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!