Ho! Ho! Ho!

P.S. I Quilt is holding an awesome giveaway where everyone gets to be creative for a chance to win gift certificates! Sounds just like the thing for those presents Santa forgot...at least presents of the fabric variety. Check out my entry below and a whole bunch more on Rachel's blog.



Twas the night before Christmas,and snow was adrift.
My family set off to scratch the last from my list.

They arrived at a quilt shop owned by a Grinch,
To whom sales meant more money, fewer pennies to pinch.

The bell on the door made a huge clatter.
The Quilt Shop Grinch sprang up to see who she had captured.

She watched my family fumble around,
But their faces fell when my gift wasn't found.

"Do you have a layer cake?" they asked, as a last resort.
"Oh, Moda?" the Quilt Shop Grinch said with a snort!
"We wouldn't carry anything of that sort!"

Sensing a sale was about to fall through,
The Quilt Shop Grinch lied, it's what all Grinches do.

"This here," she said, "Will be all that she needs.
These fat quarters will make plenty, just wait, you will see."

My family headed out with their package wrapped tight,
Wanting to see my face filled with delight.

"Enough for your quilt!" they sang in a song,
And as much as I hoped, I knew they were wrong.

It was all up to Santa to fulfill my wish,
He whipped up a layer cake, lickety-split.

He was about to put it in the back of the sleigh,
When the sound of a crash lured him away.

Elves came in, yelling, "Emergency!"
And Santa tossed my layer cake under the tree.

So as Mrs. Claus sits with sewing on her lap,
I stare at this small stack of quarters cut fat.

Visions of quilt patterns dance in my head,
But my fabric was gifted to Santa's wife instead...

Monday Moments: Tuesday Edition

We took the kids to have their Christmas celebration with their grandma this weekend. It's a long trip that we were only supposed to make for one overnight, but my husband surprised us all by getting an extra day off of work to spend at the cabin up north.

This led to a lot of extras that we either weren't planning on at all, or that we didn't think we'd have the time to do. One of them was a little side trip to Traverse City to see the Train Festival (a total trip down memory lane for me as it was housed in the old library that I haven't been in since I was a kid). It wasn't very big or impressive to the adults, but the kids enjoyed it enough for it to be worth the price of admission.



Then we took them to lunch at Don's Drive-In. We neglected to get any of their famous milkshakes though. We regretted that decision later when we told friends where we had been and got all kinds of, "You have to have their shakes!" comments. Oh well, I'm sure we'll have plenty more chances.

Three Little Bibs

The title of this post also happens to be the name of the pattern I used to make these. For a limited time last week Leigh Ann was giving this pattern away and I eagerly e-mailed her for my own copy. I knew they would make a great gift for my new niece.



She suggested backing these bibs in chenille, terry or minky. Digging through my stash I discovered I had WAY more minky than I ever remember purchasing. I might have to make up a ton more of these.



As it was, the bibs were so cute and easy I couldn't resist making a couple boy versions. These are for my mother who still hasn't purchased any bibs that don't say "Little Sweetie" and have giant pink cupcakes on them. She's on grandson number two and I am tired of seeing the pretty pink cupcakes in photos of my nephew and son.

Single

I showed you all a double oven mitt I made last week, but I thought that maybe a single mitt was still in order. I used a pattern from the 2010 Sewing Calendar (there is a 2011 calendar available too) with a bit of alteration to whip this one up.

I made it more complicated than it had to be, but unfortunately I realized how tedious quilting around the zebra stripes would be after I had already started doing it. Longest time spent making an oven mitt in history, folks.



I didn't have enough purple bias tape to seal off the ends, so I used some black and lined it with a purple cotton that was almost the same color to try to make them match. It didn't feel like enough though, and I had to extinguish the urge to bust out the seam ripper (and spend another $3 on this project) by wrapping them as quickly as possible in pretty Christmas paper.

Monday Moments

Christmas is almost here! And in the true spirit of things, my son could care less about the presents, what he is most excited about is seeing his sister again. The biggest Daddy's boy has taken to being disappointed when his daddy walks through the door because, "I thought you were sister."

Not that he wouldn't like, "A couple toys and some candy"...

Still one to go

This is the backing for one of my log cabin stars throw quilts. The star is almost exactly centered and the strips continue in one piece all the way to the binding. Normally when I show my husband something he takes a quick look and tells me it's nice. With this he actually did a double take and said to me, "That's a nice back. I think it's nicer than the front." Apparently I did all of the piecing for nothing. Ha!



