I just read this morning that there are 12 days until Christmas. This is right after I had convinced myself that I had lots of time left to get stuff done. But let’s not talk about that today. Today, I just want to post something non-holiday related that I made.

It’s a new quilt block for my Brown/Orange/Grey sampler quilt called, “Road to California”. I spotted it online here and thought it looked easy enough to give it a go. It was!

I have to admit that making a sampler is completely relaxing. I just need to do one block at a time. I love it.

I’ll be back again this week for a holiday giveaway. I’m hoping to somehow check about 50,000 things off my to-do list today.

I decided I needed to make a grey, orange and brown log cabin block to go with my Dresden Plate. Log cabin is such a fun, easy block to do. I’ve made several now, so it feels like a piece of cake.

That’s two blocks done for my future sampler. I’m loving the pace of doing a block a month. What a leisurely way to make a quilt!

The next block we’re learning for our ‘à la carte‘ quilting series is the Schoolhouse block. I’m ready to learn to do ‘y’ seams and thinking my schoolhouse is going to be made of woodgrain fabric for sure! (I don’t think you can ever go wrong with woodgrain fabric)

I’ve decided to start yet another quilt! We’re doing an à la carte quilting series at the workroom. Since we’re learning a new block every month, I’m going to put all my blocks together and make another sampler quilt.

The Dresden Plate was really fun to put together. I love all the orange petals that radiate from the centre circle. The fabric in the centre circle is from Denyse Schmidt’s Flea Market Fancy collection. It was one of the first bolts of fabrics I bought for the store and is the colour inspiration for my new sampler – grey, orange and brown. It feels very cozy and fall-like.

I’m pretty new to quilting, but it seems perfectly acceptable to have various quilts on the go at different stages of completion. Clearly, I am embracing this notion as there are now 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (this one!) in progress over here.

Sometimes I feel like a bit of a craft tornado, blasting through and leaving behind me a trail of unfinished projects. It’s certainly not for lack of interest, but usually I’ve overloaded myself with too many things at once. Perhaps you have sensed this about me already. Perhaps you are like this too? Too many ideas and ambitions and not enough hours of craft in the day. I have resolved this year to return to many of those abandoned items and finish them up, once and for all.

This sampler quilt was my first priority. I took Johanna’s sampler quilt class last January! It was one of the nicest class experiences I’ve had. Seven heavenly weeks of working alongside a superb group of ladies. The lessons I learned about quilting and sewing were invaluable. I fell a bit behind the class because of my shopkeeping duties and before I knew it, the class was over and MONTHS had passed.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been working on finishing this quilt. I even made an embroidered label. Apparently, I shouldn’t do freehand embroidery. The label is not my finest work and the next quilt label I do will be done with more care. (and hopefully skill!)

My patchwork potholders gave me good practice on doing continuous binding, so I found that part very satisfying. As soon as I had finished attaching the binding I threw the quilt in the washing machine and then the dryer. The satisfaction of looking at my puckery, washed quilt is incredible. In fact, I’m sitting on the couch right now underneath my sweet sampler and it’s so incredibly cozy.

I’ve got two other quilts in progess that I hope to finish this year – my queen-sized quilt and a nine patch quilt. Truthfully, I’d like to make ten other quilts this year but I’ll try to be realistic and account for the fact that I should sleep a few hours each night. Johanna is hatching up some exciting new quilting classes, so in the very least I’ll certainly have to ‘test’ those out.

For now, I’m basking in the sublime feeling of having finished my first quilt. I feel like I’ve been granted the honourable title of ‘quilter’, at long last.