2015 Calendar

Last year, I received a coupon to get a free calendar from Shutterfly.  I gathered a bunch of photos of my quilts and threw them together into a calendar and got it printed.

This year, I received another coupon to get a free calendar from Shutterfly.  I still haven't gotten things planned enough to make a decent planned calendar, but I thought that last year's strategy worked well, so I copied it.  I grabbed some images of quilts I have made - both finished and unfinished.

I didn't want to use the same template I used last year, because I didn't want it to look the same.  Last year's template had quotes on it, and I really liked that idea. Since the template I chose this year didn't have any quotes, I needed to find my own quotes to add to the calendar.  I chose story quote as the word to search. I was planning on finding different topics for inspirational quotes, but I liked so many that I kept with the same theme for the whole year.

Some of these story quotes are about living life, and some of them are about telling a story. I felt that both kinds are applicable to me.

I didn't include names of quilts this time. I probably should have recorded them, but I don't remember the names of all of them, and since many are unfinished, I wanted the flexibility to come up with new names.

I initially thought I had more images of finished quilts than unfinished quilts this year, but it is pretty much half and half.

I added the pictures to the month that it seemed to fit best in.  When I went to the actual page, I was pleased to see that the background color of the template worked well with all of the selected quilt images.

I especially like this purple one with this quilt, although I'm not sure why, since there is very little purple in the quilt.

If you haven't done this before, I highly recommend it.  Seeing the images of these quilts professionally printed makes me feel like a real quilter!

Most of these quilts have not been shown in last year's calendar. In fact, I think there is only one repeat. It is purely accidental; if I had remembered it was on last year's, I would have used a different image.

I had to take the pictures at an angle this year, so you can't see the calendar at its best.  Trust me that it is a high quality calendar and it makes my quilts look very good.

A Year in Review

I'm not making any goals for the New Year, because I'm not done with the ones for 2008. I'm sure you have been wondering what I've been up to this year, and were hoping I'd give you a recap so you don't have to slog through old blog posts. I'd be happy to oblige.

It's been a good year for me overall. There was some drama this summer with relatives which caused me to start a new blog, and now we aren't talking to each other anymore, but since we didn't talk before anyway, the repercussions are bearable. I'm happy we are finally getting a new president. The big issue that is worrying me now is the economy, but I'm young and healthy enough to work and have job(s), so we will be able to ride it out.

The photos that follow are the finished projects, as they appeared on my blog. A lot of my posts are about the Shakespeare in the Park which won't show up in the finished category.















So what's next? I'm going to quilt today and tomorrow, to properly bring in the New Year. I'll be working on the orange crazy quilt. It's been calling me the loudest lately.

Have a Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2009!

It's Kim's Fault

It's been pointed out that I have made a lot of blue quilts. And that's true, sort of. When I was pulling out photos of blue quilts, I found lots of them, and I probably didn't even get all of them. There were only a few other colors that I didn't include in the blue quilts post. I was trying to figure out why that is, because while I like blue, I don't really have a favorite color - or it changes from time to time. I think I've figured it out.

In the summer, I like to work with the coolness of blue. Since I look forward to summer in the spring, I can work with blue in the spring as well. And when autumn comes, I'm almost done with the blue quilt, so I go ahead and finish it off. By that time I am thinking of autumn colors, and start a quilt using those colors. The problem is, winter comes, and then the autumn colors are too dark, and I want to work on something bright and colorful. Since the days are shorter then, I don't get a chance to finish that off before spring is back and I am back to working with blue.

That may be the reason I keep getting tempted to work on something different from my blue stars. The weather is getting colder, and I haven't turned on the heat yet. The tree across the street is starting to turn colors. That, and people like Kim not only show beautiful quilts, but also give directions on how to make them. And since she made two and wrote up the directions in such a short time, surely I can whip something like that out too, right? Couple of hours tops, right? I am trying to make this from my stash only, but may have to buy a border fabric if I can't find a suitable one.

Besides, I have to make more (and finish) quilts in colors other than blue, so I can give you a proper show.

The fabric on the left is in the border of my Celebrate quilt, and will be used in my stack and whack quilt. The one on the right was used in some house blocks I made for a swap, and some other harvest color quilts. The yellow background was used in my daughter's Japanese quilt. The green stars in the sashing was in my summer swap quilt which I showed you recently.