The Home Stretch!

Tomorrow starts the last week of school before a nine-day Thanksgiving Break - woo hoo!  I'm doing my best to get my On Ringo Lake quilt done before the release of Bonnie Hunter's new mystery, but I don't know if I'm going to make it; I realized this weekend that I never finished one of the clues, so I'm scrambling to make some flying geese units so I can finish piecing the blocks.  I did get three or four more blocks pieced this weekend, though.

My leaders and enders for the weekend was to sew together the bonus triangles I had laying around from a recent project

and add them to my HST tin.  At some point, I should be able to make something fun from all of these.

I L-O-V-E butter cookies!

I also finished and mailed off five blocks for Carole's Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.

No finishes to show, except a couple more stockings for my ETSY shop

but I've been thinking a lot about beginnings - five people here at work are having babies this spring!  Five opportunities to make fun little quilts!!

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

Dabbling

I  am ADDICTED to making these mini Christmas stocking gift card holders for my ETSY shop.  I love using up little bits of batting and scraps of holiday fabrics.

In between times, I am sewing up some blocks for the Carolina Hurricane Quilts Project coordinated by Carole at From My Carolina Home.  I sent her some blocks back when she was collecting for the California Fire Quilts, so this was a no-brainer for me to get involved again.  I hope you will, too.  The big blocks go together quite quickly, especially since I already have pre-cut scrap squares.

I'm headed to a conference in PA for the next two days, so I will be knitting, not quilting.  I'm hoping to finish a Christmas present while away from home, or at least make significant progress.  I'm only planning to make a few gifts this year; the rest I am trying to buy from local artisans or on ETSY.  Do you have a favorite ETSY shop to buy gifts or a go-to gift that you like to make?  I'm always looking for ideas...

I'm linking up with Monday Making and Oh Scrap!

NOVEMBER!!

In my world (college advising), October is commonly referred to as Suck-tober.  Crass, I know, but whoa, what a crazy, exhausting month!  Today is the deadline for seniors to apply Early Action or Early Decision to most colleges, so tomorrow, things start to slow down to a trot instead of this full-on gallop we've been experiencing all month.  YAY!

To me, that means picking up the guitar again, reading for pleasure (I have a backlog of new-to-me cozy mysteries waiting for me) and SEWING!!  Tonight, in between panicked emails from the kids who didn't listen to me about getting things done early and are just now finalizing essays before submitting applications tonight, I am whipping up a couple of mini Christmas stockings.  They usually sell well in my ETSY shop, and those that don't sell, I use to give gifts to friends and family.  They are the perfect size to hold a gift card, but I've also filled them with candy, lottery tickets, money, any little thing.

When I got online tonight, I found that Bonnie Hunter has announced this year's mystery quilt!  ACK!  I guess I should get back to finishing LAST year's quilt; I had fun working on it last year, and want to do it again this year.  I have 18 more blocks to put together before I can start assembling the quilt.

Getting into the spirit of things!

I'm that mom who is always too busy to decorate for the holidays, the one who buys the Christmas tree on December 23 (but on the upside, it is usually only half-price by then!).  I promised my kids that it would be different this year.  I still refuse to decorate before December starts, but I'm trying to catch the holiday spirit earlier this year. (and by holiday spirit, I mean decorating spirit.  I believe in holding onto the real "holiday spirit", the spirit of loving and caring for one another, all year long)  So, true to my word, I'm getting started.  I'm teaching a Magic Christmas Stocking class at the shop in a couple of weeks, and a trio of girls from W&L stopped by this week to make some while they were on break from classes.

As I cleaned up our fabric and batting scraps, I got to thinking...what if I made some little stockings, too, for decorating or for giving gift cards?  So, rather than add to my scrap bins, I starting cutting and sewing and before I knew it, I had made 12 mini stockings!!!  I may be slightly addicted.  I still have fabric scraps picked out to make more.

Tomorrow, I plan to put the tree up in my shop window.  I'm pretty sure I'm the only store in town that isn't decorated for the holidays yet.  But usually, I have some vendors who bring in ornaments for sale that I use to decorate the tree, and this year, they are behind schedule.  I can't put up a tree with no ornaments, right?  And I'm too cheap to go out and buy some.  What's a gal to do?  MAKE SOME!

