I'm Back!

I am back to blogging normally now!  I've finished my Christmas knitting (all on time), and last night I even finished my last project for Loopy Academy Sewing!  I'll catch you guys up this week!

This is my Seasonal Wallhanging project for Loopy Academy.  The design is a quilt block from Kumiko Sudo's Fabled Flowers book - this is the hydrangea.  I started by appliqueing the leaves and stem onto the background by hand. Next I added the borders and quilted and bound it.  Finally, I started folding blossoms (each one starts as a much larger square of fabric).  Then I sat down and started sewing them onto the quilt. 

I waited until the end to sew on the blossoms because I wanted to quilt behind the flowers beforehand and I also wanted them supported by all three layers of the quilt.  This meant that there are little knots all over the back side of the quilt, but I used a crazy, bright pink batik for the backing and since it's a wall hanging, the knots are against the wall anyway.

Once I finished this project, I only had the placemats to make for my first semester of Loopy Academy.  I'll show you those tomorrow.  I'm hoping that it's not so dark around here and I can get photos today.

Next semester I'm going to manage my time better and not wait until the last minute to finish Loopy Academy.  I did have the sense to start with the most involved project and work towards the easiest, but if there had been any extra credit like there was last spring with Knitting Loopy Academy, I might not have finished.