Happy New Year!

It's officially 2014 in my part of the world. I blithely promised to post on my blog before we clicked over to 2014 ... I'm pretty sure there are many places in the world that are still waiting to ring in the new year, but I don't think I can claim I kept my promise ... but no matter, I'm sure you're all still busy celebrating ... or recovering :-)

2014 feels like it's going to be a great one, so bring it on! From a quilty perspective, I'm pretty certain I'm keeping up my tradition of travelling biennially to the USA - this time I think in September, so I'm really looking forward to that. I still have no clue what my major project/projects will be, but I'm narrowing down some contenders. Perhaps it will be my year for working on lots of things and finishing not much??

Have you seen the AP&Q Quilt Along project? I'm in love with it! I had planned to make a Burgoyne Surrounded project at some time, and this project is enough like it that I may just play along. You see, Burgoyne is a family name on my Dad's side, and I didn't realise until recently that we are actually related to the famous/infamous General John Burgoyne - so it stands to reason that I really need to make that quilt sometime in the future. And why not start now?? Just let me get my hands on that magazine :-)

So, what have I been doing lately?? Well, given that it's around Christmas/New Year time, I've of course been making apricot jam. Our tree gave me a break this year and the fruit ripened a couple of days after Christmas rather than the day before. Yay!

This is all we'll get this year - birds got a lot of our fruit, and last year Marty pruned quite heavily so there wasn't as much to begin with. I don't even eat jam - see how good I am to that man *lol*.

Something else I've been working on in stolen moments are some Sewing Machine Mats. I had a request on Etsy for one, and one of our local shops has requested some patterns. So I've made three up - one for the order, one to accompany the patterns, and one for if anyone else would like one. If you'd like it, let me know, I'll be listing it on Etsy soon - the one in the picture is spoken for, but the other is almost identical.

If you would like to make some up yourself, the pattern is available for download at Etsy also - the link is over on my sidebar.

And here is a photo I nicked from my Facebook page. Mum took this picture on Xmas day before we sat down to eat and posted it on my wall.

You can see my Mrs Billings quilt over on the wall in the background - I swapped out the Nearly Insane quilt when the quilting girls were over - they thought it would be nice for a change of scenery. It's so hard to see in the grainy picture, but this year I used my Holiday Wholecloth in the centre of the table - I loved hand quilting that project, and soon I plan to start working on a queen size wholecloth. I won't be holding my breath to get it finished - it'll be a LONG term project.

Well, that's it from me for now - don't forget to spend New Years Day doing something you love ... it's said that what you do that day, you'll be doing for the rest of the year! Chatter soon :-)