More Quilt Progress

I have been busy in the "sewing room" (aka, the end of the dining room table) lately, and it has been a blast!

I decided to wait on cutting the fabric for my tree skirt, as my cutting mat is tiny. Luckily for me, I have a pretty terrific dad, and he reads my blog and saw me lament that fact earlier this month. He decided to send a larger cutting mat to my mom-in-law who'll be visiting in just a few weeks. Thanks, Dad!  With the new mat coming, the cutting will be much easier, so I'll wait on that project until then.

Meanwhile, I've had the urge to sew, sew, sew! and I've made tons of progress on my red, white & blue quilt.  I originally started this quilt in July of 2010, after a US trip that summer. From July to January, I did exactly two blocks. Two.

In January I did one more, and in February I finished three more so that as of yesterday, I had six blocks total! That is the whole first row of the quilt and half the second row. The quilt top is laid out in a 4x4 pattern -- that is, four rows of four blocks across.

I don't have pictures of all six blocks yet, but here are four of the blocks, laid out in the pattern/order of the top row of the quilt. I might move these around before I attach them and start sewing rows, but this is just to give an idea of how the blocks will go together.

four blocks in my red/white/blue quilt project

It's been so easy to work on this now, because I  got those really great quilting gifts at Christmas. The tote my mom gave me has been such a huge help -- I didn't realize how unportable my quilting stuff was until now that I see the difference. It's so nice to just pull out one box that has my organized baggies of cut fabric (all the squares and rectangles, sorted by size), the tote with all the supplies, and just sit down and go.

Everything I need is inside the tote, which is inside the box. Makes it very easy to take over one end of the dining table, sew for a while, and then quickly put things away when we need the table for eating and stuff.

What projects have you been working on, crafty or otherwise?