Sister's Choice Quilts

Two Last Minute Finishes for 2013

Just under the wire, but I made it!  Two last finishes for 2013. 

The quilt shown in the photo above is "All Wrapped Up" a pattern by Moda.  I used the Kate Spain "Flurry" line of fabric.  Great directions, simple construction, and you have a very cute quilt to enjoy during the holidays.  I really enjoyed working on this one during the Christmas season, and once it is quilted, it will become Eva's own special Christmas quilt.

Ta daa!  Nantucket is all finished too.  The border on this went together like a dream.  I added the little red stars for fun, and wish I had made more than nine of them.  Also, looking at the quilt, if I had it to do over again, I think I would have used one light background for each of the large red star blocks in the center medallion and concentrated on using mostly the tans with the nine patches in the border.  Just a thought.  Doesn't matter now.  It is a fun quilt and it will get plenty of play in my house too.

I have been making lists of what I'd like to accomplish in 2014, and have some very nice projects in my line up.  This week I will also be doing a re-cap of what I finished in 2013.  It is a shorter list than in some years past, but I did make a few of my all time favorite quilts this past year that I am super proud of.

Also, woo hoo, I am coming up on my 1500th post.  Can you believe it?  It is true!  I will be doing some give-aways to celebrate, so check in with me over the next couple of weeks.

Happiest of Holidays

Merry Christmas to all of you!  Thank you all for your kindness and comments all throughout the past year.  I appreciate you more than you can know.  It just makes my day to wake up and see your sweet words and little jokes each morning when I log on to my computer.  I haven't been able to sew quite as much in 2013 as I have in past years, due to all my family commitments, but who knows, maybe things will ease up in the coming year and I will be able to get back to devoting my spare time to what I love so much.

Here's hoping 2014 is a great year for all of you and full of good luck, good health and happiness.

I will be back to regular blogging on January 2.  Happy Holidays to you all.

Countdown

I know this looks pretty random, but I did whip up a few Christmas gifts yesterday.  Three pillow cases for a couple of nephews and a niece.  Cozy flannel for the guys and a Parisian print for the gal.  I am really digging these pillow cases for a quick and easy last minute gift!

 
Have you all heard of "The Elf on the Shelf"?  Someone gave one of them to us for Eva to enjoy, hoping it would become a new family tradition.  The idea is the elf turns up every day before Christmas, in a new spot each day.  He supposedly spies on the children in the family, and will report to Santa if the kids are naughty or nice.  Hmmm.  I have to admit not to be terribly possitively disposed to a little sneak who is on hand in my home with the sole purpose of ratting out my grandchild to Santa. 

However, this is supposed to be a fun thing, right?  So, the first order of business, after introducing the little rat fink guy to the kid, is to have the child give the elf a name.  Eva, ever perceptive, named him "Michael", after the naughtiest boy in her preschool class.  That kid has instincts, I tell you.

Thus far, he has turned up in a couple of different spots each morning since joining our household, and has had nothing negative to report to Santa in regard to Eva's behavior.  The jury is still out if he will be embraced as a family tradition, but at least Ozzie hasn't chewed his leg off.  Yet.

Great Idea

A few days ago, I came upon something that I thought was a very appealing idea.  I was browsing away on the Fatquartershop.com and was intrigued by this Floral Gatherings collection.  It is a little box of Auriful thread that coordinates perfectly with the latest fabric collection by Primitive Gatherings.

How pretty is that?  I certainly couldn't resist it!  It will be fun to see if other designers will come out with these little boxes of threads that match their fabrics.  When I sew on my machine, I typically use a big spool of a neutral shade of Aurifil that disappears into the fabric.  However when I do machine applique or sew on my binding I like to have something that matches the fabric closely.   These shades of thread are such a nice addition to  anyone's thread collection, and if nothing else they are like pretty little jewels nesting in the box we can just enjoy looking at!

I've been a bad blogger this week.  So much is going on around the house and at work, I have barely had a minute to myself.  It feels so good to just sit in the living room and stare at the Christmas tree when I have a second, so that is how I have been spending my leisure time, little of it that there has been!  Hope you are all enjoying this marvelous time of year.

I'm Done

Ahhh.

I am done.

Done with the shopping, done with the decorating, done with the running around.  All I have to do from now until Christmas is enjoy the carols on the iPod, tweek my decorations, and wallow in the lovliness of the holiday season.  Oh.  Well, I do have a few presents to wrap.  But I will crank up Chris Isaak singing Blue Christmas and wrap away until I am done.  Gosh, I love it when I get to this point in the season. It's all down hill from here darlin'.

