50 Day Hustle!

This is my 100 Day Hustle list. I am actually feeling pretty good about my hustle progress–after today or tomorrow I will have finished all of my sewn Christmas projects which gives me the remaining ~48 days to do fun things and catch up on that FMQ.

1. Monthly Guild Project - On track! Here are the completed October and November blocks:

2. Jacket - bumped
3. Charity wholecloth - also bumped
4. Christmas presents. - So close to being complete!
Here is one finish I can post about: apron for my brother (pretty sure he doesn't read this blog...).

I used the super easy free pattern from J Caroline Creative (thanks Quilt Inspiration!) As a side note, I really don't understand all of these aprons that only cover your lower half.  When I wear an apron, it's to prevent flour/oil/etc from spattering all over my front while I'm cooking. Very rarely does something every spatter my legs, and very often does something spatter my shirt!

Anyways, it was tricky for me to find a "manly" fabric for this, because as you might notice, I really favorite very bright colors. Luckily Joann's had a great selection of these "home decor" weight cottons in subtle shades.  I was able to throw in some cute with the chickens on the pocket though. :)  This assembled in pretty much a single day.  Just cute one big piece for the apron, cut one for the pocket, and you're there!  Time-wise, this has good potential for mass production.  Cost-wise, not so much.  Even with all of my coupons, I would estimate I spent about $20 on the materials for this (that home decor weight fabric is expensive...)

The only remaining Christmas project is small present for my co-workers.  I decided that I didn't want to spend much time or effort on these, so for the first time I used Spoonflower. This is a website for custom printing fabric, or you can order from their extensive user-submitted fabric library. They have tons of adorable fabrics, and I love following their weekly themed fabric design contest, but their fabric is way too expensive to ever purchase (like $20 a yard...)

However, every year they have a special sale for these tea towel fabrics and even though it's damn expensive for a mere fat quarter, it saves me a lot of stress and time that could be spent on projects I care more about. So today my new tea towel fabrics arrived in the mail: (side note: Spoonflower takes forever to ship, I guess because they're custom printing your stuff. But, factor that in if you ever order anything from there!)

So all I have to do is basically stitch a hem around each of these, and they will be complete!

5. FMQ Challenge/placemats: I have started again! (After 5 months....big step!) Today I knocked out both the January and July designs in one fell swoop, and even slapped the binding on this placemat.

The July patten is in the center, and I stitched the January pattern as the border. I am enjoying these FMQ designs, but where I still am lacking is figuring out what stitch to use in a space to enhance the design - not necessarily as filler. One of my Christmas projects (which I can't post about yet) entailed stitching on a paper pieced pattern, and I had trouble figuring out what stitches to put in each space to enhance the design.

All in all I think I am actually on track to complete everything (granted I crossed a bunch of things off, but whatever).  If I have time, I would also like to do some Christmas decor. I might be getting my own tree for the first time ever this year, in which case I will need a tree skirt.  However, I don't want to rush into making one because there are just so many great patterns out there...I want to take my time and make something special.  But I do have a little paper piecing pattern for a little 12" Christmas wallhanging that it would be nice to complete.

Okay linking up with Kelsey Sews...go see how everyone else is doing on their hustle!