Well, my oldest niece thinks that one of my New Year’s resolutions should be to blog more often, so here we go.

Back in October, I made my annual trek to Mom and Dad’s ranch near Hermosa, SD, for the annual Community Club Bazaar. Well, unfortunately, the Bazaar was derailed by the Atlas blizzard. Instead of a fun community get-together, we had rain, freezing rain, high winds, and then a true blizzard. Many, many neighbors lost cattle in this storm. At the ranch, we were without power for five days and phone for four days. But all that gets an entry of its own, later.

Here are the things that I made for the Bazaar! Some of them ended up being sold at the (postponed and modified) Bazaar, while some of them we donated to the Soup and Pie supper at my Mom’s church. I did forget to take a picture of the afghan – this was a crocheted afghan that someone else started, and then passed on to a knitting friend of mine who wasn’t really interested in finishing it, so she passed it on to me, and I finished it and donated it to the Bazaar, where it surprised us all by selling for $95! I didn’t really care for the yarn or the color, so that was a great surprise for me – I guess if we all had the same taste, the world would be a very boring place. I found a picture showing the afghan on my phone!

Lustrous yarn afghan

Counting by Fives Quilt for Folsom Community Bazaar

This quilt started out as something else entirely. I originally intended it to be similar to this “Field of Flowers” quilt – but then I decided that there was no way I was going to get it done in time for the Bazaar.  So I hopped on Pinterest and found “Counting by Fives” – which seemed more possible.

Then I had a color conundrum. I started this quilt before taking my color class. Now I realized I had some very high contrast strips in there, while most of the other strips were about the same value. So I posted on Facebook and got feedback from my friends, most of whom voted that I go with the more blended values. So that required some ripping out. I think it required some fabric purchases as well (I always MEAN to make scrappy quilts, but really, it takes A LOT of fabric to make a quilt.)

Too much contrast in some strips

Less contrast, looks better, I think

The only fabric I could find that worked with all the other fabrics as a background was lavender. This was going to be a decidedly girly, Easter-y quilt.

After getting the top sewn, I still had to quilt it. I do have a New Joy quilting frame, and a Juki TL98E machine, so, in theory, this should go quickly? Well, not if you have to rip out a full five rows because your tension on the back isn’t so good. Now I have “new needle” on the check list for each time I start quilting a quilt. I did make a great discovery, I love Aurofil thread, and will be using that to quilt my quilts unless I find something more miraculous. It worked really well. The only problem is that the quilt store that carries it in the Denver area is WAAAAAY down south.

And of course there were Barbie doll dresses.  One of these got donated to the Soup and Pie supper rather than the Bazaar, since we weren’t sure the Bazaar would be re-scheduled.

Western-themed receiving blankets and burp cloths. Again, I think one of these went to the Soup and Pie supper.

Horse pillowcases and crocheted potholders. The pillowcases went to the Soup and Pie supper, I already have fabric to make new ones for the Bazaar next year. My second-oldest niece also got a set of these for her birthday.

That’s all for now, more catching up on sewing/crafting in a few days!