Reveal!

The Christmas gifts have all been opened so I can show off the three quilts I made as gifts for my family members. You have seen 'The Guys' for my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter. She loves it and is sleeping under it now.

This is, of course, the robot for my 5 year old grandson. He is also cuddled under his quilt tonight.

And finally, here is the quilt I made for my new son-in-law. He was the only one in the family without his own quilt. He liked it but is more excited about the remote control helicopter!

We have had a wonderful Christmas this year! While I enjoy having my whole family together under one roof it has been wonderful to spend some time with each of our children and their significant others individually. We have a couple more days here and then it is back to the real world.

Two Christmas Gifts Received

This is the little quilt I made for my sister for Christmas. I saw the pattern in a magazine several years ago and found it online at the magazine's site and drew it up on graph paper so I could make it 'someday' since the magazine was no longer available. Well, someday arrived a couple of weeks ago when I decided to make it for my sister. If anyone knows what magazine it came from I would be happy to acknowledge that here. I told my sister that this is definitely a '10-foot quilt', meaning that it looks good as long as you are at least 10 feet away! The points don't match well but it is mostly because it is made quite small - only about 14" X 18". I think if I enlarged it, it would turn out better so I may try it again some time soon. it was very confusing getting it all laid out correctly.

This is the one I made for my niece, Brita - the one who came and worked so hard for me this summer. This is from the book Dare to be Square. In fact it is the cover quilt, though I did change it a little so that the breast would be made up of short 'feathers' and the rest is longer ones. This was a fun quilt to make!

Merry Christmas to all!

and to all a

Good Night!

More eating than sewing!

Our son and his girlfriend arrived on Saturday and we have been having fun spending some time with them. She is from South Korea and has spent the past year going to school at WSU. She will be going home next week so we are trying to enjoy the time we have left before she goes. They have made dinner for us a couple of times. Here is a picture of one dinner.

This is called kimbap and is not something you would find in a restaurant but is more like a sandwich. It was very tasty and I am hoping to learn how to make them as I think it would be a great dinner for hot weather.

This evening is Advent soup supper at church and the kids are at ZooLights so they won't be making dinner today and I think tomorrow I will make japchae for dinner which is a Korean meal that my mother learned to make back in the 70s and when I made it for Peia (the girlfriend) for her birthday last month she said it was like at home.

I am still working on the 'guy' quilt for the little princess. Just have the buttons to get sewn on. I am going very slowly since I am not a huge fan of sewing buttons on! It will get finished though!

Last week I made a couple of sets of these little numbers for my two 'drinking buddies' for Christmas.

They are coasters for stemware. They also work as glass markers as long as they are all different. I made them out of scraps and just cut squares until I had 6 that sort of went together and then put them together. I plan to make more for a bazaar table at the next quilt show.

Last night at craft night we didn't get any crafting done once again. Instead I brought over my birthday cake - a from scratch German Chocolate Cake - my favorite! That along with 11 batches of Chex Party Mix was yesterday's cooking project. Today I made peanut butter fudge and orange creamsicle fudge. Both are quite tasty! I am hoping to give most of it away so I don't end up eating it all. So far I haven't gained back any of the 25 pounds I have lost in 2010 and I hope I can keep it that way and then in 2011 I would love to lose another 15-25 pounds. Then I will finally have lost the baby fat - 21 or so years later!!!!!

Happy Birthday to me!

Yep, it is my birthday today but I think it will also be a busy day for me today. Got word last night that our son and his girlfriend will be arriving tomorrow and staying for a bit over Christmas break so this means the sewing room needs to be 'broken down' and turned into a guest room again. It also means that all the lint and threads from all the sewing I have done for the last three weeks needs to be pulled out of the corners and from under the furniture! And the dust!!!!! House cleaning has not been a priority the last few weeks! Okay, let's be honest, house cleaning is seldom a priority at my house! It's a good thing it is just the two of us and a 5 pound poodle so the mess doesn't build up too quickly!

Last night was the bazaar. I really did have quite a few doll quilts, wall hangings, table toppers and baby quilts along with a few larger quilts that I was able to pull out to sell. My niece added some little zipper pouches that she made up that can be used for cosmetics, toiletries, etc. to the table. I did take the time to make some pillowcases this week. I cut out 22 and sewed up all but one (I discovered there was a small piece cut out of the end of one of the pieces so it couldn't be used). They are sew easy to make and it was fun decorating the cuffs with some ric-rac and lace.

My strawberry quilt top was sitting on the sewing table so I also decided to make up a back and get it finished for the bazaar. Unfortunately, my work was for naught as I didn't sell anything though lots of people thought the pillowcases were nice. Katie sold 5 of her pouches so it wasn't a total waste. I did get a good bit of the binding sewn on the 'guy' quilt while I listened to Katie's students caroling so all was not lost.

I finished another secret project this past week but again, that picture must wait until after Christmas.

I am thinking today will involve creating a back for Linnea's quilt (due Jan. 4) and getting it basted. At least then it is ready for quilting after Christmas. Tomorrow after going to the food bank to help make up the Christmas baskets for families in need in our area I will get the house cleaned up a bit in preparation for company. I am guessing we will be putting up the tree tomorrow or Sunday so there will be some furniture rearranging to be done also.

Time to post or time to sew?

That is my dilemma! When I have time to post here I am not spending time in my sewing room so don't have anything to post and when I have things to post I don't take the time to do the posting!

