Decking the halls

 Hi everyone! Well, it's December-- almost mid-December!-- and we are staring down the end of 2021. I know, it's crazy, because I'm still not over the trauma of 2020. But here we are, and it's time to deck the halls. I did get some new sparkly lights and they help my mood a whole lot, plus we got a new tree that actually fits the high ceilings in the family room. Our old one looked really tiny, and this one is much better, even though we need a ladder to get all the way up there to put the angel on top.

 

So, since we are decking the halls, I finished up two projects that are new parts of our holiday decor. First up is this little project:

 

 

This is the Cactus Star from Barbara Cline's book Diamond Star Quilts, which you can find right HERE. I finished this little project top back in March and just quilted it up this week, mainly because I think it looks like a Christmas cactus and will look lovely on the table for the holiday. 

 

I quilted this with my walking foot, just outlining the flower and leaves, adding in some rays, and stitching a flower in the center. I used two layers of white batting to make it extra cushy (for dishes, you know) and a white backing with sparkly dots. It didn't take long to quilt up, and I love how it turned out. That pink binding makes my heart happy.

 

The next project might be a little traumatic for some people, but I don't regret it one bit. It all started with this cute little quilt that I made a long time ago:

 

It's cute, but we don't use it very much. I used to hang it on the wall, but there are not a lot of walls here, and who wants a quilt to live in a box for years? What to do? Well. . . fold it in quarters and pin it to the ironing board:

Grab a piece of ribbon and a marking pencil and mark a circle, then cut! (Told you it could be traumatic!)

Then grab a cup or something similar and cut a circle in the middle, with another cut from a side to the center circle.

Then you have to make some bias binding and bind the edges, including the center circle. 

 

Honestly, this was the most painful part of the whole thing. That binding is stretchy, and I had to remember how to bind the inner curves. it took a little while. But it's worth it, because look:

. . .it turns into a happy tree skirt! This is much better than staying in that box for another year. I looked for a nice blue to use as binding like I had in the original quilt, but instead I ended up with a snappy Christmas green. I think it works. 

You may think I'm crazy, but I am so, so happy with this little project. I really only lost the corners of the old quilt, and this is very festive!

Hope you all are getting some time to stitch and maybe doing a few other happy, festive things. I think we're finally all decked out, and I'm looking forward to finishing up the semester next week and finally having a little down time with less stress. I have no idea how that will feel, but we'll see!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, and the linkup at Patchwork and Applique.

Festive finale Friday

Hello all!  It's 27 degrees here today, and there has been water running down my street from a broken pipe all day. Not my pipe, thank goodness, but a *lot* of water.  They've sent the salt truck down the street twice, but it's going to be treacherous out there in the morning. And the water is still running! My fingers are crossed for the neighbor with the broken lateral pipe, that's for sure.

Today I am showing off my last finish of 2019! It's really the first in my quest to get all of these unquilted tops out of the closet and quilted up, but it's a finished quilt at last:

It's a winter quilt, just in time for a nice cozy Christmas!  I finished the top for this in January of 2015. Yes, I am deeply ashamed that it hung around that long, but maybe it just needed to age a bit.  It was definitely ready to be quilted up, though.  This was a year-long quiltalong from Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles, and you can buy the whole pattern from her.  It was super-easy to make and fun, too, plus it used up a whole lot of my scraps at the time.  (She has a lot of other fun patterns, too, so take a look around.)

This was quilted by Alycia at Quiltygirl, and she did an amazing job with it.  I told her that she could do whatever she wanted and I can tell she had a lot of fun with it.  There are so many fun things quilted in here.  Take a look at the great textures:

A closeup of the trees:

I love all the swirls, and the limbs on the trees, and take a look at the cups:

Isn't that heart cute?  She also quilted in a few snowflakes, and they blend so well on the front that I had a hard time getting a good picture, but here's one on the back:

The backing is a really nice quality flannel sheet from L.L. Bean, and it makes this quilt extra cuddly. For the binding I chose a red dotted print, which gives the edge just a little zip. 

That's probably too many pictures, but I'm very excited to have this out of the closet and ready to keep me warm. It wasn't doing anyone any good in the closet, after all!  I am so, so grateful to Alycia for her great work on this quilt. (I'll bet she'd be willing to quilt one for you, too!)  I could not be happier with the results, even if it was a long time coming.

And with that, I am closing the sewing room for the holiday so that I can bake up some cookies, wrap some presents, and generally relax with the people I care most about.  It's time for some old-fashioned celebration, and I intend to make the most of it. 

I hope that all of you who celebrate Christmas have a wonderful, restful holiday filled with good food, good friends, and family.  If you celebrate another holiday this time of year, or no holiday, I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful end to the year and a nice restful time with people you love.  I have a wrap-up post scheduled for next week, but otherwise I will see you all in 2020!  Happy holidays, all!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or not Friday.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!  

May your day be merry and bright!

A little help from my friends

Hi folks!  How is everyone this week?  If you're like me, you are busy, busy, busy.  Why is it that there always seems to be a ton more work to be done when you get to be at home instead of at work?  I guess that housework expands when it knows you have time to pay attention to it.  Otherwise, I can't explain where all this dirt came from.

This week I mainly worked on the house and on my paper for the conference next week, but I also squeezed in some time to work on blocks for a block swap I'm participating in with some friends.  Here are my blocks for this month:

Well, they're kind of blowing around there, but they look okay.  Every month our fearless leader gives us colors to use for the different parts of the block, then we send them to her and she swaps them.  It's been a good experience.  Here are some of the blocks I've gotten in return:

A lot of variety there! That's the great part about swaps--seeing everyone else's fabric choices and interpretations of the block.  We only have one month to go and then I'll have a Christmas quilt to show off!

If you're interested, we're using this pattern, which is free: Santa's Rising Sun Quilt. You should know that these babies turn out great, but they take forever to put together.  At least they do for me.  Maybe I'm extra slow, but read the pattern and see what you think.

Now that that swap is winding down, I joined another one with my quilt group. Yeah, I know, nothing like obligations.  But these are friendship stars, with very few rules, and no month to month color requirements. There were several groups, like scrappy, batik, Christmas, etc.  For some reason, I chose solids.  What is it about solids that is drawing me in lately? Here is my first batch:

It was sunny and difficult to get a good picture of the pinks, so I tried to be artsy and put them on the grass in the shade. Well. The corner triangles are really a yellow green, which don't show up so well, but you get the idea!  One thing I discovered while making these (which was MUCH faster than the Santa blocks) was that the solids will show if you are even one thread off on the corners or the matching, which wasn't much problem but made me nervous.

That was my sewing week!  Hope you got a lot more done than I did! Everyone enjoy the weekend.  Stay away from the housework--like I said, it expands. Best to be safe and stay out of the way!

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict and also Finish it up Friday. Come on over and have a look!