Making the house look like Christmas

I put the tree up on Sunday, but have been puttering along with all of the other decorations. Today after work I added this to my family room coffee table. I bought this machine-embroidered little quilt at a fund-raiser a couple of years ago. A former co-worker made it so it is even more special. It has a hanging sleeve too, so some years it may get hung on a wall - maybe in my office.

Two Thanksgivings

On Thursday we spent Thanksgiving with my older daughter and her husband at his parents' house. It was a lovely day - wonderful people and yummy food. And fresh lefse!! What a treat.


Today we had my husband's side of the family at our house. We had 34 for dinner - two of those were babies, but it was still a full house. I love it! Wish we did this more often. It's always fun to have a house full of the people you love.


And tomorrow the Christmas tree will go up. I think putting up the Christmas tree is one of my favorite things to do. And I did get out my Christmas quilts yesterday and my daughter is curled up on my sofa under one of them.


I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well.

Happy Thanksgiving

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving?

1. I get to eat a holiday meal today that I didn't cook. (I'm bringing the veggie tray.)
2. My girls will both be here on Saturday for a late holiday party.
3. The winter storm conditions have ended and the sun is shining.
4. Good health and well-being in my household.
5. And . . . my Christmas shopping is already DONE!

Best holiday wishes to all.

Santa table runner

I have another project finished and ready to wrap for Christmas. This table runner is made from a border print and uses 60 degree cut to make the points. There are several great rulers made just for such a cut, but I was cheap and just lined up the 60 degree mark on my big ruler and then laid a smaller ruler along side to make the cut. It worked perfectly.

I have another border print sitting on my sewing table ready to cut into another of these. Will I get it done before Christmas? Maybe . . .

Border prints

I bought a couple of yards of this border print a year ago but didn't know what to do with it. And this summer I saw a pattern for a table runner using border prints cut at 60 degree angles. This is a really bad photo, but here is a sneak peek at the table runner in progress. I'm doing a little hand quilting on this and should have it ready to bind this weekend.

Another cat picture

My cat loves to drape himself over the arm of the sofa. Sometimes he faces out toward the window and sometimes he faces into the family room. But the funny thing is how he drapes his back legs - over opposite sides of the sofa arm. Here he is watching the birds outside. This is a WIDE LOAD!

Selvage baskets

Here is an experiment from this weekend - a selvage basket. The handle is a bias strip that is machine appliqued onto a black triangle. The selvages were sewn onto a muslin triangle with a smaller black triangle added to the bottom.

Voila - a basket block. It finished at about 11 inches and I finished 2 with a couple more started. I'm not sure what I'll do with these, but they were fun and fast to make.

Cats & quilts

Cats and quilts go together!

Sammy loves it when I lay quilt blocks out on the floor. When I put blocks out to arrange on the floor he immediately comes running. He pounces in the middle and begins to burrow and push the blocks around. Then he sits there looking pleased with himself. He had just begun his own arrangement when I snapped this photo on Saturday.

115 pillowcases

Yesterday I picked up some of the pillowcases that had been made for the Pillows For People project and added them to the box. I just had to count them. 115 - and there were still maybe a half dozen left "decorating" the drop box at the coffee shop. Plus there are 7 smaller pillow covers in this box.

The Love Feast event where these will be given away is coming up on December 16. I'm not sure we'll make our goal of having a new pillow and pillowcase for each of the attendees at the Love Feast. But we'll do the best we can.

I won something BEAUTIFUL

I won something really, really beautiful this morning - 15 blue and white 12" quilt blocks. These were the bonus blocks that people made for Saturday Sampler this month. I almost didn't make a bonus block, but decided that I had lots of blue scraps to use. I am so glad I did that, because my name was drawn this morning. Are they gorgeous? Now I need to decide on the perfect way to use them. Any ideas out there?

Mug Rug is ready to mail

My mug rug is ready to mail to my secret partner. I used the same little package pattern that I previously used for placemats. I hope my partner enjoys it.

Along with the mug rug we are to send an actual mug, a package of a hot beverage such as hot cocoa, a candy cane for stirring, and a favorite cookie recipe. I've got the mug, the hot beverage, and picked up a giant candy cane today. Now I just have to decide on which cookie recipe to share.

What do you think? Molasses? Sugar? Spritz?

Silent auction item

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Big Brother/Big Sister fund raising event I attended. We had a lovely lunch, a fun trunk show, and could bid on lots of beautiful items in the silent auction. I bought this framed applique . . .

Can't wait for the holidays so that I can hang it up.

The same but very different

These two blocks are made with the exact same pattern, but because of the changes I made in where I put the lights, darks, and mediums - it turns into a totally different block. The pink and brown one is block #10 of our Saturday Sampler blocks. Two to go! And the blue block is the bonus block. Each month there is a theme for the bonus blocks, and then one person will win them all. You can only win if you brought a bonus block to enter. I really want to win these blue blocks next Saturday!

Quilting With My Credit Card

Eleanor Burns often says on her TV show that she prefers to "quilt with her credit card" and I have decided to do the same.

Yesterday I dropped off 5 quilts at the Pin Cushion for Carli to quilt for me. Two of them are UFO's from more than 3 years ago. The other 3 are this year's quilts. None were likely to be quilted BY ME in the near future. I could have taken them over to my friend Sylvia's house and used her QBot machine to quilt them myself - but that can only happen if I find the time.

I made the decision this week that I'm going to get these quilts done so that I don't feel so guilty working on new projects. I'm not sure when Carli will get to any of them, but that's OK. The bindings are all ready to put on as I get these back. And then I can either find homes for these quilts or enjoy them myself as finished projects rather than UFO's.

Mug rug sneak peek

This is just a sneak peek at the mug rug I'm making for my secret partner. I signed up for a Mug Rug Swap at Aunt Pitty Pat's blog. You can still sign up until Nov. 6. Check it out at: http://auntpittypats.blogspot.com/.

I just love the anticipation! Can't wait to mail this off along with a few other goodies.