Merry Christmas!

And nearly Happy New Year!  I hope your holidays are going well, mine aren't so bad considering my grandmother passed away about a week before Christmas.  We will miss Grandma Linda's snarky comments towards Grandpa and never-ending humor even in the face of leukemia.  Grandma also happens to be the other quilter in the family, and her last wish for me was to take over the last project she was working on for my cousin.  She gave me her sewing machine to go along with this project.  Bernina Virtuosa 150 QE, and it's incredible.  I only wish the circumstances I ended up with it were different.

 

However, as fate would have it, this machine arrived right when I needed to quilt my mom's quilt (yeah, didn't finish for the competition, maybe next time) and worked like a charm.  Here's progress pictures:

 

 

You can see (if you look very closely) the columns of color going blue, purple, white, purple, blue.

 

Still piecing with my White, and have ended up with a new pincushion by accident, was trying to make a football themed one for my aunt and royally messed up the process, so I'm keeping it...

 

Getting down to the wire, this one is

 

 To give you an idea of the space I work in, under the table has been tidied up since I got organizer bins for Christmas (thank you Grandma Kathy!)

 

 

My husband was really impressed

 

Racing stripe down the back, yeah!

 

I had to set up shop in our living room, there was JUST enough space for me.

 

 

I learned how incredibly helpful it is having lines to follow.

 

Yes!  Oh thank goodness, done at 10am Christmas Eve.

 

I told mom if she wanted to see it she'd have to wait on the binding, and she was fine with that.

 

Yay!  Happy mom!  Now hand it back over...

 

So the next thing I had promised (I will really have to work on this organizing thing and not saying "yes" to every request) was to make my sister a Christmas giraffe.  Well, after the festivities seen here

 

Oh, am I supposed to leave some for others?

 

The aunt's chattin' it up

 

There's my hubby (in the hat) diving into the macaroni & cheese I contributed to our lasagna dinner :)



 

 at 11:00pm Christmas Eve: 

 

 12:00 am

 

2:15 am

 

9:00 am (only got 3.5 hours of sleep, not good for Christmas Day activities)

 

And Jif with his new momma, who was very pleased with how he turned out.

 

 

The other patchwork giraffe is going to my best friend in CA, who's son turned one 2 months ago, and she is a zookeeper, so it seems fitting he have a giraffe.

 

 

 

I am very much looking forward to this year, I am all set up to be organized with only one or two projects a month, and at least three of them are actually for myself.  Pat Sloan asked a very good question on her blog a while back

"WHY ARE THERE SO MANY UFO'S FOR YOU??"



 and that got me thinking, "you know, I have at least three off the top of my head I can say are mine and I keep putting off because I am putting the perceived needs of others before myself" so I am following her Assignment:

Pick the top THREE projects that you want to finish for you in the first quarter of next year (yes I like lists and I like the number THREE!)

Set a deadline of when they need to be done.

Do NOT move this deadline.

Do NOT take on other work that makes you MISS this deadline.

Now get the first of these 3 projects OUT where you CAN work on it. Don't leave it in a box under the bed in the spare room.  Put it front and center in your workspace

Now work to finish something for YOU!

(1) Mortimer Moose, just need to bind

(2) Car quilt, may need to acquire more jeans for backing

(3) King size strawberry quilt for bedroom

 

#3 may end up being a goal to have done by the end of June, but I can always work on a block a week for it, and it may get done sooner!  By the way, I am quite looking forward to being in my second blog hop with Mdm Samm and Carla at the end of January, and contributing to my sister's household while I'm at it!

 



 

Happy goal setting to you, and see you all in the next year!

It's a baking kind of week

I had a Pampered Chef party this weekend, and we made Cheesy Bruschetta, and oh my lord, it was sooo good!  Here's a tiny picture of it:

 

The other project I will have this week, well, besides pumpkin pie and chocolate-banana cookies, is for my dad's birthday is Saturday, and I have decided a Chewbacca cake is in order.  I found this picture earlier this year and just loved it!

 

I even already own the 3D bear pan it needs!  We are looking at getting some Star Wars themed plates and such too, it will be great.  BLT's and mac & cheese for dinner, sounds like a great follow up to turkey day to me!


Thanks for stopping by, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh, and I have sewn 8 of my blocks together for mom's quilt, it's supposed to be done by Saturday...

UPDATE!

Here's how my Chewbacca turned out, I wanted him to look more like the adult, and John made him a Millennium Falcon to stand on :)

 

My dad loved it :)



A work (or two or three) in progress...

Well I have that "issue" where you start one BIG project and then a bunch more decide they must be done as well, so you start on those as a bit of a break from the big one, and on and on.  Christmas fabric is a weakness of mine, and as my two lap blankets I'm working on are not at all Christmas themed, I just had to do it:

 

Eleanor Burns' Mortimer Moose pattern!

 

In the tutorial on Eleanor's youtube channel they actually did stippling as the quilting, but I wanted my moose to be in the woods.  Free motion quilting on my machine is no easy feat, but I think it turned out pretty nice.  I am a huge fan of the holly and berries, they have that gold accent that makes me happy about Christmas fabric. :)  This will be for my husband for Christmas, his mom started him on a moose theme when he was young, and I decided we need a Christ-moose in the house!  He will have light up Christmas lights that weave through the antlers, and still needs appliqued onto the background, but I feel better now to have a Christmas project under my belt.

 

I made a pressing pad for myself last week, and realized it would have happened a lot faster if my mom didn't have unplanned gall bladder surgery... MOM!  Three surgeries this year, we're done.  Done I tell you!  Anyway, she's healthy, all is well, and I got my pad done and am THRILLED with it!  I can press on one side, and easily flip it over to lay my cutting mat on and cut stuff up on top of it too (my table is not even, and bends in the center when I put pressure on it, so I have to have the board underneath).

 

 Food Network playing in the background, the Thanksgiving Special of course.  Alton Brown is an awesome person.



I used Pat Sloan's Flowers and Berries on White from her newest line Bobbins and Bits as my happy colors, with the vibrant blue of course.  Just a splash of color was needed!  She was interviewed on Fat Quarter Shop recently, check it out!

 

And I have been working on mom's quilt, more so in the last two days, trying to figure out how to lay out these half-square triangles.  I think I got it though:

 

 Neat, but not mom.

 

 Not quite what I envisioned.

 

Oh, I like this!

 

 

I'm thinking of separating the colors so all the lights are together, and all the purples, to make more individual blocks.  Mainly because I really don't care for "scrappy" very much, so the less scrappy it is the happier I'll be.  This particular layout doesn't seem to flow as nicely to my minds eye.  We will see how it goes!  Have a wonderful day!