The Seven Days of New Year's 2020: Day 1

I hope you had a wonderful and joyous Christmas!  For me, it's time to.....

Last year I spent the period between the Day after Christmas and New Year's Day doing a little project cleanup and creative recharging to put myself in good spirits for the start of the New Year.  Just like last year I am fortunate not to have many scheduled activities (just one doctor's appointment) or any pressing deadlines.  Which is not to say that I wouldn't love to finish off a few things before the year ends though, Lol!  

So once again I'm going to spend this period of time indulging in an extended daily Quilt-A-Thon session.  A lot of it will also be a bit of a look back at the quilt ambitions and obsessions of this year (here's to you Edyta Sitar!).  I don't know about you but I already have a pretty long list of "Want To Dos" for 2021.  The more 2020 projects I can bring closer to completion or finish, the more likely the new list will actually happen!

One of the biggest ambitions for 2020 was to tackle a new Christmas decorating color scheme of Blue and White.  I already had ornaments in those colors that I had purchased years ago.  

So I started the year by compiling a scrappy stash  of a lot of blue and white fabrics for making coordinating accessories for the season.  My plans included making a tree skirt, quilts for the back of our couch and the chair in our living room and for the wall next to where the tree would go.  The first idea for the wall quilt was to make this year's annual AQS Christmas Countdown BOM.  Its color scheme of teal, dark blue and white I felt could easily be expanded to utilize scrappy blues. 

The binder holding all the finished blocks.

As noted in a previous post, after making the blocks, I'm now rethinking whether scrappy was the way to go after all.  So that project is moving onto 2021.  

Unfortunately while a lot of the other desired projects got started, the center piece for the whole decorating project -- the Christmas Tree -- was never found!  We usually decorate with a small 3 to 4 foot tree but was not able to find any this late in the season this year.  So our "decorations" truly suited this year's holiday season:  this was all we did for this year's "COVID Christmas" decorating!

The one thing I did manage to get done for holiday decorating was the blue felt "Merry Mugs" fabric ornament kit I picked up after deciding on the Blue & White theme.  I was lucky enough to catch them on sale from Quilt In A Day back in the summer. 

I've made ornaments from these Rachel of Greenfield's kits before.  I did the stocking ones a few years ago and had half of the set of Mitten ones completed.

Having made these by machine before, I was really surprised at how quick they made up by hand!  Because of that, after finishing the last of the mugs earlier this week, I decided to also finish up the last of the mittens too.

I worked on the skate yesterday and finished up the Bell and Santa this afternoon.  The Bell is not actually from the original kit.  The kit had a Christmas tree for one mitten but since I had already made a Christmas tree as part of the Stocking set, I found a bell design in a Penny rug and Ornaments pattern by Pat Sloan from McCall's Quick Quilts and used that instead.

The chair quilt project was going to be my version of "Snow Day".  

It is also part of this year's Laundry Basket Quilts obsession.  As soon as I saw Edyta Sitar's design on her website, I knew it HAD TO go into the B&W project queue!  I knew I'd have enough scraps for the nine patches.  Then I saw the perfect fabric for the sashing in my AQS BOM stash.  Unfortunately, I only had a half yard of it.  When I went back to the store I was able to find the same print although the background of it was a pale blue rather than white.   

Still works though and I found a good fabric for the setting triangles.  So I worked on the nine patches as leader/enders along with other projects.  For some reason I had it in my mind that I only needed seven rows of blocks (fifteen in each row).  By the time I left for my trip at the start of December, I had five rows of blocks made so shipped the block sets for the remaining rows and the sashing and setting triangle fabrics down to work on them while at my MIL's.  I did get them done while there and also found backing fabric for the quilt.  I needed four inch finished quarter squares for the setting triangles and was able to cut those with my MIL's Accuquilt Ohio Star die which made very quick work of the cutting!  I got the top done....

...except I then realized that no, I needed nine rows of blocks!   So the task for this evening is to finish making more nine patches and then maybe tomorrow, I'll get those last two rows on.  

And the bonus for today?  Because Christmas was on Friday, TODAY is the day to pick up the latest installment of Bonnie Hunter's current "Grassy Creek Mystery"!  Woo hoo!  Hope you had a quilty day planned for today too!