Gettin' There

I survived the first week of the quarter. Only 10 more to go until Spring Break.

It was an interesting week, as it always is when the students come back from a long break. I sent an email to a student informing him I expected him to drop my class after not showing up the first day. He wrote back and said he's not going to drop, his afternoon nap was longer than expected and he missed class because of it. *HMPF* Let's all try that excuse with our bosses.

My crafty time was a lot less this week, but I made some progress on my Four Seasons Quilt. Before starting the quilt I went back and forth about the design. I liked my idea but wasn't sure the execution would be successful. I almost started a different design twice. I'm glad I went with my first idea, I think it is really fun!


I basted the parts of the tree to the background fabric with some Lite Steam-a-Seam (on clearance at our local JoAnn for 99 cents for 5 9x12 sheets. Are they discontinuing it? Perhaps I should see if there is any left...), and basted the "gift boxes" to the backing the same way (lining everything up was a bitch!). I layered all my pieces together and machine quilted on the inside edges of my tree pieces, creating a quilted tree on the backing. Now I am hand quilting the gifts and adding bows. Here's my progress:

Detail of the quilt front...looks a little smooshy in the photograph but just needs a warm iron

Detail of the quilt back...the label is one of the "gift boxes," you'll see it next time

The quilted gifts were inspired by my lovely quilt from Louise. She hand quilted leaves on that quilt, and I love how subtle they are. I don't think you can call the quilt I'm making subtle, but I liked the idea of using the quilting as a shape.

I've also been working on my Etsy shop. I took photos of everything I have left from Pattyfair, edited the photos and compressed them for the web. I did research into shipping and how much I should charge (Thanks Kathy!) and I went to the post office and picked up some envelopes and boxes. Then I realized that I should probably open a separate bank account for this. Not because I think I am going to make a ton of money, but because I would prefer to only spend on this venture what I profit from it, and that won't happen if I am using our family account. Also, my preference would be to use PayPal for payment and you can only have one PayPal account per checking account. Our current PayPal account uses Charlie's email and what a pain that would be! I can't get to the bank to do that until next week, so I won't meet my goal of getting my Etsy shop running this weekend. *sigh*

Etsy is addictive. I just popped it open and found three things on the front page to look at! I guess I should get back to work...I should be working on my homework, my quilt, or chasing Jaxon away from the pets. Poor Samantha!