ALOYF June Finish

I did it!  And then I almost forgot to post and realized that I DID forget to link it up at the beginning of the month ... That's what kind of a month June has been for me.  Oh, well!

ALOYF June Goals

Last month I got back on board by working on a couple of small finishes languishing on my side table.  Since summer is a time for being more outside and less inside, I think that this month I'll continue with that pile.  Next on my list is a mini top that I finished and sandwiched almost 18 months ago now.  I wasn't sure how I wanted to quilt it until I saw all the beautiful spiral quilting like here and here.  I figure a mini is the perfect place to practice.

So ... My goal for June is to finish this mini ... that means quilting and binding.  Bonus would be to quilt and/or bind the other two minis on my side table ... then it would be totally cleaned off and ready to re-purpose.

My May Master List

I had one of these all ready to go for May, but apparently I got sidetracked early in the month and never got back to it ... so here is a recap of my April/May projects.

And because this is my current favorite picture, you get Samantha and Mom ready for prom, which was a huge project at our house.

ALOYF May Finish!

Before I really get down to business, I want to say Happy Memorial Day.  I truly believe that this day is a day to honor all those who fought for the freedoms we enjoy today.  My paternal grandfather, Alma Fife Heath, fought in WWI as a medic and my maternal grandpa, John Elvin Bennett, was on the Enterprise in WWII.  Currently my brother-in-law, Jared Himmighoefer, is in the Army and has already served two tours overseas.  I am so proud of these men and all the other men and women I know who have served so selflessly.

ALOYF May Goal

Last month I did't meet my goal =(  I did work on it quite a bit, but in addition to getting sidetracked by the Modern Traditional Challenge and Sarah's play, I also had thread issues and had to go out and find some new stuff.  Combine all that with nice weather and trying to get outside more and that adds up to significantly LESS time at the sewing machine.

Modern Traditional Challenge

I stumbled across this challenge that was posted at the beginning of this month.  When I saw the theme, I had a couple of ideas about what I wanted to do.  I went to my LQS in search of the right fabrics and fell in love with Dear Stella's Spring Street.  I've been using Sketch for quite a while now as accents in my bee blocks and round robins.  I really like the feel of solid movement that the screen-like tone-on-tone lines create.  A lot of the time they have the same overall feel as quilters linen.

It does happen ...

I sent in my charm swap package complete with charms and self-addressed-stamped-envelope.  Then ... A couple of days ago, Rhett was sorting out the mail and this was at the bottom of his pile:

I couldn't believe it.  My charms that I had secured in a re-used ziploc baggie.  (It had my address on it because a bee block had been sent to me in it.  I figured it would make it easier to return my charms to me when that time came.)  I had mailed them a week ago and assumed that they'd already gotten to their destination.  I quickly e-mailed the intended recipient to let her know what happened and that I would re-send.

She returned with an e-mail saying that she had gotten the two envelopes last week.  The original packaging contained my self-addressed stamped envelope and was perfectly sealed.  Somehow my little packet of charms escaped and decided to find their way home ...  Too bad for them that I really want to trade up =)

My April Master List

Making a list worked really well last month, so here we go again =)

Sarah's Primary Bee Block--the Pennsylvania

Of course, my child is the one who doesn't want to select from the list provided =)

ALOYF April Goal--Sam's Trek Quilt

This one I've been putting off not just since January, but for about two years now.  This month I'm going to tackle the first quilt I designed and executed--before I had a clue about what I was doing.