Sister's Choice Quilts

All the Christmas Things

I am so enjoying my house this holiday season. As I write this post, I have the entire place to myself and I am relishing the quiet and peace. That is my little reading nook in the photo above. I spent some time in that chair finishing "Hester", the book I described in yesterday's post. It was really good. The ending felt a bit rushed to me, but I was quite satisfied with the book overall.

I have the house to myself because my husband, daughter Sara, and granddaughter Eva drove down to Disneyland! Sara was planning on taking Eva on her own, but my husband didn't think that was the best idea, so he offered to go along and drive and pay for things. That was an offer she couldn't refuse. So Ozzie and I are holding down the fort and quite content with the arrangement. 

I didn't spend much time sewing yesterday because I felt more like reading to tell you the truth. These little blocks take a minute to put together because of the center star block unit being so tiny. Somehow since 2018 I have managed to amass scads of them in spite of that.

I have well over 180 at this point. Supposedly, my goal is 240. The blocks are 6" finished, so that would be a darned big quilt. I need to figure out when I can stop making these blasted things.

Ozzie and I are living the life of Reilly. I made biscuits and gravy for dinner (an unhealthy meal my husband wouldn't touch if he were here) and watched a Hallmark Christmas movie (which would have put my husband to sleep in two minutes). The weather has been rainy and blustery all day long, and we are ready to turn into our cozy beds now.

Happy Friday!

 

It's a Quilt Shop and Christmas Reading

It's a Quilt Shop! How cute is that? The Designer Mystery 2015 Block 6 is a quilt shop. What a perfect addition to our village.

It's coming along, my little village. My tiny star blocks are progressing too, but gosh, they are slow going. Very fussy to make those little 2 1/2" center stars.

My friend Sue and I always like to buddy-read a book or two during the holiday season. This time we chose a cozy mystery called "Gingerdead Man" by Maya Corrigan. It is a light read, not too intense or gory. Cozy mysteries tend to rely on poison or other not-too-bloody means of offing the victims. This book has a lot of characters to keep track of (that's my only complaint so far). I am about three-quarters of the way through it, and I sure don't have a clue who done it. Have any of you read this? It is part of a series evidently, but you don't need to have read any of the previous books. 

Do you enjoy reading holiday-themed books during Christmas? What do you recommend?

Resurrecting a UFO from 2018

I was digging around in my sewing room, looking for something to do this week. Which is of course what one does on Thanksgiving week, when one has work deadlines, cranberry relish and pies to make, and a house to clean. And did I ever find a project. Back in the summer of 2018, I signed up for a weekly block kit from Primitive Gatherings. They called it "Star Studded Event". Of course it features teeny tiny pieces, which Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings is known for. 

At the end of the project, you were to end up with 240 six-inch quilt blocks. Super scrappy of course. And each block has a 2 1/2 inch center star.

Here is one 2 1/2" center star. It is tiny all right. The flying geese units are 1" x 1 1/2". Good grief, my yellow rotating mat is a mess. My friend Thelma sent it to me eleven or twelve years ago and it has gotten good use, obviously. I can't bear to replace it though for some reason.

I had already finished 120 blocks, so yay, half way through. As I started going through the weekly fabric kits, I felt (as I often do with scrappy kits) that many of the fabrics were (to put it kindly) not to my taste. So that led to much rummaging around in scrap bins and me cutting more strips to make blocks more to my liking. You should see my sewing room. To say it's a mess doesn't quite sum up the complete chaos. 

This is how you assemble the blocks. You get four blocks out of a fabric strip assortment for one color story. Five color stories per weekly kit, so 20 blocks a week. Evidently I forgot the instructions not to combine duplicate fabrics within a block. No problem I have about a hundred more blocks to make.

The blocks really are awesome. I need to finish this project. I think it will be an heirloom. I will keep you all posted.

In other news, if Jan gives me the ok, I will share her Thanksgiving Jello Salad story tomorrow. I think you all will get a kick out of it and be able to totally relate to it! 

Hope you all are getting more done this week than I am. I still have all the cooking and house cleaning to do today. How smart of me to have procrastinated and left everything for the last minute.

Sewcialites Week 5 and a Fun Notion

I've been having fun with the 2022 Sewcialites Sew Along sponsored by the Fatquarter Shop. This was week 5, and the block was pretty difficult. I am making two different block sizes (in two different fabric collections) for this sew-along. The blocks above are my "extras". I had tons of leftover Christmas Morning fabric (Lella Boutique) from a previous sew-along and thought it would be a good idea to try to use it up if I could. So I am making the six-inch blocks with it for the Sewcialites sew-along. And they are quickly becoming my favorites, over my main blocks!

