January and February are always the hardest months for me. The weather is usually cold and grey and it’s very hard to do anything outside. And you don’t have the distraction of the holidays like you do in December.

There’s so much I want to get started on, but the ground is too frozen for even the most basic of garden things I want to do.

One of the things I will be doing this year is adding a little “structure” to the garden. I’ve got a couple projects planned but I’m only going to share one today.

You’ve all seen the front of the house:

There’s no denying, it needs a little something. The gardens are helping… but we’ve still got a long way to go. While it’s not an English cottage, I want the gardens and front of the house to have that “cottage garden” feel.

And this will help

I ordered this pretty arbor from a place in Sarnia just after Christmas. It’s sitting in a box on the sun porch just waiting for the day I can put it together.

I think it’s going to look amazing over the front walkway. Especially when the roses I ordered as well start to climb all over it.

The rose on the left is called Eden, and the one of the right is Quicksilver. I’m going to plant one on either side and they can meet in the middle!

Oh spring… please get here soon!!!

Today’s Friday Felines is a little different….

Remember this fun little cactus planter I have?

He came as part of a two-pack, with one green cat, and one white cat. I planted up the white one with a matching cactus, and gave it to Mom.

For a few months she’s been bugging me for help… she said her cat tail needed some attention. What kind of attention….?

Um… it’s just a wee bit overgrown for the planter. Honestly, I can’t look at that picture without laughing my butt off.

My cacti tail grew too… but not nearly as much as hers did. It’s probably less than half the size!!!

While at her place for the weekend, I popped out to Terra and picked up a new cacti tail.

I got the smallest one I could, so it might take a little longer to outgrow its home.

And as for that monster…

I found this cute bunny planter on clearance when I picked up the new cacti. I had to erect a little bit of scaffolding to keep the giant upright, but once its roots get settled, it will be able to hold its own again.

It’s not deja vu… I wasn’t planning on it, but I managed to get the second snowflake top quilted and bound this weekend too!

Now, it’s not exactly the same as the first one (which already sold, btw!!!!). This one has different fabrics, which lean towards the more aqua side of the blue spectrum.

And the borders are a little different too, though they are the same size (making both quilts 58″ square)

The back, however, is the same navy snowflake flannel. That wasn’t the plan. But when I started sandwiching the first one, I realized I bought more yardage than I remembered buying. With a little creative piecing, I was able to get both quilts out of it. That thrilled me to no end. I had bought some fabric for the back (a black cotton with snowflakes, I found on sale), but it wasn’t flannel, and I REALLY felt like this design deserved flannel on the back.

So the cotton I bought has been packed away in the stash, and this quilt is now in the shop!

Next up in the finished quilt parade…

My big, beautiful cat-themed sampler made as part of the Moda Blockheads4 quilt-a-long. This top has been done for months so I was thrilled to finally get it quilted and bound.

It was made mostly with the Mod Cats fabric line, with a few other pieces from the stash thrown in here and there. Not all of the blocks were part of the quilt-a-long. The cats, paws, flowers, and heart blocks were all additions I made.

I’d originally planned to use some grey cat face flannel for the back, but I wasn’t paying attention and made the top to big for the amount of fabric I had. But… I was able to find this sweet chunk of flannel that was just purrfect, and priced right.

And now.. this one is in the shop too!

The first of my snowflake tops was quilted and bound this past weekend.

And as you can see in the background, we even got a nice coating of snow in time for the pictures.

The top is made from a great group of beautiful wintery batiks. Even the black background fabric. The pattern is the Jelly Snowflake pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop (with a few minor modifications)

For the back I found a beautiful navy snowflake flannel. And the whole thing was bound up with more cool blue batik. This is a quilt I’ve wanted to make for over a year. I’m thrilled to see it come to fruition – and it looks even better than I imagined it would!

It’s available in the shop now.

We’ve been diligently snow balling strips and sewing them together as our Leader Enders. We completed another pile of blocks, and Burton wanted me to lay them out and see how many we had.

The answer is 36. It’s definitely not enough for a quilt, so we’re back to snowballing more scraps. This one is going to be in the works for quite a while!

Before getting too far into my red quilt, I wanted to clear out a couple of smaller projects that have been bouncing around inside my head for a while.

The first is a baby quilt from some mermaid fabric I got at Walmart ages ago.

It was just a five-piece fat quarter bundle. I picked up the pink coral fabric on sale for the back last year. And the mottled blue/green is leftover from a quilt back from who knows when (I’m pretty sure it was one of Mom’s quilts).

I didn’t actually know what kind of pattern I wanted to do, so I set everything out on the bed (a comfortable place to brainstorm), and got out my graph paper.

Unsurprisingly, I had some help from the usual quilting crew.

The mermaid print was pretty spread out, so I didn’t want it cut it too small and lose all those pretty mer-creatures. I decided to go with 12″ star blocks (six inch centre). I’m probably going to put it together with cronerstar sashing, but by the time I got the big stars together, it was too late to start on that.

It will have to wait for another day.

The title of this post is a little ironic, since as you read this, I’m actually staying at Mom’s. But it refers to the Stay At Home Round Robin sewalong.

I’ve participated two years so far, and this year will be my third. It’s such a fun sew-a-long because it’s all under your own control. You can do whatever you want with each weekly prompt.

This year, I bought a fat quarter bundle with the SAHRR in mind.

It’s called Indigo Cheddar, and it’s is so not my normal colours. But something about it just spoke to me. The navy tones paired with the warm, dusty oranges is just so striking.

It’s all tiny, ditsy floral prints. I just adore ditsy prints. Bigger prints are fun, but they can be a real challenge to quilt with sometimes.

The first challenge of the SAHRR is to make your centre block. There are no rules – it can be any size, any design, it’s all up to you.

I took my inspiration from the internet. Moda is currently doing a charm-pack challenge with their Moda Love pattern. And one person modified it a bit. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for my centre medallion.

And I was right! It looks even better in real life than it did in my head! My centre medallion is 16″ square, giving me a nice big start to my quilt.

The first prompt will be released on Monday. I’m not sure I’ll be able to provide an update every week, but I will keep you all apprised of my progress as often as possible.

For this Friday Felines, I have an FO for you. But it’s kind of a cheat. Ages ago, Mom was cleaning out her sewing room, and asked me if I wanted one of her UFOs to finish for the cats.

It was one of her early efforts – a baby quilt she’d made from a charm pack. She started to do some straight line quilting on it, but she kept getting puckers. She got frustrated with it and set it aside.

It only needed binding.

It’s been sitting in my UFO pile since then – and she gave it to me several months before we moved. But as I was putting the binding on Burton’s winter quilt, it caught my eye. And I realized it was the perfect size for the kitty cabana.

So, after finishing the binding on Burton’s quilt, I went into the scrap binding bin and pulled out something that would work, and got to sewing.

Lemmy helped me sew the binding down – it’s quickly becoming one of his favourite activities.

After an evening of sewing it was finished.

Lemmy gave it a thorough quality test before I tried it out in the cabana.

IT’s the perfect size! The cabana is on the porch for the winter so the cats can still enjoy it right now. And come spring, it will go out in the yard. I think the quilt is going to look fantastic amidst all the flowers!

Whenever I have a spare moment in the evenings, I’ve been working on the Crimson Blossom shawl.

I’m almost back to where I had to frog it. Beading slows down the process.

So does this…

Eventually, he does fall asleep and I can knit a little faster.