Wishing you a peaceful Christmas Eve

I am getting ready to finish telecommuting and headed up to the studio to try to finish my friend Anna's gift. If not, she'll be opening a box of fabric scraps and a promise. This will teach me to wait until the day before to start a project that I've never done before (pleated outside pocketed tote  bag).

The hubs is out to the grocery store. In appreciation I sent him off with a typed shopping list arranged by aisle with coupon items in bold.

The BIL is supposed to stop by with his 4-year old daughter to make gingerbread houses, and I'm hoping that his 13-year old daughter comes to supervise so I can rally on in the studio. I've still got to make labor-intensive cinnamon rolls (they need 2 rises) so they're ready for breakfast tomorrow morning. If I don't, this would break what has been a 20 year tradition and I'm not sure I want that responsibility.

There's also gingerbread dough in the fridge that's been there a couple of days waiting to be cut into various sized stars and stacked into trees with powdered sugar snow sifted over them. I'm afraid that may be the extent of cookies, though I could throw something together later. We'll see.

Fortunately I finished the MIL's gift.....

I'll check in later and let you know if I finished the tote. Keep your fingers crossed!

Happy Birthday To You

As promised, the finished birthday quilt....tah dah!

And the back with my 'signature block'.

My sister pointed out that I didn't have a finished photo of the Maple Leafs of Friendship table cover quilt, so here is that one:

actually covering the table.

So this makes two quilts finished so far this month. The black/white/green is currently in the sewing machine. It's going to be a tedious walking foot with a bit of freemotion job. Hope to have it done by the weekend. Then I've got to quilt Nautilus (which is pinned and ready), and I'm all caught up and can start a new one. Pretty productive summer so far, if I don't say so myself.

Oh, and I tweaked the center block of my group project last night. Instead of making the border be the dusty teal polka dots, I used the star fabric that I used for the smaller circles in the block. I can't wait to see what direction this one goes in.

I've got this weekend and next week to catch things up as I've planned to drop my machine at the 'spa' on the 11th for a well deserved rest and some pampering while I'm in Hawaii. Must get back to work as I have no time to waste.

Baby Quilt Finished

Having lost steam, after completing this quilt top a couple of week ago, I have finally finished the project....and much to my surprise, the recipient is still a baby--so it still fits! (Patting myself on back). At any rate, the weekend before last I was kind of tied up on other projects, but I did manage to get in a little quality sewing time on 'National Quilt Day', this past Saturday. And, fortunately for me, I had stopped at the quilt shop before I started sewing this and realized that this quilt would be much more practical if I removed the batting (which meant taking out a hundred safety pins to do so and putting them back afterwards).

Put an art quilt DVD in the player, slipped on the old machine quilting gloves and was off to a lively start with a little free-motion here, some spirals there, and then it all came crashing down. I wanted to do flowers on another block throughout, so I found an appropriate marking pen, drew them out, but when I went to sew them, I would keep skipping stitches...not just one, but a bunch, so I'd have an inch of nice even little stitches and then there'd be a stitch that was an inch long. I ripped out, I rethreaded, I rebobbined, I poured a glass of wine, took a few cleansing breaths, turned the machine off and then on, shook the tension out of my shoulders and continued to do this, rip it out, do it, rip it out.

About to give up (after all, I did stitch in the ditch down the rows), I realized that without batting inside this, there was no reason that I couldn't just cheat and use 'conventional' sewing (feed dogs up, presser foot down, sew in one direction) to 'quilt' the flowers. They didn't turn out too bad. So I made some simple x's on some of the other blocks, and I was done with it.

Now I just have to figure out what went wrong before I start on the next one.

Buzzin' Along with the Baby Quilt

Well, I've been a busy bee this weekend. My neice had her baby this past week, so I thought what better way to spend Saturday than at Needles and Pins' fat quarter sale...if I make a quilt for the baby, I've got a perfectly good excuse to indulge.

6 flannel fat quarters, a Yellow Brick Road pattern, and an 'almost put my eye out--that'll teach me to wear my glasses' broken needle incident...by the end of Saturday night I had the top pieced.

Sunday I cut the border, sewed that on, cut and sewed the back and got the sandwich all pinned.

Unfortunately, there was a 38-car pile up on The Road Paved With Good Intentions, so it didn't get finished last night. Maybe tonight.

My daughter came home from Ikea yesterday with some black and white framed prints for her guestroom...."Remember Mom, the guestroom you are making the black and white quilt for", so I take it I need to jump back on that one as soon as this one is out of here.

We drove by her house yesterday and it's really coming along, so it's possible she actually has a guestroom for this quilt in the next month or so....I'd better get crackin'

Of course, the other 9 fat quarters I bought were Hoffman's new batiks, and of course, I did buy the Kiwiberry Bali Pop to go with them. I'm going to have to hide those in one of my new Ikea storage boxes--'out of sight, out of mind'--if I plan on getting anything else finished before starting something new.