Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful and fun New Year’s celebration. I know many of you were sewing with the Twilters on the New Year’s Day Sew In over on Twitter and Facebook. I didn’t get a chance to join in on that fun but I did follow along throughout the day. Today was the first day back in my sewing room and boy, that felt good! I started two projects and did some major planning.

Let’s start with the 2016 word of the year. Did you all choose one? My word for this year is Faith. You can read how I chose this word over on my other blog, by clicking here.

Today I was itching to get into the Accuquilt dies. I decided to make a version of this 1930’s sampler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think my version will be a bit larger as it is going to be a quilt for the beach. The girls have asked me a few times to make a big quilt to take to the beach in the summer and I think this will be perfect. I went ahead and made the first block today, it’s a Broken Sash block…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And tonight I ripped the whole block apart…why, you ask? Well, it seems that when using Accuquilt, your seams have to be a very scant 1/4″ or the block comes out too small. I read up on it today and some quilters are using an 1/8″ seam…yikes. I’ll resew it with an 1/8″ and see what happens. My 1/4″ foot is way to generous. I’m going to have to play around with it.

My second project was getting this redwork embroidery pattern traced onto some white cotton…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used my light box and a mechanical pencil. I left off the frilly design around the heart because I know I’ll get tired of stitching that so I’m going to see how it looks without it. This will be the center panel of a throw pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t have much for Fresh Start Monday as I’ve not been diligent this week collecting articles. I was super busy with the family and that seemed to be right where I needed to be. I do have this one article though with 25 recipes you can make with shredded chicken. This will come in handy for quick and healthy dinners this month. Click Here.

Sandi