soscrappy: Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012 and SewCalGal Free Motion Challenge

Happy New Year!   I hope your Christmas or holiday was wonderful and you got to spend time with the ones you love. 

I don't know about you but I'm ready to get busy again.  I decided I didn't want to overwhelm myself right off but I do want to challenge myself to get things done. I know I always do better with deadlines so I decided to take stock and see what I wanted to accomplish this year. One thing I want to do is to use up some of my scrap stash, so I turned my attention to Angela.  She had a rainbow scrap challenge last year and is at it again this year.   I've been organizing today and I didn't do too much with my colored scraps last year but I'm willing to try again.  I love seeing what everyone does with their scraps and I want to use up alot of mine too.  Angela is way more organized with her colors than I am but I can always pull mine out as I go.  She's already started the month off and decided on reds.  I'm going to incorporate this challenge this month with another.  My group is doing a Mug Rug a month.  This month is a house mug rug.  I'm going to use my red scraps to make some house mug rugs.  So, to that end, I'll go pull out my reds and get busy.  Here's a link to Angela's Scrap Challenge, go check her out.soscrappy: Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012

 But before I go, I want to tell you about the other challenge I decided to do this year.  I'm always trying to finish my own projects.  I like to be able to work on my quilts from start to finish.  I love to hand quilt and do still hand quilt occasionally but I'm not a fast quilter and I want to see my quilts finished in my life time.  I used to work in quilt shops (I worked in three different shops over a ten year period) and I did alot of samples.  These samples did not have to be quilted at the time.  So, I have several of those hanging around and I have several other tops finished waiting to be quilted.  I like to machine quilt but I don't like to quilt big quilts on my sewing machine.  I have quilted a king size quilt in the past and did not enjoy it at all.  I will quilt up to a full size but I don't like it to be bigger than that.  I am an ok machine quilter but want to improve my skills,  so to that end, I have decided to participate in the Free Motion Quilting challenge  over on SewCalGal's site. She's having 12 different teachers, one each month and she's giving away prizes too.  So, I think that's a win-win combination. 

  There is a link on the sidebar of my blog for more info. Or, you can click here: http://sewcalgal.blogspot.com/p/free-motion-quilt-challenge.html

Ok, I'm getting off now so I can get busy.   Until next time, happy sewing!