This is the actual fifth block in the sew-along, designed by Carrie Nelson. This is the nine-inch size in Flower Pot fabrics (Lella Boutique again). This was a challenging block, but if you go slowly, starch your fabric, cut accurately, and trim to size things will turn out pretty great.  I would not, however, want to make this block in a smaller size. 

Kimberly suggested that if you wanted a simpler block with a similar look, that you use a basket block from Sewcialites 1, which I did for my six-inch Christmas Morning block.

Here are all my nine-inch blocks. I am really enjoying this sew-along. On Fridays, Kimberly does a live tutorial where she makes the week's block on YouTube's Behind the Seams channel. I put Kimberly on in the background on my laptop and stitch along with her. 

And this is a fun new notion I got recently. It is called a Slap and Wrap Peel, but I call it a "slapper". Eva has had bracelets that curl up like this when you slap them, and a ruler too. In this case, it is used as a holder for the triangle papers Fatquartershop sells. You could use it to hold any bundle of papers in a roll. It comes as a straight flat strip. When you slap it against something it curls up and holds it tight. 

Hope you all had a great weekend. We put our Christmas trees up but didn't decorate them yet. We are hosting Thanksgiving for Sara and her husband Jeff, and Eva, and I don't want to rush the day too much. There will only be the five of us and we are looking forward to a feast. Jeff is a former restaurant owner and Culinary Academy graduate and his specialty is grilling. You know our turkey will be something special. 

On Black Friday however, we will be hitting the road full tilt boogie and getting those Christmas decorations up! This is a first, I am nearly finished with my holiday gift shopping!

Have a great start to your week!

 

Winter Village

These are all the blocks I have made so far for the 2015 Designer Mystery BOM. Five buildings and four snowmen blocks. Several people have asked about the pattern and where they can get it. It is available on the Fatquartershop for $59.98 for the twelve building blocks and the finishing layout/blocks pattern. 

This is the layout I am doing. Except, I am making the quilt wider and putting the top and bottom borders on the sides. I'll do the top as well if I have enough fabric. I prefer my quilts to drape over the sides of the bed.

These are the four alternate snowman blocks. I will probably embroider eyes and mouths. The pattern calls for button faces, but I am not sure that's a good idea.

This is how I wasted spent the morning yesterday. I just had to have a new holiday mug rug. No pattern, I just kind of made it up. The tree section does measure 6" finished.

I drive past these trees several times a day and decided to stop and take a picture before the leaves all fall off. Isn't that the most gorgeous juxtaposition of colors? It makes me so happy to see it.

Friday, yay! Hope your weekend is splendid.

Snowman Village Coming To Life

My snowman village is coming alive! I only finished two of the four snowman blocks yesterday, but the remaining two are ready to assemble. I think I will do little French knots for their eyes and mouths. Each block has two strips of trees and a snowman in a hat, scarf, or sweater. They are so darn cute.

I cannot recall when I have had so much fun working on a quilt! 

Several of you asked what fabric I showed yesterday in my post about wanting to make a Christmas quilt. The background and red fabrics are mostly from Primitive Gatherings latest collection "Garden Gatherings". They are a beautiful clear Christmas red. The dark greens are from that group also, and the lighter greens are from Jan Patek's latest collection for Moda. 

Oh my gosh friends, if you like to bake but can't ever finish (or don't want to eat it all) a whole cake, this book will be perfect. Each recipe makes an 8-inch round, an 8-inch square, or a loaf cake. Eva and I made the Pumpkin Spice Cake with a Maple Glaze, and it was truly outstanding. If you aren't big on pumpkin pie, this could be an easy and delicious Thanksgiving dessert. Flavorful, moist, and that maple glaze was brilliant. My husband said, "This is the best cake I've ever had". I put a green post-it flag on some of the recipes we want to try and practically ran out of flags. 

Snowman Village Quilt

My fifth building in the Snowman Village quilt is the library. This one was pretty easy, although it did have a ton of pieces. Those little Alphabities labels are a big help in keeping them organized.

Here's the entire village so far. Someone was asking me if there will be a quilt shop and there will be!

Today I am going to switch things up a little. My navy border and alternate block fabric arrived and I starched a yard or so of it yesterday. Today I think I will make my four snowman blocks, which fill out the setting layout. They promise to be super cute and I can't wait to get them done. Compared to these buildings, they will be a cinch. 

