I was going to join the rows together, I came to realize I would have to take those tack stitches out, then re-tack. I started thinking 'wow, that seems like a lot of unnecessary sewing to get the look that I want' and started looking at the more traditional directions and decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and do it all by hand. I know it will take longer, but I do so love hand sewing, and I know I will feel so accomplished in the end so I started over and the picture below is where I stand right now with my second attempt. I will still do something with the first attempt, I'm just not sure what that will be. DD really likes it so maybe I will make it into a doll quilt for one of her babies :)

Everything went well at the speech meet. It was quite a big day for DS. I was so worried that he might get nervous and not be able to recite his verse, but when it came time he got right up and in a nice loud voice recited Psalm 1. I was so proud! I don't know if I could have recited it as well as he did. He ended up receiving a red ribbon for his performance. One very cool thing about was that all the kids that participated got a ribbon based on their performance. Blue for superior, red for excellent, white for good. So no one was left out. Very very cool :cD

Finally I am happy to report that most of that big snowfall has melted away, but not before we got out and had a little fun. We don't get out and play in the snow nearly as much as I would like to, but two days after all that fell it warmed up a bit and it became perfect snow for building snowmen, or snow bunnies. And although we had lots of fun, I'll be more than happy if we don't see another snow fall til next winter :cD

Warm country wishes!!