New Year Review

On New Years Day I like to take some time out with a mug of Whittards Dreamtime tea and my journal. I look over last year's New Years entry to see what my hopes and plans for the year were and how much I achieved or how much I was surprised by what transpired despite my plans, then I write about the year ahead.

This year it was really funny. The first mention of quilting ever in my life was on 4th January when suddenly there is a page and a half list of all the notions and tools I would need to quilt taken from Katherine Guerrier's Encyclopaedia of Quilting. That I borrowed from the library so given that quilting was not in my 1st Jan plans at all I have clearly gone down there pretty quickly becuase I remember that it was on 2nd Jan that I was sewing a button on for my husband and began to ponder on a sudden image of Amish women peacefully sewing that popped into my head from nowhere.

That's not so funny, I know, but the fact that the list had prices with it tells me I went straight on line and shopped around several shops. Which is so typcial of my full on have-to know- right- now-in-all-the-greatest-possible- detail-research methods. Then on 5th January I record baldly "Yesterday I decided to take up quilting." Again typical of my decision making process - no point in dithering over these things is there?!

I did have the foresight as I was starting a brand new hobby to start a special journal for it and recorded all my projects, web research etc and unfortunately all my spending ( which I am not confessing on line!). This year I am going to make it more of a journal and record more of my creative processes and thoughts about quilting in this new notebook ( bought at Jenner's in Edinburgh)

Looking over the old notebook my quilting activites over 2006 turned out to be:

Finished:

5 bags

1 sewing machine cover ( for the machine I sent back - see below - so now unused)

1 log cabin lap quilt (Given to my mother in law)

1 handquilted lap quilt in country beiges ( used mainly for keeping my feet warm at my desk)

1 liberated log cabin quilt in African fabrics ( my favourite I think - I love African themes)

1 lap quilt and 1 bed quilt from Nickel Quilts made with 5 inch charm packs ( both used to snuggle under in front of the TV and for extra warmth over my duvet)

2 36x 36 children's quilts for Project Linus - one for a girl and one for a boy

1 larger girl's quilt for Project Linus (handstitched on aeroplanes mostly)

1 pink tied quilt for the garden bench

Unfinished and ditched

1 railfence quilt chewed up by a defective sewing machine ( first ever attempt - very discouraging)

1 string based wallhanging ruined by bad machine stitching

Tops finished and waiting for quilting:

King sized batik top in blues for our bed

In progress

Snowballs quilt in african fabrics

I also

# acquired 54 books on quilting either purchased or as gifts

# started blogging about quilting and found other's blogs

# wrote my first magazine quilting article

# started classes at Morceau in the Lakes (and branched out in to dressmaking there too)

# began my City and Guilds

#started to listen regularly to three quilting podcasts

#vistited in person 6 quilting shops

# subscribed to five quilting magazines

# went to an Indigo dying workshop

# caught 3 quilt shows (Trentham Gardens, Southport and Harrogate).

So I guess that makes me a quilter!

Oh - I also wrote a first draft of a novel.....