Stitching in the Barn

My daughter arranged the layout of the wreath and I sewed them together. We got 2 fronts and 1 back. I don't know if I'll make more fan blades now to finish the second one. Now she's going to take the front for my MIL and decorate it before we put them together and stuff them. I don't know when she'll get to it but hopefully I'll have a couple more posts before mailing this to my MIL.

Last Night my husband helped me make some block boards like in this video by Fat Quarter Shop .  This one was actually 2 scraps of batting. After reading the comments I decided to leave off the bindings and use some tape I bought that was sticky back fabric. It was too thin so we just mitered the corners and wrapped the excess batting around to the back and they work well. We also hot glued all sides down taut first. I just used them today to move my Dresden wreath after my daughter arranged the hearts. She arranged three and they stacked easily as advertised. I just picked up two hearts at a time to piece them and then placed them back and they always stayed in order. Now I just need to make bigger ones. I got 4 from a foam core board that I cut evenly down the center each way. They finished at 11 x 14 inches.

I saw this wreath on the Charm About You blog while I was scanning Quilter Blogs over the holidays and watched the video at the bottom of her instruction page   and saw a lovely new years wreath in it. In the new years wreath the similar fabrics were paired and I thought they looked like hearts.  I asked my daughter if my MIL would like the wreath in Valentines day fabrics and she thought it was a great idea. We are blessed to have a crafting thrift store nearby. She went and picked up several different fabrics at $3 a yard. It's funny because I donated some Valentines day fabrics to them in the past year because I never thought I'd use Valentines day fabric. She brought home some lovely fabrics, I already had a Dresden plate ruler and I cut an 8 inch strip from each fabric and made a total of 36 hearts over the past 2 days. We only need 20 hearts for the whole wreath. My daughter is going to arrange them into a wreath and add some gems and decorate one side ...

Yep, I cross stitch too. I hadn't done it in years because quilting is more useful. Then my husband was in the hospital and I needed something to do with my hands.  I picked up a cute motivational kit to take with me. This is what I had done by December of 2019. Here's my progress now. All the cross stitch is done. I'm working on the half stitch. It'll still need the back stitching and french knots. I find it helps calm my mind to just take a row of stitches at a time.  I don't like how my photos turned out after the editor. It looks more like the first one. I'll try using a new editor next time.

I shouldn't have started this project on a day I wasn't feeling the best but I thought it would help spur me on to get something done. I started with the X-men symbol block because it was the simplest. I thought I knew what colors went where without looking at my notes and sewed on the wrong color. There were only supposed to be the medium blue and yellow up to this point, not the dark blue. I jumped the gun on the last color. I reprinted my block out & started over because I just didn't want to rip out what I had done and it wasn't much anyway. Then I set it aside until I felt better.

I'm making some dice bags for me & my son. You can find the links for the patterns and paper piecing on this post . I really started on this project a while ago up to this point. Then the woven hearts took me on a detour.  I had no problem picking fabrics for this project and they all came fro my stash! I had the red and black and white for Deadpool. 

I'm still working on my potholders.  I used an old friend from high school to help me baste them. Aqua Net is cheap and the fumes are not as toxic as basting spray. I basted them in the bathroom so it wouldn't get on the carpet. I ONLY use it on small projects. It's not the stickiest stuff.

Here's the start of my potholders. My husband helped to pick out this assortment of fabrics. The lighting is awful and this was originally two pictures but you get the idea. The furthest one on the right is one he dyed for me ages ago. He said it looked muddy and not as nice as the others so it's going to be the solid side of the potholders.