Wrapping up January

I have had a busy sewing week and can actually show a wonderful finish!!!  Photo flood ahead!

M-san and I have been working on our Block of the Month On Williams Street quilts for nearly a year.  We actually decided that we were happy with the skills that we'd learned and that there really wasn't anywhere in our houses where we could display a 12 block quilt so we stopped at 9 blocks.

This was a Quilt-As-You-Go project and one week M-san and I would make a block from scraps that I had in one color scheme or another and then we would wait until the quilting class on YouTube appeared that month and machine quilt our blocks on our own.  M-san quilted in white thread and I quilted in rainbow colored thread.

My quilt.

M-san's quilt.

We had so much fun making these quilts.  M-san claims this was very hard for her and it is true that it is largest quilt that she's ever made.  I guess I'm a bit pushy when it comes to what I think she can do...  BUT SHE CAN DO THIS!!!  I've been quilting for 30 years (or more).  M-san started 3 years ago!  

Really, you can't tell the difference in our quilting except for the thread color.

The blocks are identical.

And these were the labels we put on the back of the quilts.

The On Williams Street YouTube videos were so easy to follow and I'd recommend this class for beginners and experienced machine quilters alike!

Some other sewing that I've been doing are wonky words...  This is a project I am frantically trying to finish before the end of the month...  Will I succeed?

Because of all the sewing I didn't get as much drawing in as I'd wanted.  We went to a Chinese restaurant and had noodles...  

The pool is closed for two weeks so we are visiting various hot spas.  This is NOT supposed to be me.  Yesterday I soaked in an outdoor bath with an elderly lady who said that she comes to this spa every day and she considers it the highpoint of her day...  The water is so hot and there was rain boardering on snow coming down so you know the air was SO cold.  Of course I couldn't sketch her while we were in the bath but I tried to catch her essence from memory afterwards.  I see I need to do more people drawing practice...

I scribbled a house with some new ink that I found...  

I was so thrilled with a set of inks and glass pens that I found at a recycle shop,

The inks aren't waterproof so after inking in the outline, a brush of water makes them "bleed" and they give such fascinating texture to the scribble.

By the way...  a week from today I'll be getting ready to board an airplane for the States.  I'm taking quite a long absence from my job (and I feel bad about that because this is the coldest time of year and a puts a burden on the teachers who will have to come and stand at the crosswalk every morning while I'm gone) but after a short stay with Takumi and Julieta I'll be headed to Indiana to be with Leiya until a couple weeks after their baby is born.  I'll be back in Japan in the middle of March....  It is complicated, but Tetsu will go to California for a week but he'll come back and hold down the fort until I get back...  We have one cat who we don't really expect to last that long, and winter is a very hard time of year to leave a house unoccupied (bursting pipes... two other cats who will be left in a cold house though they'll get fed by our neighbor.  We will leave electric mats on for cats... Don't worry).  So... sorry Tetsu.  He'll have to meet our new grandson at another date.  And Luka isn't too happy that Jiijii (Tetsu) isn't coming...  

"Jiijii!  I'll miss you!"