Goodbye 2013, Hello 2014!

Happy New Year! Every January I spend a little time reflecting on the previous 12 months. What I accomplished...what I didn't finish up...and my goals for the upcoming year. Last January, my biggest goal was to take it a bit easier. By the end of 2012 I had just submitted the projects and manuscript for the book and I was exhausted. I think I did a pretty good job this year of slowing down. I thought it'd be fun to do a little summary here. (Fun for me anyway! lol)

The biggest accomplishment of 2013 was the release of my first book - Vintage Quilt Revival. We've had an awesome response to it so far, and I thank you (THANK YOU!) so much!

I made a lot of quilts this year - some shown above. Probably not as many as previous years, but I'm really happy with what I finished. I have several additional tops that need wrapping up as well. That should probably be one of my first goals for 2014.

I hosted the Lighthouse Quilt Along and was excited to see several of your finished quilts and hear success stories from first time paper piecers.

I visited several quilt guilds to speak and teach, and was lucky enough to attend Quilt Con and Fall Quilt Market. Unfortunately, all the traveling and time away (even just evenings and weekends) got to be a bit too hard for our family, so this year I'm wrapping up my calendar and only attending a few events. I'm sure there will be more time for additional traveling once my kids are a bit older and don't think I'm cool to hang out with anymore. ;)

I added a new page to my blog, Community Giving, to highlight current ways to help those in need. (Details on the page if you'd like your organization listed.)

And I hosted monthly Great Big Giveaway Days from my awesome sponsors! They were so popular that I'm going to host those again throughout 2014 (yay)!

For 2014, I have a few quilting and blogging related goals:

1 ~ Create more charity quilts 2 ~ Create more gift quilts 3 ~ Spend more time teaching my daughter to sew (and be more patient in the process) 3 ~ Finish some of my quilt tops (at least my Arkansas Traveler one!) 4 ~ Sew with fabric lines less and scrappy prints more 5 ~ Continue to write patterns 6 ~ Work more on improving my photography 7 ~ Destash all the fabric that's been sitting in a destash pile here for 4 months!

Here's to a wonderful and creative year for everyone out there!