Looking Forward (and a Tiny Glimpse Back)

First, we'll take our tiny glimpse back.  

These first two photos are quilts that were made for Teen Living in Chicago.  Our guild ended up making 23 quilts (twin sized or a bit larger!) to give to Teen Living.  The gray quilt in the photo (which I borrowed from my guild friend, Robbi) was made together with my friend, Emily.  We both pulled fabrics from our stash and then sat together and combined them to make the pairs for each star.  

A funny little story…  If you look at the stars, you will see that there are two different versions of the star.  When we came up with the plan, we drew a pencil drawing on grid paper in Emily's notebook and I took a photo of it with my camera.  We didn't talk about it beyond that, I guess because we didn't really think of it at the time - each just imagining that we saw it the same way.  Anyway, when the blocks were all back together, we had two different versions that combined very well!  

The second quilt was made and quilted just by me.  I call it the Awkward Quilt.  I was in a rush when I put it together and the something went a tiny bit awry with the fabric placement.  I had a "free" yard of fabric, when I accidentally got the wrong fabric in an online fabric order.  Anyway, I grabbed some other fabrics from my stash and bought a piece from JoAnn's (the white which is really a text print with grungy green on it) and put this quilt together.  Even the backing was a knit that I had inherited after my great aunt's home was sorted through.

In this grainy cell phone photo of my nephew,  he is wearing a bapron which I made him for Christmas.  When I had been home a couple weeks before Christmas, I noticed that he kept pulling off all of the bibs that they were putting on him.  It wasn't too hard with the Velcro fasteners that most bibs have.  So, I fixed him up :)  The report was that he didn't even try to take the bapron off.

A new pillowcase for the husband.  I had been using some of the comic fabric to make a gift for my uncle earlier in the year and my husband had commented that it would make a cool pillowcase.  I think he liked it because he took it and immediately put it on his pillow!

Photos of my niece with her Bookbag Backpack.  I had made this version earlier this year when testing the pattern for Samantha and decided that it would be perfect for my niece.  (Incidentally, Samantha currently has a post up with a very lovely version that she made for a friend.)

I'd say that the bag was a hit!  She kept trying to fit all of her other gifts into the backpack and if you look closely, in the second photo, she is sitting on her bag.

Okay, so I guess that was more than a tiny glimpse.  Anyway, moving forward…

For the next year, I am thinking about a lot of things.  I have a few things I want to focus on, I suppose:

1)  Finishing up some UFO's - scrappy trip along, flannel quilt, my husband's quilt, 'inherited' hummingbird quilt

2) Sew more selfishly - I have a few things lined up to make for myself, and I just want to be able to sew a bit for myself if that's what I want

3) Knit a bit more - actually knit a pair of socks, plus during the last year I joined a dishcloth of the month group (actually it's 2 per month) - and only managed to knit one dishcloth… this year, I'd like to knit at least one of them each month

4) Use up some scraps -  I don't have bins and bins full of scraps, but enough… and it's time to use some of them up!

I'm sure there is more, but I can't really think of it right now.

Happy New Year!