A few readers have asked for more pictures of the house, with my decorations, so I am putting a few out there, but seriously, I don't go nuts like a lot of the decorator blogs do.  You will not see any burlap Christmas wreaths, and honestly, if I ever show a chalk board ANYTHING, please kill me now.  I am not that person.

My daughter and I have been enjoying sitting around, looking at the lights, listening to music, eating soup by the fireplace and checking things off our To Do lists.  Last night, we were enjoying an especially relaxing evening when I started taking some photos for this blog post.  "You are so not taking my picture" she told me.  Ok, I'm not.

I have a few collections:  Santas, Snowmen, some glass Christmas trees my mom started me on, some mercury glass, and my  husband's serious Chritopher Radko habit, but I haven't really gotten anything new in years, and just keep putting out the old stuff, like old people do.

My little grandaughter Eva met Santa Claus for the first time this weekend.  Her daddy took her on a train ride that had Santa as a special passenger to meet all the kids, and she was thrilled.  I wish I could show you the expressions on her face.  She was joyful, beyond thrilled and full of excitement to actually see Santa with her own eyes.  There was no shyness, no trepidation, no hesitation.  She embraced him with her arms, heart and soul.  That is the reason I love that child so much.  She is so full of adventure, courage, enthusiasm and zest for life.  What a blessing she is to me.  How much she has to offer this world.  She will never be one to hang back.

Her favorite Christmas icon, besides the great Santa himself, is Frosty the Snowman.  We read the book Frosty the Snowman twenty times a day.  She recites the lines of the book along with me.  She loves snowman decorations, and especially loves driving in the neighborhood at dusk to scout out Frosty lawn decorations.  "Frosty!" she exclaims when she spots one.  "Another Frosty" she soon demands, as we go in search of our neighbors Home Depot and Lowe's scores.  One of our neighbors has one of those blow up Frostys that is ten feet high, which is quite dramatic, but her favorite is a more subtle Frosty that is surrounded by fake presents in his lawn.  "Frosty's house" she declares when we pass him on the street.

It snowed in our neighborhood last weekend.  A big snow, that stuck all week.  She was sleeping over that night, and when I woke her up to see the winter splendor first thing in the morning, she blearily peered out the window and croaked, "Where Frosty?"

 

He's right here Honey.  Right here.

A Little Elf Work

Honestly, I wasn't planning on making any Christmas gifts this year.  I have enough going on, I told myself.  But then, as I was going over my Christmas gift list, there are a few people who are just tricky to buy for.  Someone to whom you would like to give a gift, but you don't want to embarrass them or make them feel awkward if they don't have a gift for you.  Something hand made really fits that ticket I think.  You didn't spend a lot, but made a thoughtful effort with them in mind.  I think people appreciate that.  I do anyway.

So, I had these holes in my gift list.  What to do, what to do?  Then yesterday morning I was browsing some blogs that I read regularly and came upon a link to American Patchwork and Quilting's One Million Pillowcase challenge.   I clicked on the link, and was quickly blown away by some of the very creative FREE patterns for making pillowcases. 

A basic pillowcase consists of just less than a yard of fabric for the main body of the case and a third of a yard for the contrasting bottom edge.  Some folks got so creative with their ideas for making that bottom edge really fun and pretty.  Check out Pattern 33 with the Spools border.  What sewer wouldn't love to get that ?  You could go crazy with your bottom borders, making pinwheels, piano keys, chevrons, churn dash blocks...the ideas are endless, and you can download these patterns for free.

What I love about making pillowcases is that you can match them to quilts you have made!  I put these pillowcases I made with French General fabric on my bed with my Madeleine quilt, also made in French General, and look how sweet they look.  I opted to make my first pillowcases in the basic design, and seriously, each one took about 20 minutes to make.

I bet if you think about it, you can come up with someone who you could make one or two pillowcases for.  How about this idea? Make them in cozy plaid flannel fabric and give them to the trickiest group of people to give gifts to--teenage boys and young men!

Got My Greens On

So, I think I have managed to acquire some good greens for my scrappy Christmas version of the American Patchwork and Quilting Sew Along.  Now all I need is a copy of that darn magazine.  My local Savemart, where I typically can pick up my American Patchwork and Quilting magazines has had no sign of the issue that contains the pattern for the sew along.  Come on Savemart, don't fail me now.  I guess that is one advantage of being a paid subscriber:  you get your magazine issues first.

I have rummaged thoroughly in my stash and have come up with a formidible number of fat quarters for the backgrounds.

Plenty of backgrounds, and they aren't all even pictured in the photo above.  I need a total of 7 yards of backgrounds, so the more the better.  I can't wait to start on this project!

