Looking Back at 2023

 

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas.  We had a quiet Christmas with very little snow, it has been raining with above freezing temperatures all week.  I have been having fun feeding the Chickadees in our yard by hand as its been so mild here. I also had a lot of fun this summer feeding the hummingbirds with a hand feeder and having them fly so close and even land on my hand at times. 

I didn't make the number of quilts I normally do but my attention was turned to bag making this year and that has been a nice change of pace.  Did a few Markets to sell my bags and that went very well. Had a lot of custom orders and sales from my social media posts and I'm still really enjoyed the new creative outlet.

So here is my end of year round up of the quilts I made this year.

I finished my Cupola View quilt in July which I gave to my youngest son.

Made a quilt for my older sons to give to his best friend for a wedding gift. 

I made quilted shoes!  That was a fun project I did at a retreat with Lori this fall.  We purchased our sneaker kits from Fabriculous. 

I participated in a Queen Bee block swap with our local guild and I made an baby sized Ice Cream Cone quilt.

Now to my bags.   I started with a few Ruby Totes, then tried the Compass Bags. Moved onto the Haralson Belt bags, the Redwood Totes and the Cambridge bags.  Made a ton of Devon Pouches, Norfolk Pouches and Essential Pouches. Just going to show one of each!

Here is what my sale table looked like at the markets. Had a mix of my laser cut signs, waxed canvas bags and quilts. Thank you to all my friends and social media followers that bought items from me this year.  I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to do markets but they were fun and I might do a few next year. 

I had a nice steady flow of quilts coming in to be longarmed this year.   One big change I notice this year was I didn't need a waiting list which was really nice.  I could quilt tops as they came in and my turn around time was a few weeks.  I had a slightly lower number of quilts come through my door this year compared to last year which is what most longarmers have been reporting.  I think it is down to two factors, higher cost of living and quilters are only bringing one quilt at a time not 2 to 4 like during covid years.  Things feel back to normal and I expect this coming year to be similar. 

  I wish you all a happy and healthy 2024!