Janu-whut?

Well, it may be a few days late, but since I've lost all sense of time this "year," anyway...  It must be time for the annual recap.

After moving to a new home/town in January, it took me a while to get back to my stitching.  My first finish was in February - a wee tooth fairy pillow for my niece.

And then March happened.  I was working from home, and my daughter was doing virtual school from home, and then in April we started a kitchen remodel (the house desperately needed it, and I'm still glad we went ahead with it - since we were lucky enough to still have jobs and steady income).  The year didn't get any less crazy as the months went by - my employer offered a retirement incentive that took away about a third of the library staff, and then we had to try to figure out how to reopen the college library with rotating flexible schedules to accommodate all the unexpected changes in the staff's outside-of-work lives, as well as track all the students/patrons entering and exiting our building, while remaining open a (IMHO) ridiculous number of hours.  And oh yeah, there were no summer camps for my daughter, my husband was briefly furloughed, and...and...and....

Anyway.  I managed to finish 20 stitchy things, mostly smallish in nature.  I also worked on a few of my larger projects - I foresee a finish or 2 this year.  And what I'm really proud of - of those 20 finishes, 17 are completely finished!  Not relegated to The Box!  Having a room to stitch  and craft in (that isn't the basement) has been a game-changer, I think.

I also got back to quilting and sewing.  The same niece who received the tooth fairy pillow will also be getting this quilt soon.  (I got it back from my longarm quilter just before Christmas, have finished the binding, and am now just giving the USPS some time to catch up a bit before shipping it out.)

I also put together this one for my daughter, using "quilt squares" purchased from a school art fundraiser - the squares are NOT quilting material, and were terrible to work with.  My longarm lady couldn't even quilt through the fabric - it is more like a shower curtain than cotton.  But my daughter loves it, and that is what matters.

She picked the colors herself, and what you can't really tell from the picture is that it has a bit of a diagonal rainbow effect - it starts with red, then yellow, then green, then purple, and then repeats out to the other corner ending in red again, with a blue border.
And finally...a coworker challenged me to make an Ugly Quilt.  We used the Ultimate Beginner Quilt pattern that she found online, and pawed through our fabric stash to find the most bizarre combinations we could....ta-da!

I learned a LOT about making triangles and matching seams...however, some of my seam allowances are sooooo teeny, I'm afraid this beast won't hang together very well!  It hasn't been quilted yet, and I'm not sure if it ever will be.  Although my quilt lady thinks it is hilarious.  I must admit, it does seem to sum up 2020 in quilt form - a patchwork of strange held together by a few threads in a couple places.  LOL

I wish you all happy stitching in the year ahead!  I'll try to do better at popping in/commenting on other blogs...I do love to see and read what everyone is up to.  I also have an Instagram account, and am a member of a couple Facebook groups...but the narrative style of a blog is still quite satisfying.  And to bookend this annual recap, I'll share my first finish of 2021.  With a bit of background: my mother wants to try having a table at a small local craft show this coming fall - it benefits my old high school, and she has a bunch of thrifted teacups she been nursing baby jade plants in.  She suggested some of my needlework might sell as well, so I've started collecting ornaments and other smalls, along with some of those finished re-purposed jewelry boxes.  And she thinks my tooth fairy pillows could be popular...and they are quick stitches that I'm good at finishing...so I whipped this together last night.

Happy 2021!