Wrapping Up

It's really the end of 2011, isn't it? I feel like December went by so quickly, but I think I say that every year. Christmas with friends and family was wonderful. New Year's Eve will be (thankfully) quiet; we are ringing in the new year by going to brunch at my son and daughter-in-law's home and then taking in a live performance of Beauty and the Beast. 

I had it in mind to make a few gifts for Christmas this year and am pleased to be able to say I was able to make it a reality. A quilt each for my daughter's boyfriends and pillowcases to match, plus, a pillowcase for the stocking of my son's friend who joined us on Christmas day. I am planning a few more for next year, which totally justifies the post-Christmas sale fabric shopping I have been doing, doesn't it?

The quilt in the photo is a lap-sized Yellow Brick Road featuring fabrics from Emily Herrick's Going Coastal line, supplemented from my own collection. It was machine quilted by a young quilt designer who lives in an adjacent town. She is just getting her longarm business started and I was happy to be able to support her new venture. She did a large, looping meander all over the top; I think it perfectly echoes the sand dollar motifs on the quilt backing. This quilt will be staying in the family as the recipient proposed to my daughter before Christmas! She is very excited, and we are as well. You can see the snow we had on the ground the day this photo was taken; by Christmas Day, it was all but gone.

The end of the year is hours away. They (whoever "they" are) say that whatever it is you spend New Year's Day doing is what you will be doing all year. I will be enjoying time spent with family and the arts - I have much to look forward to if there is any credence to this statement!

A blessed and peaceful New Year to all!

e.

A New Stocking

The list of projects I'd like to finish for Christmas includes several stockings. This is the first one I've finished this year; it is for my daughter's boyfriend. My daughter was very excited to show it to him but I guess he didn't have the same over-the-top reaction as she had to her new stocking - it's a guy thing, I'm not too worried about it. For them, I'm sure a stocking is much more interesting on Christmas morning when it is packed with goodies. For this stocking, I sewed together leftover charm squares and other scraps which I cut to be 5" square. I quilted 1/4" away on both sides of each seam. The back of the stocking is solid green and is quilted as well. I only sandwiched the outside fabric and batting before I quilted. This allows me to create a separate lining which I can use to turn the stocking inside out. I slipstitch the opening closed after I turn it and voila - no seams are showing inside, or out! I also put a label inside for the recipient - that probably helps Santa out when he comes to fill the stockings!

I am putting the binding on another gift quilt today. I enjoy being able to sit and stitch by hand. It's a welcome break when things get busy at this time of year.

We have snow falling today though the weather forecast says we will not be having a white Christmas. The last couple of winters have brought us plenty of snow; I think I'm okay with having less this time around.

Enjoy the season!

e.

Santa stopped by

I came home after a long day at work last week to find a package waiting for me. I was delighted to find a swap gift inside. An online quilt group I belong to usually does a swap at Christmas time. My gift came to me all the way from Kansas. Terri made me a lovely table runner which happens to fit perfectly on my brand new coffee table. We've been doing some renovations around here and it seemed a good time to consider new furniture for the living room. The last time I bought some was when my daughters were born - they are 20 now! Our family is growing and I wanted to have comfortable seating for everyone so I found a sectional, coffee table, and wall unit which work just perfectly in our small condo and a store that could get me the goods in time for Christmas. Jackpot! I'm proudly showing off my new runner here. Thank you, Terri, for making such a perfect gift for me!

In between marking final assignments and the painting and furniture arranging I have managed a bit of sewing. I am helping Santa out by sewing a few new stockings to be filled. I'll post pictures here when I get some. The tree is up but not decorated yet - we're waiting for one of my daughters to get home from university this weekend so she can help to trim the tree. She's a Forestry major and rather opinionated - I wonder what she'll say about this year's specimen?

It's almost the shortest day of the year. Where I live, that means the sun won't be fully up until nine o'clock in the morning or so and it will easily be dark by 4:30. The great thing about that is the days will only be getting longer from there out!

