Catastrophe!

Argh!  Throw myself on the floor, kick and scream, moan and groan!  At least that’s what I feel like doing.  Mostly I just feel blue.  My BFF is broken.  It’s basically the end of the world.

I was stitching along last night on this little project…

 

Almost had the top finished.  It was quite late and I was tired, but thoroughly enjoying myself and having so much fun when all of a sudden the thingy that holds the needle came down on my knuckle.  There was pain and some bleeding but nothing compared to what it did to my machine…it won’t sew!!  It moves up and down but won’t make stitches.  Cry, weep, sob.

It is going to the sewing machine hospital and I will miss it.  I hope it comes home very soon because...

…I have till Saturday at 1:00 to have this finished, borders, quilting, binding and all in time for my daughter’s baby shower. 

Marvelous Mail

This little one (complete with her sock on her head) and I had great fun opening packages today after our mailman came by.   It was almost like Christmas all over again. 

 

First was a pretty package filled with sweet fabric and a darling quilt pattern.  It was sent to me from Kris for the One Project a Month challenge.   My name was drawn from the list of those who hung in there all year long.  It was such a good program that I have signed up again for another year.  Thank you so much Kris! You are very thoughtful.

Inside another package was a book.  My name was drawn for a gift certificate to Cottage Quilts from the One Year of Schnibbles group.  I have been admiring this book by Kim Brackett for awhile and knew that was what I was spending my certificate on.  Watch out, my huge bundle of scraps, I have big plans for you now!

And last, but not least, ….My favorite TV series of all time…..Columbo! Every year for Christmas my dear Mr. Sunshine gives me the latest Columbo series that’s been put out on DVD.  This year we both kind of forgot about it until afterwards.  But he sent for it anyway because it arrived in today’s mail.  Just a couple more years and I will have collected all of them.  I never get tired of watching this guy solve the mystery!  I’m really looking forward to this evening when I settle down in front of the TV with my hand stitching and Columbo!

Relax and Enjoy

  

Now that Christmas sewing is over, it’s great to be back at work on my Dear Jane blocks.  They are such sweet little things.  I started to plan my progress for finishing them all but quickly put a stop to that kind of thinking.  Instead, I am going to just relax and enjoy my time with each block, love the process and not worry about anything else.  So far they are fun and I want to keep it that way.

Oh My Word!

Much of the blog talk these days is about New Year’s resolutions.  I gave that up a long time ago…instead I have a Word of the Year that I keep in the back of my mind and use to inspire myself.  I started in ‘07 with “seed” which worked out pretty well.  So then came “laugh” (appropriate, as it turned out, for a year with cancer) and last year was “heart”.  These words have had deep meaning to me.  Now my word is “reaching”. I found it in the Bible and when I read it, it just seem to apply.  It goes with so many things coming up in my life.

And speaking of reaching, last year I participated in Kris and May Britt’s One Project a Month Challenge.  It was great!!  I finished 27 sewing projects and 15 of those were quilts!  The OPAM Challenge surely helped me with that and kept motivating me along.  So a big THANK YOU is in order to Kris and May Britt for their awesome idea and so much hard work.

Kris and Peg are hosting it this year and I hurried to sign up again.  That means I better get busy so I’ll have a finish for this month.

Here’s to another great year!

It was Wonderful!

Christmas is over and it was wonderful!  Family, friends, smiles and laughter, gifts and giving and delicious food.  Lots of work and lots of joy. 

Tons of thanks to Teresa for the Advent Swap.  So many pretty fabrics and fun surprises.  And the best of all on Christmas morning….a beautiful sewing case to keep threads, scissors and needles.  It is just amazing to look at.

 

I finished my Schnibbles for December and they became gifts…

And now the cleaning up and putting away.  It puts me in the mood to straighten and organize.  I’ve been busy rearranging my sewing space.  It will be nice to have things ready for a Happy New Year of projects!

