Borders and bears

Big and small news! The big news is: I have sewn together the 9 squares of the baby quilt (see? From this far away, you can't see all the mistakes, hooray!). I am so happy. I also tried sewing on a scrap of the black fabric that I thought would be too stretchy to work with, and it may not be as bad as I thought. Anyway, worth a try. This coming weekend I hope to get black borders around this whole block, sew the back of the quilt together (from ~4 pieces, I hope it won't be a big chore), and start quilting! It'll actually be my first foray into real hand quilting. I have an idea I am excited about; will share pictures.

The small news is: due to a variety of circumstances, I ended up staying at a friend's house for three nights earlier this week. I was feeling so inspired by my quilt that I wanted to keep the sewing momentum going, and had recently rediscovered some pieces of felt bears that I must have cut >2 decades ago. So, I took the pieces, stuffing, and beads for eyes to my friend's house and worked on those Sunday, Monday, and again today. I finished the 2" green bear on Monday (actually, I realized since I left her house that I forgot to give him a nose! Must fix), and have been working on the 3" black bear since then. You can see that he just needs his arms sewn on, and he'll be all finished too. I left the green bear with my friend, as she seemed to like him a lot. I think I'll give black bear (and peach and grey bears, to be made) to some lovely little girls I'm not officially related to, since their Christmas presents are way overdue.

 
Overall, I worked 45 minutes on the quilt, and then 30 (Sunday) + 30 (Monday) + 90 (today) minutes on the bears = 3:15 hours.

Total so far in 2015 = 37:50 hours.
Catherine