I bound it in the same yellow print that I used in a couple of the corner blocks. I like it. The lighting in here was too bad to take a picture of the full thing today, but if you need a refresher on what the complete top looks like you can find it here.

I'll be spending the next few days working on turning the second top from that post into a full fledged quilt.

Cardstock boxes

I bought some jewelry for Christmas, just little necklaces for a couple people. I was planning on spending a few dollars on jewelry boxes to put them in, but then I saw a sidebar in Scrapbook Etc. magazine with templates to make cute little boxes out of scrapbook paper. Something I have a TON of since I used to have that hobby before I discovered sewing, when I had time for hobbies other than sewing. They're pretty cute, but very tiny. I wouldn't put much more than a necklace in them as is, but the site says they enlarge beautifully. Maybe I'll try that next year.

Double oven mitt

My sister asked me to make her oven mitts for Christmas awhile ago. I was going to just buy them because of my extensive sewing list, but then she told me why. She was finally ready to throw out the pair our grandmother had got her for Christmas in the last few years before she died. Store bought oven mitts just cannot replace something so near and dear to her, so I started keeping my eye out for any cute ideas.



When this tutorial from Smashed Peas and Carrots showed up in my daily Craft Gossip e-mail I bookmarked it and started plotting. Such a cool and unique oven mitt! I have seen these in silicone before, but never in fabrics. I absolutely love it!

I'm still going to make one single mitt, for those pans that you don't need two hands to take out of the oven. I'm not sure how that one is going to look yet, since I have pretty small scraps of the zebra and gingham prints left, and only about six inches of purple bias tape, but I would like to try to figure out a way for them to match without driving across town to Jo-Ann again.

Monday Moments

Searching through the Sunday paper sale ads, way back in the beginning of December my husband and I saw these gingerbread train kits and decided we had to have one. With two kids who love cookies, icing and are always begging to make something whenever I am, and one kid who especially loves trains, it was an easy choice.



You probably can't read the box in the background but it says, "Create a Treat". Don't let that box fool you. It is not a treat. So gross! I thought it was going to be amazing because my whole kitchen smelled like I had just baked gingerbread...but to get that smell out of a pre-packaged cookie they had to really overload it with cinnamon and cloves. My husband nearly gagged over his bit. I laughed at him and said, "You haven't even got to the aftertaste yet!"



The kids had fun though, putting their own spin on things, and filling the train up with extra candy cargo. Of course in this Sunday's paper there was an add for a five house mini gingerbread village at Target for $2 cheaper. I think that would have been the way to go, everyone getting their own house to decorate instead of trying to crowd four people around one little train. Maybe I'll still pick one up, even though we've already decorated gingerbread this holiday season.

Why?

I decided awhile ago to order a kit for a craft I have never tried before. A kit to make a Christmas gift for someone else. Why? I mean, I know why I did it, but I am always doing this sort of thing to myself. Now I have to finish this and two quilts and hopefully some baby bibs and maybe a pair of baby shoes, and maybe a pair of oven mitts, all before Christmas Eve, which is two weeks away.

I have been staring at this project so much that when I closed my eyes this morning, I saw my whole room in little stitches. I think I'm going to put it away for a little bit and hopefully finish up one of those quilts I mentioned. It won't be a long break, but it will be a much needed one.

I'm late

I said last week that I was hoping to have this bound by Wednesday and I briefly thought on Wednesday, "I should really start binding that blanket." Thursday I finally sat down and sewed the binding on. Then I threw the quilt into the wash to get out the washable marker I had used to draw the motifs on it...and the marker didn't wash out. I don't know if it's because I switched both stain remover and laundry detergent since the last quilt I made, but I was in panic mode. I threw it in the wash again, this time on a more aggressive cycle. It worked for getting the marker out, but it also ripped out some of my stitching.

I finally sat down today and repaired it by hand so that I had something to show here. It doesn't help that I got all of the stuff for a new project in the mail on Thursday and have been kind of obsessed with it. I think I'll post a little peek at that one tomorrow.



Until then, here is a closer photo of the quilting. The fabric and matching thread kind of washes out the design in the top picture. Don't get too close though! Or if you do, please remember that this was the first time I have ever quilted a curve in anything. Yikes!