See you soon.

e.

Catching up...

I really want to be part of the blog community; online quilters and crafters are some of the coolest people I have ever *met*. I got a bit off course and haven't posted for awhile. I decided (and therefore, my husband decided) to do some quick reno's in our house in time for Christmas. Our kids are grown and now they are bringing home boyfriends and spouses so it was time to get the family room more updated and do something to bring in additional seating to our living room. Of course this meant we had to redo the floors which led to repainting...you get the idea. I offered up my sewing space as a storage repository for displaced furniture and my office was taken down to accommodate the installation of new flooring. Everything is pretty much back together now and it looks fresh and so much brighter -I'm very pleased.

So now it is time to get back into my Christmas workshop. One tradition around our house is opening stockings on Christmas morning. I grew up in a home where my father's German heritage led us to open gifts on Christmas Eve - there were certainly no stockings. I married into a family that embraced the stocking tradition and I have to say, I really like it. Somewhere along the line, my kids started to say "stockings are our favourite part of Christmas" - that just helped me to enjoy the process even more. I put all kinds of things in stockings and, truth be told, they probably add up to just as much as a gift, but it's so much fun. This year, my kids are students or newly relocated and money is tight for all; we drew names for gift giving, but the stocking tradition will go on as planned. I am actually really excited about this is less time hunting down gifts means more time planning neat ideas for the stockings.

Last year, my daughter asked for a new stocking. She wanted something modern, so I came up with this one. She loves it. In fact, she has it hanging on the door knob of her bedroom so she could look at it all year. I also made a stocking for my new daughter-in-law in a less modern aesthetic. This year, there are boyfriends (who I think are here to stay) and friends with nowhere else to be on Christmas and another daughter asking for a new stocking. A co-worker is looking for one as well. The elves need to get to work!

Of course, I may not be playing by the rules when it comes to giving gifts this year...quilts are coming back from the nice lady with the longarm so I'll be happily handstitching binding on a few projects before the big day arrives. The best part about that our evenings are chilly so having a quilt on my lap for binding is not a bad thing at all!

I love Christmas; I love getting ready for it. We don't go crazy with elaborate preparations but we put love into everything we do and it's perfect for our family. I hope your plans - whatever they may be - are coming together well!

e.

Shhh...

Before I'd ever heard of blogs, Facebook, or Flickr there were Yahoo Groups. Back in 2004, my fabric and pattern choices focused on Thimbleberries. I loved her rich colours and well-written patterns. One day while I was surfin' the net for fabric, I happened across a link which took me to a Yahoo group of quilters who all had a love for Thimbleberries in common. I joined and, for the most part, have been part of the group ever since. I don't have any quilty pals where I live so the interaction I've had with this group has really been meaningful to me. I've met many of them at retreat (in MN, at the home of Thimblerries, of course!) and others, I've met with in or near their hometowns as I have passed through.

My tastes have grown and changed since then but I still belong to the group. It doesn't matter what type of pattern you make or what colours you choose, you can still learn so much from a diverse group of experienced quilters. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of my old stash (why would I?) or patterns, so I still have a lovely collection of Thimbleberries on hand. This is perfect when the holidays roll around. Each Christmas, we have a Secret Santa swap in our group. The themes and participants change from year to year but the premise is the same - you are assigned a name, and you create the designated project for that person. This year, I drew the name of someone who wanted either a wallhanging or a table topper. So, that is how I spent some time this weekend. To heck with work projects and marking (I teach at a college), quilting and creating make my heart sing and I'm probably a better instructor for it. I'm nearly done my swap gift; I only have the binding and label left to do. The mailing deadline is in early December but I'm making a run to the border (where I have a U.S. PO box) this week and it makes sense to mail my project from there so it doesn't get hung up in customs (my swap partner lives in the U.S.). This is a sneak peek of my project; she just might stop by the blog so I don't want to give too much away just yet.

