Deck the Walls?

I'm slowly changing some things in our house, and one of the things I've been working on changing is the stuff on my walls, artwork and such. Somehow, after having certain things on my walls for 30+ years, I'm getting tired of it. We've moved several times during our marriage, but we've lived in this house almost 15 years now, and several things on our walls were moved from the last house, or multiple houses ago. 

I'm a lot pickier now than I used to be, and I'd rather have fewer things hanging on my walls, but have the things I do have on my walls be pieces I really like. We have a friend, Jean Sumption, who does amazing watercolors, and I've always wanted one of her pieces. Her prints can be found here . I really love her Old Chevy Truck painting, but when it came down to buying one, it had to be The Quilt. Actually, I didn't even have to buy the print, DD#1 and DSIL bought it for me for Christmas. I just got it back from being framed.

I ended up hanging it in our bedroom, because it's a good combination of DH and I. The wood of the house has that barnwood look DH loves, and you know I like that Cathedral Window quilt in the window. When I first saw the original painting at Jean's house, I asked her if she knew what pattern the quilt she had painted was. I told her it was a Cathedral Window, and she thought it was pretty funny she had put it in a window. I'm very thankful to have a print of one of her paintings, she's a wonderful lady and a talented artist. 

My oldest sister has been down to visit a few times recently, and she has been watching my progress on my sewing area shaping up. I told her every sewing room I've ever had has only been functional, but never pretty. I told her now that I have two rooms and it's not so crowded, I'd like to pretty it up some. 

My sister is quite talented, although we tend to do different crafts. We both sew, and she's made several quilts, but I lean heavily towards quilting, whereas she often works with paper, paint, or other mediums. She decided she wanted to make a picture for me to hang in my sewing room, and she got it done in record time!

It is a mixed medium art piece, with fabric, paint, and marker on canvas. I'm going to hang it right above my sit down longarm. She calls it My Happy Place. 

My repetitive stress injury was quite unhappy with 10 days of caring for a baby/toddler, so I'm having to take things slowly as far as getting back to sewing goes. I did manage to sew up a few blocks from some sub-units that were already made.

I found some Dusty Palette Kona Skinny Strip (1.5" strips) rolls at Tuesday Morning a while back, and I bought three of them. When I saw this Town Square quilt tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company, I decided I'd like to make that quilt with my skinny strips. Resizing a pattern comes easily to me, and I realized I could make two blocks with each stripset with the smaller strips. Most of the time, I can get one extra 3.5" square from the end of the stripset, but not always. I've got plans for those extra squares! I switch which fabric I have toward the middle for the second block of each stripset. As you can see above, sometimes just switching the stripset around makes a big difference. 

I threw these blocks on the floor to take a photo of them, but looking at them now, I realize the gray of my solid squares is really close to the color of the carpeting in my sewing room. I'll mix up the blocks when I start to assemble the quilt. There are a lot more blocks to make, I decided I liked the way they were coming out so much, I bought two more rolls of skinny strips and I'm not quite finished the extra stripsets. I have already cut the extra gray squares I needed. Do I need to be working on this quilt right now? No, but I need a little time to get back into a quilting groove, and I'd rather use an easy, fun project for that.