Monkey Business

Happy New Year to you all. This is the year I get back on that horse and ride it for all it's worth. I feel good, my cancer is gone and especially important to me, I am loving sewing again! I don't know if I will blog as much as I did before, but I am certainly sewing a lot! Here's what's going on at my house:

I made this quilt top from the pattern Suburbs by Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew. I did the top before Christmas, in Christmas fabrics. Now I am going to get it quilted for my middle daughter so she will have a Christmas quilt at her house for next year.

I enjoyed putting this together so much, I am making another one from non-Christmas fabrics. Here it is in process:

I am using some of my treasured Heather Ross fabrics in this one. I love how different the two look with such different fabrics.

 I am in the process of quilting this quilt for a very special person. I had to take my machine for service, as I was having a difficult time with the quilting, but it is fixed and smoother sailing now.

The pattern came from this book by Vanessa from V and Company. A great little series of six books that each focus on one color. I love many of the projects in these books. I cut out all the pieces for this quilt and started piecing it last spring, before the Chemo got to me. Then it sat for months. I knew my sewing mojo was returning when this quilt started to beckon to me to get back to work on it and now it is almost finished!

So I guess you are wondering about the title of this blog post. Well, ever since I finished my treatments, I have been thinking that I would love to find a way to give back to the hospital community that took such good care of me. Then a way was presented to me. There is a group of lovely women who make sock monkey dolls for the children's hospital here that is a part of the over all hospital complex. My daughter met them, and got me in contact with the leader of the group. So now I am learning how to make them, all by hand. I feel like this is only the beginning of my journey to giving back. There will be more, but for now, this is what I do.

The one on the left is the example monkey that I was loaned to copy after my first lesson. The middle one is my first one I made, but it has no ears yet. I still have to have my lesson on how to make the ears. The one on the right is my second sock monkey. I think I'm going to like this!