It feels good to be back in my studio after being away from thread and needle for well over a week. I very much enjoying visiting with all the family, but it’s good to be home and back into my own routine.

And right back into it. First project is an old one that I sidelined when I got to the part I didn’t want to do. Sound familiar??? Or is it just me?

I spent a little time digging through and sorting fabric selvages. These are the woven edges of the fabric that usually have the name and color code woven in to it. They shrink differently than the body of the fabric so usually get cut off and thrown away.

Within the last ten or so years the manufactures have come to understand that these are hot collectables. They have gone from boring with generic names and fonts and no standards for which direction they were printed….

to some pretty fancy stuff! There is actually an entire blog with different projects people use these for. Some are so cool, inspiring and others seem a bit out there!

Whenever I get to the selvage, I trim it off and toss it towards the bottom shelf of the book shelf. Today I pulled them out and pawed through for some interesting ones to use in my current project.

I finished the quilt top but need to piece the  back. That’s not the part I was dreading. It’s all the embroidering I plan to do on it. And you probably remember I don’t much care for that.

Focus. Focus. Focus. I keep telling myself. A quilt can’t take *forever* if you keep at it.

Having a clean space to work in and a clean years’ slate turned into an incredibly relaxing, creative kind of Tuesday. And it felt like Sunday all day long!

And because it was New Year’s Day, dinner was easy. There was no decisions to be made!

Black-eyed peas, cooked with pork and topped with chow-chow, a piece of fried ham and jalapeño cornbread.

That pretty much guarantees a prosperous New Year! And maybe a bellyache from eating too much!!