2020 Planning....How'd that Go?

Remember back in a more innocent time when I made plans for 2020, prompted by a link-up party? I had planned to revisit this every quarter but haven't posted anything since April. Just for fun, let's take a little look.

1. Quilt the Nocturne Star Quilt. Um, no. But it is basted.

And I'm pretty sure this is going to be my next big project to tackle once my machine gets back from being serviced and Troy finishes the adapter so I can uses cones of thread. So stayed tuned.

2. A wall hanging from a block I made in a class with Pat Sloan. I added the borders to the block and got it mostly quilted.

This was an adventure in finding and piecing together fabric to match the other wall hanging I had made years ago.

3. Sashing my Lucy Boston blocks. I had 24 done at the beginning of the year and now have 51 out of 56 done. Here's the last one I finished:

By "sashing" the block, I mean adding
the grey honeycombs around the outside

My goal is to finish by the end of the month (that will be three years since I started). That is going to be a push.

The goal also mentioned starting on the connecting crosses and I have done that. Here are a couple:

I probably don't have half of them done yet, but I think I'm getting close to that. I can sew together one of these in about an hour.

4. Finish my Joy to the World quilt top. That was done at the last update in April.

5. Start a quilt with my "antique red" fabrics. Not started. But I pulled out all the fabrics I had assembled and took out a few that really didn't go. I picked the order I would put them in for a Boston Commons quilt.

I still want to make this one but am not in a hurry to start it.

6. Make a cashmere memory blanket for a friend. This also was already done by the April post.

7. Calligraphy. I didn't do the drills with the big brush pen as I suggested I could in the April post, but I have continued lettering. Mostly a lot of decorated envelopes.

This would be one of my fancier ones:

And I was proud of this circle design:

I enjoy fitting words into shapes.

For Christmas, I did a lot of hand lettered envelopes:

Banners:

Ornaments:

and Christmas trees:

I made some personalized cards in the spring with floral initials:

Pretty much every project and design is still inspired by the Happy Ever Crafter (on youtube and Instagram).

8. Skating more. As I reported in April, I went twice in January and that's it. I haven't been this winter yet (Covid) but hope to go soon again. The outdoor rinks are opened with precautions.

9. Take a trip with Troy to celebrate our 20th anniversary (in September). Um, no. You know why.

I got out my wedding dress and put Troy in a suit and took some pictures in our yard.

10. Pray more: still going. I had a daily Lectio Divina practice until the summer and then it dropped off. I'm averaging a couple times a week now and that seems like a good amount. Last week, my church started a scripture series where we're reading a prayer from scripture and then doing a relevant prayer practice. The series goes up to Lent and I hope to keep up with that. (Not that I did in the first week we just finished!)

I'm not worried about evaluating whether I won or lost in meeting these goals, but I was interested in reviewing them after the end of the year.

Lettering

I've written about doing the calligraphy drills with the Happy Ever Crafter in January. Since then I have continued to follow her and some other lettering accounts and try out some projects of my own.

Here was a card I sent to a friend.

We were having a conversation about looking back and seeing all the things you could have done better. But isn't that just a sign that you are not that person anymore? The card itself was blank except for the bird printed on it. I bought a set with the bird in four or five colours and really like them.

I came across this verse in some reading and it struck me as a good verse to put on a card to hang.

Obviously, I'm still learning, but I did like the was the word "God" came out!

I also have been doing envelopes. I started with simple calligraphy on the name and a fun font for the address. I hadn't learned any capital letters, so the first way I stepped up my game was to fancify the first letters of the names.

Then I tried bounce lettering:

I can't say I'm a fan (or very good at it!)

Then I started trying to add some flourishes.

And look! Capital letters!!

I downloaded the free "majuscule" sample sheet from the Happy Ever Crafter and tried some capital letters following her examples.

Then add some more flourishes:

A bit much maybe?

I liked the following composition better. I liked how the flourishes joined different letters.

I mean, the "y" into the "x" into the "t" -- brilliant, right?

I continue to do the banner style. I like this too.

I started to add a "please deliver to" line for fun.

But then sometimes I ran out of room!

So I had to put the zipcode on the bottom end.

Following more examples on Instagram, I created this composition:

This design inspired by the Happy Ever Crafter's
holiday wreath examples on her Dec 9, 2019 post.

and then this one:

I had a lot of fun doing those. I do the whole thing in pencil first so there's no commitment! Then it's just a matter of drawing on the lines.

And sometimes something like this happens:

to keep me humble!! :)

I also played with some floral letter forms:

The flower itself was drawn after the example in a tutorial
by...you guessed it...the Happy Ever Crafter.

For the first one, I did it completely in pencil and then traced it. After that I was a braver and did it straight in marker. At first the flowers and the leaves were done with the same size marker, and later I did the flowers in the small marker and the leaves with the extra-small marker. For all of these, I printed the letter on paper, put it under the page I was working on, and then used the shape that showed through to tell me where I could and couldn't draw. This gets pretty zen.

Also, I put my initials on all of them. Can you find them?!

And finally, I recently sent birthday cards to triplets, and of course I couldn't make all their envelopes the same!

A slanted banner:

I ran out of room on the top for the "please" and was feeling bad. Then I realized I could put it on the bottom. Problem solved!

Some calligraphy and a larger font for the address:

I have to say capital "F"s and "T"s have been my nemesis. I have never liked them and certainly never liked how they turned out when I tried them. I studied some of the samples in the free sample book linked above and was able to pull these off. Not bad.

And finally:

I saw another example on Instagram with the address fit into the inside circle of the wreath and had to try it. I was slightly worried that this would come back for extra postage because it needed to be hand cancelled or that it would be delayed, but it went through just fine. Yay, USPS!