In other news, we had a Christmas party at the house this week.  My daughter and son in law hosted a sit down Christmas dinner for their staff of their wine tasting room.  What a lovely occasion it was.  Lots of fun people, great food, and the wine was beyond compare.  One of the guests is a chef at a local restaurant and he brought an appetizer of stuffed dates wrapped in bacon.  Let's have a moment of silence to contemplate that.  I could have eaten the entire platter.  Christmas lights, spirited carols on the iPod, great holiday food, fun people, good conversations--it was a terrific party. The "kids" promised they would clean up after the party, so I walked out of the house at 8:30 the following morning to go to work, and sure enough, I came home to a spotless kitchen. 

I was excited that my decorations and table settings  got to be enjoyed, and a side bonus was that all the hostess gifts of poinsettias got to stay at my house afterwards!  Woo hoo!  A girl can't have too many poinsettias.  Oh, and the leftovers all stayed in my fridge too. 

On another happy note, Grandpa has a new day time caregiver, so a few more days are freed up for me during the week for sewing.  She seems like a super nice woman; a good listener, compassionate, and sensible.  What a relief to have her on board.  This has really been a good week.

A Little Set Back

You may think at first glance that this photo is the same one I showed yesterday, of my All Wrapped Up quilt.  Nope.  I discovered when my side borders didn't fit that I had left out three 2 1/2 inch lattice strips that go under the top three rows of presents.  Argh.  It seemed like such a random pattern direction, to add in those three strips, but there you are.  Read the directions.

I wasted a nap time sewing session (I sew while my granddaughter naps) enthusiastically using my seam ripper.  Actually I use my rotary cutter to rip out long seams.  It is an acquired skill, and I am pretty good at it.  Lots of practice, lol.   I would love to show you how I do it, but I would need three hands, one to hold the camera and two to do the ripping.  One of these days maybe I can get a family member to take pictures or a video while I show you how to rip out seams with a rotary cutter.  It is a great method, very fast, and I have never accidently ruined my fabric by ripping it instead of the seam.

At any rate, it was a zen like sewing break.  Me ripping away, then re-sewing all those seams.  It was ok.  It just feels so good to be up in my sewing room that I don't really care what I am doing!

So, here is a little tip for you all.  Maybe someone can benefit from it sometime when they have a gazillion little threads to pick out.

For me, after the disappointment that I have sewed something and now have to rip it out wraps around my brain, I know I am going to have to deal with all those nasty little threads in the seam line.  I have found that if I use a pair of tweezers to pull out those teensy thread bits the process goes much much faster.  Try it!  You zoom along that seam line pulling out those little buggers, and it is oddly satisfying.

My Intentions Were Good...

Um.  Right.  Yeah, I know.  What were my last words here on this blog?  Nantucket.  I will focus on and finish Nantucket.

But then, I was out in my garage storage area, where my project boxes are kept.  I was looking for my Christmas wrapping paper when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a box labled "All Wrapped Up".  "Hmmm, what was that?",  I wondered.

Just a peek was all it took.  Oh my goodness, I remember that project!  Kate Spain's Flurry collection and a super easy and fun pattern made up of blocks that look like Christmas presents!

I could not help myself.  I forgot all about wrapping Christmas gifts, sewing Nantucket, cleaning my house, cooking dinner, and all the other things I was supposed to be doing.  I brought that project box into the house and up to my sewing room where I discovered I had already completed five of the sixteen blocks.  Finishing the remaining blocks took no time at all, and if I had not been interrupted by various other pressing responsibilities, I would have gotten those four borders on and it would have been a done deal.  All wrapped up, as it were.

I did get the blocks and lattice sewn together, and finished one of the borders.  Three more to go, and I will have a new Christmas quilt top!

Ignored, But Not Forgotten

Poor Nantucket has indeed been set aside in the tumult of Thanksgiving Week and Weekend, but truly I have been thinking about it.

Look, do you see?  I even cleared my Antique Stars blocks off of the design wall in an effort to focus and get serious about finishing up Nantucket.  Given a few uninterrupted hours, this quilt will be a done deal.  The big center stars went together in no time, the little nine patch units were easy peasy, and sewing those borders will be a cinch.

Are you seeing stars?  Lol.  A friend got the idea from another friend, to add little 4 1/4 inch star blocks in the border for that sparkle effect we love.  Not too many, just eight or nine--enough to make your eye travel around the quilt and seek them out.  Love it.

I am going to dedicate myself.  Yes, Dedicate Myself, to working on this quilt top Thursday and Friday and Saturday this week and see if I can't just finish it up and move on to the next project!

If you are sewing along, how are you doing with your version?  Go visit Sinta and Thelma to see their finished tops.