This week, my American friends will celebrate Thanksgiving. Truth be told, I'm sometimes envious of how special it is south of the border. We celebrate in October and turkey dinner is always on the menu but I have to say, the four-day US holiday seems awfully nice, too. In the spirit of being thankful, I want to give a heartfelt shout-out to all the bloggers who so generously share of their knowledge and skills. I have never taken a machine quilting class in person. Instead, I have learned from online articles, blog posts, Flickr demos, and videos, and I think I'm coming along quite nicely. The kindness and willingness to share of the online quilting community inspires me to pay it forward right here, where I live. 

Happy thankgiving week to all.

e.

Weekend Flurries

Here in southern Alberta, we expect almost anything when it comes to weather. Forecasts serve more as reminders of our unpredictable climate as opposed to anything to plan our lives by. This past weekend, the forecasters warned of snow flurries. Sigh. I'm never ready for snow. More correctly, I'm never ready for icy walkways and roads. As it happened, however, the snowfall I'd anticipated never materialized (thankfully!) though we had some blowing snow one afternoon.

Not that I ever need weather as an excuse to sew, but something about it being dark and blustery outside makes me want to hunker down in the sewing room with a good project. I seem to have difficulty concentrating on a single project at a time. Have you seen the movie Up! where that little dog is always being distracted by squirrels? That's me when it comes to projects. Some months ago, my husband took me to a quilt shop and told me to pick out the fabrics to make something I'd enjoy, as my Mother's Day gift. One of the samples on display was a simple quilt made from the Moda candy bar precuts so I chose that as my gift (which I promie, I WILL get working on soon). The pattern can be made just as easily from charm packs and one evening, I was inspired to use my Flurry charm packs to whip up a Christmas version of the same quilt. I got it all cut out and started piecing it, then I felt guilty for having abandoned a couple other projects midstream. I set my new project aside and went back to my other projects, but wouldn't you know, those darn pieces were all over my small sewing space and just kept getting in the way. The logical thing to do, of course, was to finish up that Flurry quilt top so it could be moved out of the way. 

I guess you could say the weekend forecast was all wrong; the flurries I was expecting didn't happen while the unplanned Flurry ended up coming together after all. The result of my "justified sewing room clean-up" is the top in the photo below. I honestly need to set the top aside and set my mind to other projects just now, but I'm hoping to get this one quilted up in time for Christmas. I'm thinking my son and daughter-in-law might like it for their new apartment.

I'm heading out of town on business for a couple of days so there won't be much going on in the way of projects - forecasted or otherwise. I'm packing a book (okay, and a ton of marking) and making plans to stay tucked into my hotel room for an uninterrupted "me time". 

Happy Wednesday!

e.

Next up...tree skirt

One of my girls left home this fall to attend university in a different city. Last weekend, her boyfriend traveled up to visit her. While I think she was happy he came to visit, she was also very excited that he would be bringing up her collection of Christmas decorations.Each year, she puts up a small tree in her room; this year will be no exception and in fact, her dorm room is bigger than her bedroom at home so I think she'll probably decorate even more. She mentioned last year, already, that she would be needing a tree skirt, made by her "mama".  I know it won't be long before she moves past bedrooms and college dorms and into a place of her own so I'm making her a full size tree skirt. She can always cinch it up around her mini tree, right?

My own taste in fabric has been evolving, but she is still very much a traditional girl. I still have a stash of Thimbleberries and Kansas Troubles fabrics and was able to pull, I think, a great selection of pieces to make her tree skirt from. All but one of the fabrics are TB; the other is actually a fairly modern piece from one of the recent Basic Grey lines by Moda. It plays nicely with the other rich colours.

I am about halfway finished piecing the top. It's looking pretty good so far. I think she'll like it. I know I sure like being able to work on a fun project like this.

In Canada, it is Remembrance Day today. We remember those who have unselfishly given of themselves in order to serve our country. Thank you, Canadian Forces, and thank you to your families who give so much for us. We do remember.

e.