Welconme to 2016!

(Queen size, French orange peel back from longarm quilter, waiting for binding)

 

Okay, so you lost me for a while.  Things got a little crazy when I squeezed in a couple of road trips, a girls' weekend, trips to Houston for Quilt Festival, and a week and a half in Florida.  (Shop 'til you drop, baby).

16 hours after getting back from the airport, I hosted darling daughter's 'Reveal Party' (it's a girl!), which resulted in a toss all other projects aside to make our first flannel baby quilt, a mad rush to host the family for Thanksgiving which, being so late, results in the FRENZIED 'hunt and kill a tree/decorating/baking/shopping/entertaining/send cards/wrap gifts/make my first Springerle cookies/not make the gingerbread house/only use things from 10 of the 30 totes of Christmas gear in the basement' Christmas Rush.

Oh, did I mention that on Black Friday I also started Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt, 'Alietare'? And that I decided to use French fabric that I again purchased in Houston, having used up all of the French fabric I purchased in Houston 6 years earlier (photo up top)? Or that I didn't seem to have quite 'enough' French fabric, which resulted on a whirlwind tour of quilt shops in two states trying to supplement, with no success, until I had the idea to look to see if the vendor I purchased from had a website I could order from -- they did.  (Not exactly a wasted quilt shop tour as of course, I purchased other fabrics).

So here I sit, January 3rd. two Christmas trees to take down (yep, only 2...I took a break this year from the usual 12 trees--sooo glad for that unusual display of good sense). I'm on Part 4 of Alietare--the rest of the world is on Part 6 (the last part), and many have even finished their quilts. (Over-achievers!)

I've got at least one baby quilt that needs to be sandwiched and quilted...

 a Christmas applique wall hanging that never made it to that stage...

 

and a small embroidered winter banner I mostly did on the plane rides, also waiting for quilting

A glutton for punishment, I told a friend that I would make her a quilt, and she asks every week if I have started on it yet :)

And did I mention that I'm hosting the baby shower mid-February? Or that I need to learn how to embroider on my Bernina (that I purchased specifically with a future grand girlchild in mind)?  Daughter has sent over practice pieces. Thankfully she isn't requiring progress reports.

 

Looks like this year is going to a major test of my juggling/organizational skills. All I can say is thank God my first grandchild isn't a boy, which would then require me to make the nautical quilt I purchased this fabric for in Houston.

Shopping to Shop

We're all guilty.  This is why quilter's have stash.  The Holiday weekend found a 25% off sale at one of the local quilt shops.  This was a VERY smart move on their part because the other LQS chose to close for the holiday weekend to have a retreat with their staff .  I can't begin to tell you how many regular customers from the closed shop I saw shopping the sale in the open shop.  Anyway, they sucked me in.  I just love it when the quilt shop groups a line of fabric together and features it at the end of an aisle.  That's where I found those fabrics above.  While it was the vari-colored dots that sucked me in, I had to add three prints to them.  Don't know what I'm going to do with it...a little too whimsical for a table runner, but it would make a cute kid's quilt. This is a line I'm not too familiar with--even the bolts themselves had a unique shape--Cute Critters, Debbie Mumm, Wilmington Prints.

After that I moved on to the Christmas fabrics.  I have convinced myself that I need a Christmas-y throw. (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I need to finish 'Jingle'), but I've had my eye on that Moda fabric on the right  (Tole Christmas by Gina Martin--and it's made in Japan, it has a nice hand to it) my last couple of visits to the shop, so I came home with a yard of each of these prints (which, believe me, was an exercise in control, as they had at least 5 more prints in this line on the floor).

Come Sunday, as I'm sitting there admiring these 4 prints I decided that I needed to go back to the shop and buy more fabric at 25% off.  And the justification would be that I needed some Bella Solids to go with these prints.

So four more yards came home...and my color selection was a tad unconventional...salmon and olive as opposed to red and green. I must have had some kind of influence....I think you'll the next photo will clear that up.

I also came into the shop with a some fabrics from my stash that needed matching. I picked up those two top prints from a 'discontinued fabric' basket at a recent show in a wool vendor's booth. Half yard of one, yard and a half of the other.  Table runner fodder.  But it needed something to go with it, so I found something.

Hmm.... I think my decorating this holiday is going to be salmon and sage-centric.  Oh my!

Fun With Fabric -- It's Not Always All About Sewing

 

Labor Day weekend... Market Days at the repurpose/shabby chic barns...check.  Big fabric sale at the LQS...check. Hubs spending the day at a Fantasy Football draft and now I'm bored, what can I do?  Well, I can unload my scrap strip drawers and pull out all the Halloween strips, and then neatly fold all the other strips back into said drawers..that'll take an hour and a half...check.  And then I can raid the craft room and look for leftover styrofoam trees from Christmas crafts past...check. Queue up a few episodes of UK Celebrity Big Brother on YouTube and get to work.

 Sew those random width strips together.

Fold them in half and give them a slight twist as they are twisted around the styrofoam cone.

Find some wooden 'doll head' beads, paint them black, and then come up with a creative way to rig them to attach to the cones (bent flower head pins hot glued on the bottom and up the side).

Wah-lah.  Halloween trees (sitting on pillar candle holders). 

I used 14" cones for the trees, because that's what I had in the workroom, but you could certainly make these a lot faster on a smaller scale (or use 3 different sizes).  I'll likely pick up some more appropriate bases and put two in my Etsy shop. I definitely don't need three of these in my decor--which I think is going to be more on the 'dark side' this year.

Happy Thursday...and hang in there, it's almost the weekend!