My head is so full of ideas for projects I want to make! I mentioned that I have been buying fabric, and this is some of it. Look at those beautiful reds and greens! The pattern is called Christmas Kaleidoscope and is available as a pdf download from Gigi's Thimble. The darker greens form a strong diagonal line, with the. lighter greens forming kind of a shadow effect. The reds are the star blocks, which are so fun made in different prints. I am looking forward to plunging into this project during the holidays. 

Hope your week got off to a good start. Eva and I usually bake on Tuesday, and this week we made a recipe from a new book I bought "Snacking Cakes" by Yossi Arefi. All the recipes can be made using just one big mixing bowl. You can bake the cakes in a round pan, a square pan, and even in a loaf pan (some of them). Our first effort is a Pumpkin Olive Oil cake with a Maple Glaze. We threw in a handful of chocolate chips because that's how we roll. I took the photo before we put the glaze on.

It sure smells good!

Snowman Houses and a Blast From the Past

To say I am enjoying making these houses from the Designer Mystery 2015 BOM sew-along is an understatement. Each one of these blocks is a little work of love. Top row: Grandma's Cottage and an Apartment Complex. Bottom row: Post Office and Sweet Shop. If they look scroogey, it is because I did not lay them straight on the design wall, they really came out pretty good. Anyway, so much fun! I am really pleased with how well the mail box turned out. That scalloped edging on the Sweet Shop block was so hard!

Here is a bit of fun. My sisters were going through our dad's bedside drawer and discovered an undeveloped roll of film. Kate took it to be developed and found a bunch of photos from 1999 that my dad had never had printed out. The picture above is of my mom at her kitchen sink washing lemons she had harvested from the lemon tree on the sideyard. We have no idea what she was planning to do with them, and even Sara, who was pictured in some accompanying pictures where she was assisting my mom, had no recollection of what the plan was. What a blast from the past this was. At the time, Sara and Ahren and I lived less than a mile away and were hanging out at my parents' house all the time. This picture is a perfect example of what life was like back then. There was always some project or other going on at their house that we all pitched in on. It makes me miss them so much.

Hope you all had a great weekend. I spent part of it with my sisters and it was so nice to be together. 

Too Many Projects?

I admit it, I have a few projects going on. For some reason, I have always loved doing multiple things at once. I typically am reading three books at a time, I can work and eat lunch at the same time, and I could do housework and fix dinner while nursing the baby.  And as you may have noticed, I am constantly starting some new quilt project before finishing others that I have started. It doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I do finish things, but often get distracted by something new and shiny. These are some of the block projects I have going on at the moment. My Sewcialites 2 9-inch blocks are in the upper left corner of the design board. My five Nantucket Summer, Designer Mystery BOM 2022 blocks are on the right. On the bottom left are 6-inch Sewcialites blocks, which I plan to turn into a runner or lap quilt.

Did you notice something new? This is the first block in the Designer Mystery 2015 Snowman Gatherings BOM. I think it is called "Grandmother's Cottage". It turned out super cute and was very fun to make. Tons of pieces. I used all my A-Z Alphabities plus some numbers just for this block. I am going to need to square up the block units constantly because with these small pieces, things can go sideways fast.

On the large design wall I have the Family Reunion quilt. This quilt is in the book "Rollin' Along" by Moda Bake Shop. I have started making the border square in a square blocks. I need 68 of them. They are kind of boring to make, so I am pushing myself to make at least 10 a day. 

I think I mentioned that Eva is with me this week since her Dad is on vacation. Wouldn't you know she came down with a sore throat? I kept her home from school and she's been drinking gallons of tea, and eating soup. It was pouring rain all day long so it was a good day to stay inside under an afghan.

Hope all is going great with you!

Halloween and Block Re-Do

We had a wonderful neighborhood Halloween gathering at my son in law's house near us. The adults sat around a small campfire in the front yard and greeted the kids and their parents as they came by for trick or treating. Eva's dad lives in a neighborhood that goes all out for Halloween, to the extent where people drive from nearby towns to trick or treat. When we first moved here, we lived in his neighborhood and the first Halloween we had 283 kids came by.  I kept track. All the houses were decorated to the nth degree and many people, like our group, sat out in front of their houses to pass out candy. It was all very festive and fun.

Eva was dressed as a mermaid skeleton and in the picture above she is standing with her bestie, who is a spooky black cat. Those girls are growing up so darn fast. 

I remade the second Sewcialites 2 block.  I just didn't care for the way the large print was working in the design. 

Here is a comparison. I think I prefer the one on the right.

We had a big rainstorm today, with lot of thunder and lightening. I am glad it held off until today and didn't spoil the Halloween festivities. I curled up on my chaise lounge with a good book and had a perfectly cozy day. Hope your week got off to a great start.