Last Minute Things

I’m still opening my gift a day from Teresa.  I keep the tags and line them up on the bookcase shelf.  The days are going by so fast…

…maybe too fast.  Yesterday, Mr. Sunshine and I worked on making a last minute gift and now its ready.  Then I got busy on my Gail Pan’s “A Christmas Wish” little quilt and finished it just in the nick of time to put up for this season.  I didn’t want to wait clear till next year to use it, so I buckled down and sewed till the wee hours.  It is pinned over an existing wall hanging for now.

We’re almost ready.

One Thing I Can Share

All this year I have been playing along with May Britt and Kris’s “One Finish A Month” project.  I have quite a few finishes for this month but I can’t post them because they are Christmas surprises.  However, I can show you this one. 

I got this idea from Penny.  It rang a bell when I came across it because I have an overflowing amount of scraps.  So I quickly sat down, cut a bunch of them into strips and sewed them back together into this quilt.  I just finished binding it last night. 

None of the fabrics I used were necessarily bright or bold, but when I put them all together, surrounded them with white and gave them a busy border, I ended up with one cheerful, colorful quilt!  I like it and so does our friend Willow.

Besides Christmas sewing I am also enjoying the Christmas Advent Swap.  First thing after I jump out of bed every morning I open another gift from Teresa.  What a great way to start a day.  Do you notice all the pretty yellow?  Teresa knows what I like and has made it so fun!

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A Gift for You and One for Me

It’s December!  I love the holidays.  Mostly for the spirit they bring of giving and good will.  And who has bigger hearts for giving than quilters and stitchers.  So I wanted to give something back to you.

I designed this little snowman and put him on a pillow.  Just click on the sketch below and you can have a copy to stitch up for any project you choose.

Enjoy!

 

And the gift for me is from Teresa for our Advent Swap…a gift a day till Christmas.

I opened the package to find this cute cuddly kangaroo guarding all the packages in her Christmas bag. 

She let me open the first package…

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…and inside was a Leslie Beck panel for a stocking and Christmas tree skirt.  I’m going to be having some fun.

Thanks bunches Teresa. I’m excited for tomorrow!

I Spy lots of fun!

I joined Karen’s I Spy Swap and sent in 40 five inch fabric squares from each of three fabrics.  Today I received 120 sweet little squares in my mailbox, all different.   Someday they are going to become an I Spy Quilt for grandkids. 

(By the way, did I ever tell you I have another grandchild on the way soon?)

Karen is so generous.  Besides all her hard work to organize this swap and sort all those blocks, she also sent a pretty little gift.  It’s one of her nifty Tool Time Tuesday sewing helpers…a little pincushion, scissor holder on one end of a ribbon and an ingenious spool holder on the other.  It will be very handy.

Thank you so much Karen.  This has been great fun!!

A Little Holiday Sweetness

Guess what I’ve been up to…

 

   

I’ve been busy sewing Happy Zombie’s adorable Itty Bitty Poochie Bags.  They are so tiny and sweet.  And fun to do! 

They’re making me feel like Christmas is just around the corner.

Comfy Cozy House

I fell head over heels for this pretty little house quilt pattern when I first saw it a few years ago in Homespun magazine.  It’s called “Home Among the Vines” and is by Blackbird Designs. 

So when I recently decided we needed something new for a bedroom wall, this came back to mind as the perfect thing to make!  It was a relaxing project, probably because of the simplicity of the pattern and the soft colors I chose.  I think they are very calming.

I put in the last stitch this evening and have it up already.  It makes the room feel comfy cozy. 

Fixed and Finished

 

Everyone pretty quickly found my “oops”.  Thank you for your morale booster comments….very much appreciated and motivating. 

I came back to it all refreshed the next morning, put my dandy little seam ripper to work and had it fixed in no time.  It wasn’t so bad after all.  It’s amazing what a good nights sleep will do.  And now I can even laugh about it.

It looks nice hanging in our family room.

For me, planning the color arrangement for this quilt was sort of like doing a Sudoku puzzle….trying to have only one of each color basket per row or column.  Also the inside box and outside corners.  I thought long and hard but just couldn’t make it work with the diagonals.