The Trip...

was fabulous.  Internet access was not.  It will take a while to go through all of the pictures, but I'll post as I can.  Day one (9/10/10) was spent mostly traveling...

I'm very proud of only taking two small
suitcases for 12 days in Europe!

First week:  Stuttgart, Germany.  Not many pictures to choose from for this day - just a few shots taken between the airport and the hotel...

and, of course, the view from our window...

...which is okay since we only slept there and didn't need to spend a good deal of time looking out of the window!  At least it gives Margaret another Men at Work picture!

Christmas Quilt

Not a quilt for Christmas, but a Christmas-themed quilt -
I thought I would start my Covers for Kids project with a personal goal of having it completed by the first week in January....

This is the panel the
guild gave us...

So the first thing I did
was cut it up....

Using the same method from my two prior pieces,
these blocks are quilted and ready to go...
I think it's going to be cute....

ATCs

Needed to make some Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) for a trade coming up later this month, so today I made a set of 16...

Took a random-sized piece of stiff Pellon
with iron-on adhesive...

layered it with scraps from the studio trash

(yes, trash...I guess no piece is ever too small

to actually toss...)

backed it with a randomly-
chosen piece of fabric...

added overall stitching to really hold
everything down

Cut the piece in half for ease in handling;
added more stitching;
cut it into sixteen 2"x3" pieces
and stiched around the outside of each of them...

Cleaned them up, and added embellishments...all that's left is to put my e-mail and blog addresses on the back...

maybe I'll make more tomorrow....

No regrets...

...at least when I walked into the shop, my hair was long enough to donate to Locks of Love...

Stopped for the day...

by this...

and it caused me to stop because I put the stitch that broke the needle through my index finger...so I've pretty much gotten out of the mood to continue sewing today...fortunately, it was a clean stitch so I'm sure I'll be back at it in a few days...

anyhoo - yesterday I put quilted squares together for the center of another quilt (you saw the pieced squares in an earlier post) - I used the same quilted-square method I showed you in the post on 8/22 and I think it went together much better...

...the piece needs to be bigger than it is (it's only about 26"x33")...so today I was contemplating side and end panels using basic black and yellow stitching, so that's what I started working on before I was "stopped"...I think I'll contemplate  something different to make it bigger...