Welcome 2012

I hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas and got lots of great quilty gifts. Apparently I was a very good girl in 2010, as Santa was very good to me. I got some great quilt books, basting needles, the Accuquilt birds die, a Slice Fabrique (which I have yet to make work), a Beam N Read light, and a Reliable iron (the orange one, to go with my yellow Oliso iron). If you know me, you also know that I loathe ironing more than Madonna loathes hydrangeas, yet I own two of the coolest irons on the market...go figure....(apparently I have taken up iron collecting.). Actually, the Oliso may find itself on Sew Its For Sale. We shall see. I need to fire up the Reliable before I decide.

I was also lucky to pick up a little after-Christmas item for myself

The Fed Ex guy had a struggle carrying this huge box up the front steps.

And inside was another huge box.

And inside was the 'real' box.

Which held the new Beyers Choice Vanilla Icing Gingerbread house I added to my collection for half price this year. It's a lot bigger than I thought it would be, but I'll manage to find a place for it.

I tell you, those Chinese craftsmen are something else. You'd swear these were real candies they glued on, but they're just plastic replicas. (Ummmm.....gummy bears.....one of my favorites).

I put it away, though I've yet to put away any of the other Christmas decorations. I'm playing the "I'll take the decorations down after Three Kings' Day (January 5th)" game this year. In all honesty, I'm checking out the fresh tree tonight and darned if it's not dropped a needle, is still soft and pliable, and could likely make it another month....and the rest of the trees aren't real, so what's the hurry? Okay, so we are going to Florida in a couple of weeks and it would be nice to not have to come back home to Christmas decorations (not to mention embarrass myself in front of our house sitters), so I'll likely tear myself away from my sewing machine this weekend and put things away.

Speaking of sewing.....I've got a class with Mimi Dietrich this Sunday and I did not do the homework (horrors!!!), and it is way too late to start. Actually, it was a reverse applique project that she assigned in November and gave us 2 months to do .... along with the admonishment to not try to start it a week before the class. (do you think she was directing that at me??)  Anyway, I didn't see myself using the block in either of my Baltimore quilts, so I just worked on straight up paper cut blocks. It would be nice if I could finish one more of those before Sunday so I don't look like such a loser, but not sure I can finish the one I've been working on for the past month, let alone one more. (sigh)

While I did have most of last week off from work, I didn't get a lot of sewing done.  I did spend some time over the weekend and finished piecing the 63 flannel quilt blocks for the rag quilt

And yesterday I was able to put the sandwiches together, and today I finished quilting them.

Tonight I laid them out on the design wall, which was kind of tricky as there's also a pattern on the back to consider. I'm pretty sure I managed to lay them out with no two same blocks together. Guess we'll find out when I start sewing them together. Oh well if I did.

Well, I'm off to bed. Early tomorrow morning I've got to meet with a trainer at the gym, and then it's a work day (both jobs). I hope to get the rows sewn together tomorrow night and then rag it before Saturday morning, which might be a good time to take it to a laundromat to wash.

Oh, and if you find any drunken Karaoke New Years Eve videos of me on YouTube, do me a favor, and don't tell me about them. :)

I've got a couple great pincushion giveaways coming up, so check back later this week for how to enter.

Stay warm!