I can’t believe it has been a year since I took my first quilting class at  ThreadBear on 10/20/14! Before that day, I’d never even held a rotary cutter, used a cutting mat , or even knew that quilters had their own kind of rulers. I’ve learned so much over past 12 months, and my learning accelerated even more after I made the decision to start a blog in May ’15 and became involved with the New Quilt Bloggers group the next month. I shared a little of my quilting/blogging journey in my 2015 New Quilt Bloggers blog hop post. I’ve become acquainted with so many wonderful people online who share this passion of mine and who have given extremely valuable feedback and assistance to me both with quilting and blogging. Next year I will get a chance to meet some of these people in person when I go to QuiltCon 2016 and Glamp Stitchalot 2016.

The Quilter’s Planner

The highlight so far of my first year of quilting is finding out a few days ago that the block I designed for the Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop is going to be one of 52 blocks featured in The Quilter’s Planner designed by Stephanie Palmer. Please go to this link to learn more about the planner and to purchase one for yourself or for a friend or family member who loves to quilt. I can’t wait for mine to arrive! It is such a honor to be included in this awesome project that includes blocks by so many talented quilters. I still plan to make a sampler quilt someday from many of the original blocks featured in this planner.

As far as what I’m currently working on, I’m focusing most of my energy on theJapanese Quilt for my stepson for Christmas. I blogged about my concept of the quilt here and showed my first block sewn for this project here. Below is a photo that shows some of the blocks I’ve sewn from Tula Pink’s City Sampler book on my design board with some of the rabbit panel cut into 6.5″ squares and a koi square cut from a different panel. There will be a koi square in each corner of the quilt, and the finished quilt will be 8 blocks across by 8 blocks down. I’ve only just started to orient the blocks and consider the order they will be sewn together.

And there is one more thing on my immediate quilting agenda, and that is to sign up to participate in the 2016 Stash Bee on 10/28/15. I’m sure it will another great way to network with other quilters and to build my quilt piecing skills.

What about you? What do you have going on quilting-wise these days or in the near future?

Linking up with Sew She Can: Show Off Saturday.