I have been very busy in the sewing room and elsewhere so I haven't been posting but I will get you caught up now.

I've got the robot quilted and bound. WooHoo! One down, many to go! My grandson is very into robots right now so he should be very excited when he opens this one.

I finished the embroidery on my granddaughter's quilt and got it quilted yesterday. I tried doing diagonal lines but I am not so good at that it turns out! I don't think little GD will notice the crooked lines! I have the binding on it so that is one to get busy on with the hand-sewing.

I also got the 'secret' top quilted and started hand-sewing the binding last night. That one is pretty cool!

I have started working on some other 'secret' projects that I hope to finish for Christmas but we will see!

It looks like I will be having a table at a bazaar next week with my niece at the school where she is the music teacher. I have a number of mini and small quilts that I can offer along with some larger ones if someone is interested and my niece will have some things also. If I have time I hope to make some pillowcases out of some of the novelty prints that I want to use up.

Third Top Done!

I woke up earlier than I wanted to this morning and once I had checked email, etc. I headed into the sewing room and started sewing on the third quilt top. I didn't stop for anything and by 4:30 this evening I had the top done. Isn't he just the cutest robot? I am so loving this book! I plan to make more robots and other quilts from the book but I plan to make them on a smaller scale. This one is about 60" X 70". I think the robot would be great with a black and white background and maybe orange and red zig zags for his tummy. Anyway, I need to figure out backing for the three quilts so I can get them quilted this next week and move on to other projects.

While I was working on this I had the finished parts laid out on the floor along with a few of the blocks laid out so I could plan the zig zags and my niece came over to have her uncle help her replace a headlight and my little poodle, Lucy, was so excited to see her and just kept dancing around on all the little pieces! I don't think she left one where it was supposed to be! Very funny!

Am I An Over-achiever?

I am starting to worry about me! I have just been very motivated the last few weeks and am taking advantage of that cuz, Lord knows, it probably won't last!!!

Let's see, I got this quilt binding finished. Really happy with how it turned out. I think I will toss it in the washer with a couple of others to get them crinkled up.
I also finished the second of the quilts for my customer. She came and picked them up today and seemed happy with what I did. She said she has lots of quilts so there may be more coming my way.

I got this top put together. It is the first of the three I decided to do over Thanksgiving. I was so excited to have it this far and got started on embroidering faces in the squares when I figured out that I put it together wrong!
So I ripped that top row off and will sew it back on to the bottom of the lower section. All in all, not a tragedy but a little disappointing! I do have about half of the noses and mouths embroidered (the eyes will be white buttons) and hope to finish those up this evening.

I started on the second of the three yesterday and finished the top up this evening. I am very happy with that one too and can't wait for Christmas! I can't post pictures of that one though until after it is received by its new owner. I hope to start on the third top tomorrow and maybe have it finished over the weekend!?!? Then I can get the quilting done on those and move on to quilting the quilt for my friend that is due on January 4. I am also thinking about a few other Christmas projects but first I must finish these other three.

Okay! It is official! I am going crazy!

Numbers Are Up

I was pretty busy in the sewing room in November and December should be pretty close if I can keep up the pace!

November Tally

Finishes
Leftover Triangle Quilt
3 Doll/Mini Quilts
Bento Box Quilt
Brown Leftover Triangle Quilt
Pink/Green Quilt

Good-bye Scrap Quilt

Tops Only
Strawberry Doll Quilt
Odyssea Triangle Maze Quilt

Other
4 QBE Blocks
2 QBRR 2010 Blocks
Diaper Bag

One more finish

I spent the morning getting the first of the two quilts done for my first customer. I really love the colors and fabrics though I would probably never by them to make a quilt.I just did a simple meander on this one. It turned out well and I was done in time to make it to a meeting and then run some errands, including a stop at the post office to get my new book!

After getting home and taking care of a few things around here and getting some dinner on the table for my hubby I started sewing some blocks for the first of the three quilts from my new book. I got 12 of the 29 blocks done and should have the top together tomorrow. It will then need some embroidery before quilting so I can do that in the evenings after I have worked on sewing the other two quilts during the day. Tomorrow morning though, I am planning to get that second quilt finished for my customer so I know I have that off my plate.

2 Blocks and 1 Finish

I received these two blocks this last week from QBE over on Flickr. This is a fun group with month-to-month commitments to make up to 4 blocks for others and then receiving up to 4 blocks from 4 other quilters. If anyone is interested in joining us, just head on over and you can play too. I just finished posting the participants for December but sign-ups for January will start right around Christmas.

Well, due to circumstances beyond my control (customer phone calls for our Appliance Repair business) I only got one of those quilts quilted on Monday. I started on the second but had tension issues (the machine, not me!) so I decided to start fresh on Tuesday! The quilting machine worked like a charm yesterday so I had two quilts waiting for the hand-sewing on the binding. Last night at craft night I got this quilt finished off except for a label

so I will be able to get it to my son's girlfriend in time for her to take it to her mom when she goes home to Korea in January. I got about halfway around the second quilt so hopefully I can post a picture tomorrow or even later today!

Yesterday my first quilting customer came by with her two quilts and I got them both sandwiched so I might be able to get one of them quilted today. Not sure on that since I have several things I have to do away from home today too.

My new book arrived at the post office yesterday but I didn't pick up the mail until after it was closed so I will have to run down today. It is just as well since my customer needs her quilts back in a timely manner and I would be tempted to work on the three quilts instead of quilting!