Personal review of 2011

It is great to look back on the past year and see how much has changed! 

 It was a year ago that I received my wonderful new sewing machine that started me off on my quilting dream.  January was also really the beginning of my blog life.  It has gone better than I expected - wow, so far I have had more than 16,000 hits on my blog! I would LOVE to see more comments :) , but I guess people are just shy or something...

After cramming myself and my machines into a tiny room and trying to have enough table space and quilting space and cutting space and ironing space - my husband felt sorry for me and had me design my dream sewing table, and had it made!  Then I received the complement of having people e-mail me and ask me to share my plans for the table. Wow.

I have done the most quilting this year of any previous year, as you can see on the left side under my list of projects.  I hope to accomplish just as much (maybe more?) this coming year!  I have experimented with FMQ, and with LOTS of practice, I am feeling pretty good about it - and I have decided that I love it.

I have tried a lot of new things, and even shared some of the things I have learned.  I have found some wonderful patterns, admired some amazing quilts and quilting done by others (see all of Ruth Ann's projects on the left...), and even got to travel to Amish quilting country and go to a quilt museum!  Of course, I made some serious bloopers - which I prefer not to think too much about, but I did blog about them: FMQ disaster, and the world's ugliest quilt (which was SO bad I didn't even take picture!

Some things I would like to accomplish - maybe this coming year?  I would love to go to a quilt show, one of the big ones!  I don't know if I can swing it this year, but someday I want to!  I want to learn some more FMQ patterns, and continue to try new things.  I also want to finish all of the quilts I have started or bought the fabric for that have somehow gotten pushed to the side.  OK.  Here is my resolution.  I will not spend more money on fabric until I have finished at least half of the projects I have in the queue right now.  Wow, that is a really hard one to make, but I know it is what I really should do!  Whew.  Now that it is in print, maybe I will even stick to it.  Just so you can check on me - I have fabric right now for 2 baby girl quilts, two wall hangings, and a wreath quilt top waiting to be quilted.  I also have two boy baby tops that are ready to be quilted.  OK.  I need to accomplish some of those before I begin anything else.  Keep me honest here, OK?

Thanks for sticking with me here, and thank you to those of you who actually DO leave comments, and I welcome any new commenters (is that a word?).  I hope you have had a great 2011, and that 2012 is wonderful!