Oh, happy day!  I knew all those plastic thread spools would come in handy!  Using just scraps of ribbon, fabric and beads that I already have on hand, I whipped up 7 ornaments already, and have the fabric strips cut and the paper peeled off the tops/bottoms of the spools to make another 40 or so.  I kept getting interrupted as I did this at work on Small Business Saturday (people are SERIOUS about getting their shopping done! which is GREAT for me, as a shop owner), so I hope to finish them up tomorrow while the shop is closed.

Any other quick and easy ideas for me to decorate using what I have on hand?  I am open to suggestions.  What are YOU doing to decorate this holiday season?

Day one of winter vacation

When I left work yesterday, starting a 12 day vacation, I was nearly giddy with excitement.  What to do first?  My twin sister and her family are arriving tomorrow, so the house needed cleaning, but that could wait until today.  Instead, I sewed!  And while I did work on Hurricane Sandy quilts a bit, for the most part, I sewed for ME!

First of all, I've been wanting a patchwork stocking for years now.  I just never took the time to make one.  Yesterday, was the day.  Voila!  And it is the biggest stocking in the house, too!  I hope Santa fills it up for me!

Only the front is quilted.  The back and the lining are that solid green, which I upcycled from an old sheet. 

I also  bought some flannel pig fabric about 6 weeks ago with a co-worker in mind (she LOVES everything PIG!).  I had meant to make her something ages ago, but never seemed to find the time.  I decided to make a pillow, but gosh, the pillow forms are so expensive.  My solution - I bought a jumbo 20"x28" bed pillow at WalMart ($4 or $5), cut it in half, and sewed the two halves closed to make two 14" x 20" pillows.

Then, I made an envelope style pillow, but with big 1" seams on the outside, and then snipped the seams like a rag quilt.  When it came out of the washer and dryer, it had ragged up nicely and the pillow is SO SOFT!

I just may have to make the other half into a pillow for ME!

Today, I helped the kids clean their rooms (ugh!), cleaned out the refrigerator (double ugh!), and did some laundry and some floors.  I also took the kids to see a local ballet company's production of The Nutcracker.  I've never seen it before, and enjoyed it immensely.  My boys were tolerant and well-behaved, but not impressed.  For being such good sports, I took them out to eat afterwards with a friend and her 3 boys, who had met us at the ballet.  Then, it was grocery shopping in preparation for having a full house of 8 people for the next few days.

As I sit here in the dining room, blogging by the light of the Christmas tree, I can't help but think of how blessed I am.  It is cold outside, but I am cozy here in my house.  I bought groceries without having to wonder if I had enough money to pay for it.  My children are healthy and happy and here with me.  I wish that everyone could be as secure and as content as I am right now.  It makes me want to get back down to the sewing room and work on some projects for others.  I'll definitely be making at least one pillowcase to send up to Sandy Hook.  And I have many more Hurricane Sandy quilts to work on.  The mail counter guy at the post office (where I am always shipping either quilts and/or fabric or books) shared with me yesterday how he was filling Toys for Tots orders and a kid had asked for a blanket, and he just started to cry because he didn't have one to give, and felt helpless for not being able to fulfill such a basic need for someone.  It just about broke my heart.

Many more disappearing 4-patch blocks have come in over the past week.

Plus two quilt tops:

a crib sized quilt

And this wonderfully scrappy HST quilt

But look!  There are about 5 of these blocks interspersed with all the HSTs! What fun to find them in there!

A woman from my guild donated lots of backing yardage:

Also, I was contacted by a reporter from the Republican-Herald newspaper in Pottsville, PA, I am believe our project is going to be featured in an article in Monday's issue.  I'll keep you posted on here, hopefully with a link, if it goes to print.  Thanks, Becki W, for making that connection.

Another Hurricane Sandy quilt was mailed out from here this week, and I have another one to mail tomorrow.  I also have 5 completed tops in my house waiting for quilting, and, of course, many blocks waiting for assembly.  The Blankie Depot will stop accepting Hurricane Sandy donations on February 15, so now there's a deadline.  Gotta get cracking!

Not sure how much blogging I'll be doing with company in town.  Happy Holidays to all of you, whatever it is you may celebrate at this time of year!