February is a quick month.

 Hello all and welcome to the new site.  If you recall I started to subdivide my websites because my interests are expanding.  I wanted to keep track of my book reading, my watercolors and my acrylic painting as well as my quilting.  I talk about them all here but in the different pages I go into them a bit more so you can see where I got the idea and where I am learning from.  But for now lets get going:

Quilting

I finally finished my quilt from SewFresh.  I just found out this week that she's closing her Etsy store and only selling on her website which is https://sewfreshquilts.com/  This site has a shop, a blog, tutorials, and many free patterns which you would really like.  I just finished a baby quilt using one of her free patterns, with Tigger.  It's from the Winnie the Poo and Friends quilt she made.  I just made one of the guys, but there are four of them to check out including Piglet, Eeyore, and Winnie the Poo of course.  The link is at the end of the blog posting above.  The writing around the Tigger are the words Tiger.  I got this scrap material from Fabricland (made for them only) for about $5.00 a meter, a great sale that just sat there for about 5 years.  Now was the perfect time.  I gave that away to a friend who just found out she's pregnant, and she loved it.

I had extra material even with this one so I cute out another Tiger to add to this one and I have a bit of the yellow left to go around it then I have some red to go around that.  That one I'll donate.  It ahs to be 35" by 35".  It's been a long time since I donated so I'm happy to do that.  

But the  other three characters from the free patter are so cute, I wouldn't mind doing them one day.  We'll have to see.  Go to SewFresh and on her tutorials you'll find the pattern as well as patterns for Earnie and Burt from Sesame Street and a really cute one of the Grouch

   
Have fun trying these ones out.

And here's the big review of another one of SewFresh's quilts, the Skeleton.  It's with rectangles, all of it.  There's a great map showing where the whites go, the blacks, and the grays.  The rest of the colors are your choices.  Because she loves Halloween I thought I would do oranges and fall colors.  I made a queen size quilt so that she can have it on her bed.  Her birthday was Monday, but it will take time to ship, so when it arrives, it arrives.

This is the back, a haunted house.

It's huge.

It's size on a queen size bed.

I love her patterns so much that I bought another one to make for my husband's shower curtain.  The theme is beachie and below is the next one, called gulls and crabs...   so cute.

Look at it when it is completed in fabric.....   gorgeous

Another one that I promised myself I would complete by the end of March when we leave on a trip is a Scrappy one.  The pattern is by Meadow Mist, "The Looking Glass".  It's made to use your 5" squares.  I've been cutting out many from scraps.  

It's part of the 2026 Stash Busting Quilt Along, the one and only group I've joined this year because I want to get my other BOM and Quilt alongs done (I have soooooo many on my UFO list).  You could choose between 4 different patterns that are all created to use your scraps so it's really good.  Also I have a choice of what size I want to make.  I'm making a lap quilt, but you have the option of a queen and a king.....  The pattern is that easy you can just keep going and going.  Not going there to a queen or a king after the last quilt I just finished.  At least not for a while.  With all of my scraps cut up I thought OK, I'll be able to get rid of some.  This really made me happy.  And it's looking good.  Although I am a month behind, I am catching up, everything is cut, half the blocks have been created, two rows are done, and half of the half (another quarter lol) is completed.  I also used scraps for the white backgrounds to get rid of some of that.  I'm not giving it away to anyone at this point of time.  May even give it as a donation, depending how it turns out.  So stay tuned for that one to be compelted.

I do have a flimsy completed with some other scraps I found.  I promised a councilor at my old school to make her new baby a quilt, never got it to her, and 6 years later, maybe this will be the one.  Take a look at the right.  That's right, 5" squares of all these different colors, so I put it in color order and just kept on and on and on.  But I think it's still too small length  wise so I'm going to add some strips off color on the top and on the bottom, then use black as the binding.  That will look lovely for both a girl and a boy.  But it's for an old colleague for sure.

So it's on my list to get this quilted with a white meandering quilt design.  That will look gorgeous.

So that's three for the end of February and start of March.  Should be able to do that.  The quilting prompt for February is something that makes you smile and all of them certainly do that.

Painting.

There is no prompt for painting but I'm using the same one for quilting, something that makes you smile.  And that's what this one did.  I decided to do one of the challenges from my course for watercolor painting from Emily Olson.  As the founder of Watercolor Mastery she sets out to prove that  by moving away from step by step and into "action-by-action" you can get pass the overwhelming and self0doub feelings, to just loving how to paint.  She has a You Tube channel with free guides, and some free lessons online on her web site.  But I purchased access to her online  blog.  But it also leads to her Watercolor Mastery classes that have tutorials every day, as well as lessons galore.  Take a look at it and tell me what you think.  Today I'm doing yesterday's challenge.  My goal is to do 6 more challenges.  You'll just have to wait and see how it turns out.  It's a frog in water.  So cute, with a big old eye staring out from the water.  I'm enjoying it and they say that you should practice at least 25 minutes a day.  Hope to make that goal.  Wait for the next one.

Acrylic Painting

For Valentines day I painted the picture to the right, for my husband.  I wasn't thinking of doing it but I

 was suppose to be away to Winnipeg to see my Aunt before I had to get dental surgery, lost my front tooth, broke right off, so they had to pull it and are not putting in an implant.  It's painful, and along came a fungus infection that I don't know what it came from.  Now I need to see the doctor to find out.  The blood test I took showed the fungus infection is in my blood.  Life's ups and downs.  This is one of them.  So I'm back to painting as well.  Want to do a three part series on beaches for my husband's remake of his bathroom.  Looking at a beach scene then doing a fish, a starfish, and a palm tree sunset.  Will show when it's done but that means a full day of painting...  This may be going on until after march.  One step at a time.

Also did my favorite raven.  Love how the feathers got to look so real with the sun shining on it. Wish I did the tail longer, but you live and learn.  That's it for him, need to move on into something new. This is the second time I tried a solo and I want to do another solo soon, so I made about three or four different copies or preps for my solos.  That's the idea, do some practices so I'm ready for the big 30" by 30" that I want to do.  Not going to say anything about it but one thing, it does go with the quilt that I plan to make to put up on the wall.

That's it for today, have a great day and a great week.  I'm taking it a bit easy these next few days to get rid of this stupid infection.

Bye....