Whew!  Its been well over a year since I posted, And a busy year+ it has been!  I took a work assignment in Abu Dhabi, UAE in late July 2015 and just returned home August 10th, 2016.  My work schedule was stressful and grueling and despite taking three large boxes of my sewing supplies I only made one set of placemats and part of a table topper the entire time.  My creative juices were NOT flowing at all.  I did meet this nice camel while attending a polo match and enjoyed the "lovely" balmy feel of many  84+% humidity nights.

Enough about that, let's talk about all the fun stuff I've gotten back into since I returned!!  I took a month off work since I hadn't used any vacation in over a year.  I rested, got back into the gym, did projects around the house and also worked on a few quilting projects.

Though I didn't come home with many completed sewing projects, I did come home with 6 more cats than I went to UAE with.  Its a long story, but suffice to say, these cats have sooo much more opportunity here to have loving families than they would have if they hadn't met me and been brought to the US.  Three of the 6 have been adopted, so my clan is down to what I believe to be a manageable number of 5.  Here are some photos of the gang enjoying my quilti-ness.

Sewing is tiring work

Kittens chilling in my scraps

How many cats can fit in one basket?

Can you let me finish it first?

         You made this for me, right?

Alright, on to the quilting projects.  Since August 10th, I've completed a bunch of items including the following (in no particular order):

Paper pieced Christmas wreath

This is a paper pieced wall hanging I made as a teaching sample shop.  I got back to teaching October 15th.   I pieced and quilted this in two days!

Circle Square Quilt from the Orange Quilt Bee

My new assignment at work has me traveling quite a bit as most of my team is based in California.  I did a little shopping at the local quilt shops while I was there for a two week trip and decided I could not spend a weekend without sewing so I went out and bought a machine along with all the basic supplies.  My hotel room was officially turned into a quilting studio and I finished two quilt tops while there.  I left the machine and all the supplies in my office in CA awaiting my return.

Smudgy Cat panel quilt

Thank You Quilt for my house sitter

I wanted to make a quilt for the friend who babysat our house for over a year.  He was a saint.  Deathly allergic to cats but due to a snafu he had to live with my cats for a month until they could fly out to be with us in Abu Dhabi.  He has his own house now and I thought this quilt would make a great thank you/housewarming gift.  Of course I washed, dried and then hid this quilt from the cats before gifting it.

I've been dabbling with pattern design and this quilt is  the second one I've made from the non-released Lickety Split Log Cabin pattern.  The pattern still has a few kinks I need to work out before publishing, but this quilt came out great and the cats of course like it.  The pattern works great if you have a jelly roll with approximately equal numbers of light and dark strips.  I'm trying to find a way to make the pattern work as nicely for a more varied group of strips.

Lickety Split Log Cabin

During my month off I decided to invest some time in getting back to my Sweet Sixteen quilting machine.  I purchased several Craftsy classes and hunkered down.  The practice sandwiches you see here are from Patsy Thompson's feather class.  I learned a TON and had a lot of fun.  The bag the sandwiches are in is another project.  Its basically three pieces of vinyl with a zipper in the middle and binding all the way around.  A great way to use up scraps and I find this bag much nicer than using zip locks.  I plan to make a lot more of these.

Hand made project back and practice quilt sandwiches

  

Freddie helps me cut out my guild mystery quilt.

 I also did something else I didn't think I would do....I joined the local quilt guild.  I'm participating in the guild's mystery quilt which is all cut out and ready for sewing.  Cutting is exhausting work as you can see.

Craftsy BoM is COMPLETE!!!

The project I'm happiest to be done with is the 2012 Craftsy Block of the Month.  I made the quilt in 2012 with both black and white backgrounds.  I waited a while to start quilting this until I got "good enough".  I had quilted about 6 blocks prior to my trip to UAE.  I was driven to finish this quilt because I have several others waiting patiently in line. I worked hard and used the remainder of the quilting as an opportunity to practice the techniques I've recently learned. I'm pretty happy with how it came out and have a lot of things I want to do differently on the black version.  I've included pictures below of each of the blocks I quilted since I got back home.  I quilted the sashing with a ribbon candy design and put feathers around the outer border.