Merry Christmas

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas. I was very busy but will post some photos and what was happening later.

Texas here I come

Texas is almost mine! muwahhhh. My firned, Liz the Quiltin' Whiz just sent me this teaser photo of the Texas quilt I made for my DS. She got a chance to work on the quilting over the snowy day we had yesterday and last night and guess what?? She is finished!! I didn't brave the roads today but she is at work with my quilt!!!! I am so excited. I was hoping to have it done for him for Christmas. Isn't the quilting on it so neat? She did all those little circles around every longhorn (there are 20)to make it look like leather. Then she did barbed wire fence in the sashing between the blocks!!! Ohhh, I can hardly wait to see it in person. I will take more pictures once I receive it.

Snowy Day!

Wow, who would have thought that we would be totally snowed in today! I had my Christmas party for my work on Friday afternoon. We do a secret Santa exchange type of thing. I guessed the person that had me. His mom is a big quilter so some of my gifts were quilt related, which was very nice. We had the party at my boss's house and it was a lot of fun. I had to leave early to get home to go to DH's work Christmas party. He is a pilot and it was at the hanger with the other pilots and their wives. It was fun too. Then yesterday it was time for the church ladies Christmas party. I got over to the church about noon and set up. Several of the CL's were there to help me too. We had so much good food. I invited Liz the quiltin' whiz to attend and she was able to make it too. This is when all the snow began. Not too bad but they expected 10-12 inches. We did a small gift exchange too where everyone draws numbers and then the first person picks from all the gifts and the second person can take person #1's gift or one from the table and so on. It was really a lot of fun.

Oh...but the snow...just kept on coming. Woke up this am with a LOT of snow. I didn't have big plans for today and it is a good thing! DD2 helped me decorate the tree and then put all the boxes away. We baked some cookies together today too. She threw in some laundry while DH took the snowblower to the driveway and sidewalks. DD helped me with all the Christmas cards, stuffing in the Christmas letter and putting on all the return address labels. I just have a few more to look up addresses from my email and then I need to go and buy stamps. I am grateful for the help! She wants to start wrapping, but I think I need to be done for today.

Speaking of Christmas letters...what are your opinions on them? I love receiving them as otherwise most cards would just have signatures on them. So...love em' or hate em'? I will try to take some pictures of the snow tomorrow and maybe even the tree and all the Christmas decorations. Sleep tight!

Quilts

I am still alive and well, just super duper busy! (Who isn't, right??) Well I was *trying*, (trying being the operative word here) to sew some binding on my flannel brick road Christmas quilt. When what to my wondering eyes did appear? Miss Autumn, see her tail?

AAAHHHH, now you can see her. She would not leave this quilt alone. I did finally get the binding sewn on but not turned yet.


These are 2 of the quilts I donated to the U of M quilt raffle. I designed the embroidered animals one. I first did the squares in all different colors and I HATED it...a lot! So I tried adding the white and making the squares the same color but with different fabric. I liked this much better. I did not repeat any fabirc in the colored squares. When I was a little girl, (a LONG time ago) I used to sleep under a quilt that my grandmother made. It was a crazy quilt made using feedsack fabrics (I am still trying to find this old quilt!) I vividly remember falling asleep while trying to choose my favorite fabric or seeing if I could find any that matched. I really wanted to re-create that for whoever ended up with my quilt. We raised $10,700 total for the charity!! WOO-HOO!!!


On to the most recently finished quilt. I made this baby quilt for a baby shower for a friend of mine, who's son and his GF are expecting. When the future DIL opened it my friend was announcing all the gifts and who they were from etc. She took one look and said over the microphone, "Oh no you didn't" But of course I did!! So I just nodded my head and she burst into tears as the DIL opened it up. Everyone in the room gasped and started clapping and wanted to know who made it. It was very embarassing!! I did not want to be the center of attention! My friend told everyone that the very first quilt I made had gone to her daughter 6 almost 7 now years ago. I had completely forgotten that. The panel is from Thimbleberries and was, of course, quilted by Liz the Whiz! Aren't the bees so cute?



I did not know the baby's name (which I now know is James) so I made this label. I used flannel on the back. I used the stamp my GF Yuki carved for me to jazz it up a bit too. The whole quilt was made from stash so that made me happy too.



I just sent another quilt off to Liz that is for a baby due in feb. The new dog is learning, although a little slowly for me, not to chase the cats. She and Jack are ok the others still HATE her. She is a sweetie but still a dog. Hopefully I will have some more photos to post later.