another opportunity to vote!

The voting is open for the second Project Quilting challenge.

Remember I made this little pencil pouch for the Red, White and Blue theme?

You can vote HERE!

You get 10 votes, so if you want to use one for my project, that would be awesome.  But there are a lot of really amazing ones there - I had a hard time deciding how to use my votes!  Voting is open until Friday or so...take your time!  There are some really interesting, wonderful stories behind some of the projects as well, so it's fun to click through the thumbnail links and see what inspired folks to do what they did.

Once I had my project done and uploaded/entered, I dug back into finishing the graduation quilt top.  It is a top, but the weather has been snowy, cold and windy here, so I don't have a photo of the finish.  I promise soon...but we're supposed to get almost a foot of snow here today, combined with some gusty winds and then it will be super cold for a few more days.  It looks like Saturday we'll be back solidly into double-digit temperatures, but not above freezing!  (But after the high of -2°F predicted for Wednesday, that will feel like a heat wave!)

I'm feeling a finish-it mojo, so I finally cut the cornerstones and sashing strips for my Vintage Christmas quilt.  I've been staring at the box of finished blocks and fabrics with no good reason for not cutting them and I finally just did it.  And yesterday, despite my hubby being home, I took over part of the living room floor to get the blocks all distributed...ummm...evenly?

Obviously, I had some help!  You have to move fast in this house if you're going to get this sort of thing done...

Emma joined Freddie, but her method was more sit-and-wait, as opposed to his help-it-along tactic.  Neither was very helpful, but I think they do enjoy it when I sit on the floor.  I can easily scratch their chins from that position.

But I did get it all done and rows labelled...

...and now I'm in the process of sewing rows together.

It's a good thing I had this photo, though, because yesterday I had some extra blocks sewn to one of the rows and not enough in another!

I opted to wait on positioning cornerstones to when I have the rows sewn together.  Originally I had planned to do that all at once, but with all the help I was getting, I decided I needed to pick it up and go back later.  I'm hoping later this afternoon it will happen - I'd like to have this together as a top today.  And with the hubby returning to second shift today (promotion = new shift), I won't have to stop and make a nice dinner for him, I can just eat leftovers quickly!

Once this is done, I'm going to move on to the green X blocks I made at retreat.  And then I have one more project that will need some math to get blocks into a top, but I am letting the ideas simmer a bit for setting and whatnot until it's time.

I'm not sure I like my hubby being back on second (he's done all the shifts, a few years here and a few years there), but this promotion is a big deal and a job he's excited about because he sees how much of an impact it can make on the facility he's in.  And I know eventually he'll work his way back to first shift, it's just a matter of time.  So in the meantime, I'm going to make some lemonade and sew away my evenings, watch whatever I want on television (what shows are even on any more?!) and enjoy not having a starving hubby waiting for me to make dinner every night.

Happy quilting!

Katie