December OMG Finished

It's time for the monthly finish linkup at Elm Street Quilts.

For this month my goal was to create enough handmade fabric Christmas ornaments so that I could attach one to each of the younger grandkids' gifts.  In all I managed to complete 15 ornaments, enough for each of the grands and some to spare for our tree.

A few of my favorites:

Linking up with Elm Street Quilts' One Monthly Goal December Finish.

Little Orphan Quilt Finds a Home

Last weekend we continued our quest for a Christmas tree, traveling to the nearest larger town (meaning one with a Walmart, large supermarket and a Lowes).  Still not a Christmas tree lot anywhere along the way.  But we were finally successful when we arrived at Lowes, finding a little tree a bit more than 5 feet tall, but quite narrow. Obviously a very young tree. On the plus side, it was fresh and green and a Fraser fir which is our first choice when scouting out a tree.  After loading it in the back of the truck we set off on our other big store errands and a quick bit of lunch.  With nearly an hour to kill before picking up our (more) elderly friend from his dialysis treatment and taking him home, we found a little antique mall in the middle of town.  I think I've mentioned recently that I've never made a quilted tree skirt after all these years of quilting.  We've lately just been using some unhemmed Christmas fabric yardage to wrap around the tree.  Yeah, I know, pretty lazy. 

Anyhow, I began looking at some vintage tablecloths that were quite inexpensive, but didn't find anything that called out to come home with us.  Then hubby said, did you see the quilts?  I had, though not the one he pulled out from another booth.  Behold a sweet little red and white pristine charity quilt that obviously had been yard-saled without ever having been used.  The handwritten label with the name of the donor church quilting group was still attached to the back.

Well, obviously the only thing I could do was bring this sweet little orphan home with us and give it a new purpose in life!

It measures 36 inches square, perhaps it was meant for a small wheelchair quilt for a nursing home,or a baby quilt.  Very nicely made and quilted.

No "Christmas" fabrics in this little gem, but bright and cheerful and I think it looks happy to have a home and a new purpose in life!

Merry Christmas to all! 

All the little projects

Over the past few days several small gifty projects have been completed, and I think I'm about finished with my Christmas sewing.  That is unless I decide to start piecing the throw size Christmas quilt for us that is all cut out and just waiting for action!  We've never had a Christmas quilt, or a quilted tree skirt either for that matter. 

So, since I'm pretty sure that those designated to receive these little items don't read my blog anyway,  here are the latest quick and easy projects.  First, a set of winter napkins with some leather napkin rings I've had for several years, purchased at an after-Christmas clearance.  Happily there is enough fabric left to make some for our table, a win-win!

Next, a set of kids snack mats.

Another set of snack mats.  These were blocks from a year-long mystery quilt that I quit working on after 3 months.  Wasn't liking the sameness of the monthly block patterns.  They're a good size for individual snack mats though! 

A couple full-size placemats.  These are similar to some I made a couple years ago, and there is still enough of this fabric to make a couple more for our table, another win-win, whenever I get around to it.

And I've made some progress on my One Monthly Goal of making some fabric ornaments to give to the younger grandkids.  A couple of my favorites:

I changed up my process for making these from the tutorial instructions, since the original ones were just flat two layers of fabric and seemed rather floppy.  After a bit of experimenting, I made 3-1/4 inch circles of poly batting and basted them in place behind the center of the pentagon while the edges were being stitched.  Then I used the beads to hold the batting circle in place after pressing down the triangles.  It adds a nice amount of dimension and the ornaments aren't floppy anymore. 

A strange phenomenon this year, there are hardly any Christmas tree lots in our area and the few we knew of had sold out of trees very early!  We drove through five or so surrounding towns with no luck earlier in the week.  Today we went to a larger town about an hour from here (the nearest Walmart and major supermarket, as well as Lowes) and finally found a small 5 foot tree at Lowes of all places!  There will be more than enough lights and ornaments this year, and hopefully by tomorrow evening it will finally begin to look like Christmas around the house!  Ice storm predicted for tomorrow morning, but our November snow is just about all melted and the gravel back roads in the nearby mountains have turned to mud. 

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

An old doll quilt

My daughter was recently sorting through some of her old American Girl doll's accessories that she plans to gift to her niece for Christmas.  She still has her original Kirsten doll that she received for Christmas when she was 6 or 7 years old.  Her grandfather crafted a bed similar to the one in the catalog we had, and I learned a bit of Rosemaling so I could paint and decorate the bed.  What I'd forgotten was that I had also painted a large hinged wooden box with a similar design for all the doll clothes I made for her Kirsten doll.  She found it among all the other treasures and sent along this photo.

I still have pieces of that lace trim in my stash! But the photo I really loved is this next one, the quilt I made for that Kirsten doll 30-some years ago.

Enlarging the photo I realized it had been made from scraps from the first quilt I ever made for my daughter for her 'big girl' bed when she was about three years old.  And there are still small scraps of some of those fabrics hanging around here today!  And bits and pieces appear in many later scrappy quilts.

Just a bit of Monday nostalgia that made my day!

December's OMG

Thanks to Patty at Elm Street Quilts for hosting the One Monthly Goal linkups.  I've just recently joined the crowd, and have found it very helpful toward completing 'something' each month, even if the goal is fairly small.  Of course in the back of my mind seven or eight other projects are also clamoring for attention!  And you already knew that, since if you're reading this little blog it's 99.99% certain that you are also a quilter.

Anyhow, this month I've got several Christmas-oriented projects in the works.  Some will be gifted soon, some probably won't be complete until next year.  I've been playing around with some new-to-me fabric ornaments, and my OMG for the month will be to complete enough to be able to attach one to each of the younger grandkids' gifts. 

Three additional totes have been completed, all variations on the first one, though these latter ones have the Pellon 809 fusible interfacing which gave them more body and overall a better finish, I think.

And I used up all of that rain-wear fabric I had found in the bin...win-win! This next one has already been gifted.

And the last one

Off to our weekly quilt ministry meeting in a bit.  Linking up with Elm Street Quilts December Goal Linkup.