Finished and unfinished

 I forgot to take a picture of the Christmassy mug rug I made for Leigh in a swap, but, thankfully, she did.  She has a black dog so I used doggy Christmas fabric.  Because she lives in Australia, I didn't want to do anything wintry, either.  I wrapped the mug rug in some more of the doggy fabric which I love.  The dogs are kind of wacky.

The dog was paperpieced, using a free pattern I found online.  Leigh's dog is a cocker spaniel, so I probably should have made shorter legs, but that would make the mug rug a little smaller than my usual 6" x 9" size.  I have fun quilting the ears and making it scrappy.

I've been chipping away at my 16" sampler blocks and made this Drunkard's Path the other day.

I got the idea from a new book, Crumb Quilts, by Emily Bailey.  All of the quilts in the book are made with "crumbs," snippets of leftover fabrics, but my block is just made of scraps.   The designs in her book are really great, especially the diagonally striped drunkard's path bed-sized quilt in many colors.

I got the book because I'm thinking of joining a crumb block swap in 2022, but I must say Bailey's directions for making crumb blocks are a bit too brief for me - only two pages long.  I need a little more guidance because my first three blocks were really bad.  I ended up throwing one away, and the third one has gotten a brief stay of execution.  I'll give it another try soon.