Merry Christmas to Dear Daughter

Last year I made this Kaffe Fasset log cabin quilt at a quilt retreat. I gave the quilt top to Zoe for Christmas last year. According to her account, I whisked it away with the promise to finish it for her and she had not seen it since. Well, I did finish it and she was happy all over again to receive it.
I joined Audible last year and listened to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove while doing the machine quilting. The two are inextricably mixed in my mind now. For each block I started quilting in the center and spiraled outward through each log. It is a little higgelty piggelty but fun.

No work today, we are having a blizzard, which is why the windows are all white. The wind is howling and the snow is swirling about but the chickadees are flitting from lilac bushes to feeders. Yesterday we had 18 turkeys around the feeder. I hope they are safe in the pine trees today.

When I lived in Halifax I loved Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. One day to unwind after the whirl of Christmas seems such a civilized way to live. I'm glad to have an extra day today, cozy and snug at home.

Merry Christmas to DH (and Weasley)

I pulled this "Turning Twenty" (Tricia Cobbs designer) out of my trunk of unfinished work earlier in December. When I was in Tacoma Lakes Quilters we made these quilts. The blocks are made from twenty fat quarters. Each fat quarter is cut in the same way to give you three pieces for the block and one for the border. Simply, easy, and fast. It was fun to make but I never completed it until this year, which is five or six years later.
I used a wool batt and bought a batik 108" wide backing fabric. This was the first time I used quilt backing fabric and I loved not having to seam the back. There was enough backing fabric left over to make the binding. I did an allover meander on my domestic machine.

Weasely thinks I made this quilt just for him, but it is really for my dear husband to keep him warm on the sofa. "Lap" quilts just aren't big enough for a cold Maine winter!

Merry Christmas!

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas
if you stop opening presents and listen.

~Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

Merry Christmas to all!

Crazy Quilt

Isn't this gorgeous? Blue and white, buttons and lace, so many dainty stitches. This piece is so lovely. I found this image at Sharon B's Pin Tangle. Look at her sidebar under eye candy. This collection of crazy quilt blocks is called "I dropped the button box." I've never been a fan of crazy quilts, all those dark velvets and garish colors, but these are beautiful. Each block seems to have a theme and a color palette. Pin Tangle is an embroidery website that is full of information.

Christmas Tree Skirt

We had a workshop at Back Roads last month and I made this mini-tree skirt. The instructions were for 2 1/2 inch wide strips, but I cut mine 1 1/2 inches. It still made a bigger skirt than I had envisioned. Since mine is for a table, I didn't cut out the center. It is almost flat. I used a collection of fat quarters and a different fabric for the centers. I really like the plaids. I don't think I will ever make another one of these. I'm happy with this one, but making sure everything was precise was a lot of work! The bias binding around the star points was not too difficult, but I still don't know how to do that inner angle. I just jammed the fabric in there and sewed it down. There must be a better way, but I don't know what it is. LOL

Tree Skirt with Cat

Tonks thought I made this for her. The bird feeder is out this bay window and she loves to keep an eye on the world from here. I made this tree skirt thinking that it would look really nice on this bureau. Well, it's a little big, isn't it?

So, I put it on the table. This little tree is one Grammy gave to the kids when they were small. It's a bit of a Charlie Brown tree, but I really enjoy it.

Today I'm cleaning and decorating the house. I've been machine quilting two quilt tops for Christmas presents. Don't quilts look fabulous when they are quilted? These tops have been sitting around my sewing room for several years and now that I am getting them quilted I wonder why I didn't get them finished earlier. I'll post photos as soon as I can.