Well THAT Resolution didn't last long...

So, after last year's buying spree, I really was going on 'no-buy' in 2011.  Or at least no buy unless it was required to finish a quilt or for a backing.  And, another resolution was not getting involved in new things - i.e., BoMs, quilt-alongs, etc., until I got some stuff D.O.N.E.!!!

Yeah, well neither lasted too long...as soon as I saw Little Miss Shabby's Birdie Stitches BoM, I was hooked.  Those little birdies did me in. 

And, of course, I had to do it in the new Sunkissed line by Moda, just like Little Miss Shabby, hence my first purchase of 2011:

But, isn't it scrumptious??  It Spring-y and fun and I need that right about now in the Great Northern Tundra (I mean, Philadelphia).

Then, Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs decided she didn't want to cut fabric anymore and blogged that she was selling all her yardage for half price.  HALF PRICE you say???  For Lilly & Will, my favoriate baby fabric of all time???  Well, of course I have to help take some off your hands Anne...

And, know what you get besides your fabric wrapped up in a pretty little package with a little pink bow?  You get get this cute little package of taffy...Awesome.

I've already got all the blocks prepped for the Birdie Stitches and I'm finished stitching the first month's block, so it will not languish in UFO land!  And, I know exactly what I'm going to do with that pink Lily & Will.  I found a great, simple nine-patch with lattice pattern on the internet and it will show off these fabric really nicely.  I'll have a few baby quilts all ready to go when needed!

My New Jersey Quilt Shop Hop with my Mom got postponed last Friday.  With the blizzard of last week keeping me home from work for two days, I figured I'd better go to work instead of gallivanting around.  So, we're shooting for this Friday.  We should be okay since we've already had our storm for this week (ice this time instead snow - loads of fun!) out of the way and should be clear on Friday.  I'm also supposed to go to my quilting buddy from work's house on Saturday to help her with her new longarm, but we're supposed to get another round of snow then too, so we may have to postpone that.  I've seriously had enough of this weather!

A Snow Day, a Finish and I Found the HAT!!!

I waffled back and forth for about an hour this morning deciding whether to make the 45 minute commute to work.  SO glad I decided to be smart and just stay home!  The snow's worse now than it was at 6:30 this morning - and this is the "pre storm" apparently!  Yikes!  And, I just saw on Facebook my daughter-in-law crashed her jeep on the way to work this morning.  Thank God she's alright - the jeep, not so much (luckily she's married to the best mechanic in town o:) ).  Thank goodness for Facebook also - it's the only way I know what's going on with my kids sometimes - LOL!

I actually have a finish for 2011 already!  My son & DIL's friends are having a little one and the shower's this weekend - and this one I am prepared for!  Here's the Baby Dino quilt - it's simple but I think it turned out cute...I quilted with freehand loopies so it was quick and easy...

To jazz up the pinwheels a bit (and just maybe to cover up my non-matching points - LOL), I appliqued double circles in all the blocks, alternating between the plain green and fussy cut dinos in the middle.  It just adds a little something ...

I've also gotten all the blocks appliqued for the Nighty-Nite Will quilt.  These blocks are so stinkin' cute I can hardly stand it.  This quilt has been nothing but fun.  Glad I have enough of this fabric to make another one!  I think Baby Shane, who is now one month old, won't have minded the wait when he sees the quilt (I think his Mommy will think the same thing).  I plan to quilt diamonds in the borders, outline the appliques and do some loops in the backgrounds of the blocks.  I may be able to finish up the top today and get it on the frame with this surprise snow day!

My favorite fusible for applique is Lite Steam-A-Seam 2, generally purchased with my 50% off coupon at Jo-Anns.  I was out of yardage of it when I started this quilt so made a run to Jo-Anns to get some more.  And am told "Sorry, we don't have any - that goes really fast when we get it in".  Great.  I'm already behind on this quilt!  So, I bought the package of 8-1/2 by 12" sheets, but some of these applique pieces were really big, so yardage would have worked better.  I got by, but ultimately bit the bullet and ordered a whole box of it on-line.  25 yards.  Luckily, I got free shipping and it was on sale, but I think I'm set for awhile...

And, GREAT NEWS!  I found the hat (see this post)!  I couldn't believe it.  I tore my sewing room apart looking for this hat before Christmas.  I thought for sure our Lilly made off with it and it got hidden somewhere (although she usually doesn't chew on things that aren't hers).  Anyway, I moved my cutting table (which I did multiple times while on the hunt for the hat before Christmas) last week and, lo and behold, there it was sitting on a file folder on the bottom of the shelves behind the cutting table.  I swear I looked there five times before.  Anyway, I can now give my Mom the remaining doll to complete her set of my grandmother's crocheted Christmas Carolers on Friday.

I am taking her on a Quilt Shop Hop for her birthday (no, she doesn't quilt, but she loves me and is quite happy to accompany me to the three great shops near her house - then I'll take her to lunch - LOL o:) )  We're hitting The Little Shop, the Village Quilter, and Olde City Quilts - all in New Jersey.  Fun, fun fun!  I'll be sure to report on our trip!

For now, Lilly and I are going to go quilt!

The Long Cold Road to Florida

Yes, we made it back from Florida and, no, I didn't fall off the face of the earth.  2011 seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks!  I'm just now feeling like I'm caught up at work and at home and realized I haven't blogged since before Christmas!  Yikes, time flies sometimes! 

When I last left you we were super-excited about our after-Christmas trip to Disney World.  We were supposed to leave on Monday, 12/27, on an early flight.  When we have early flights, we usually leave the day before and stay at an airport hotel.  Well, on that day, 12/26, this is what it looked like as we made our way to the Philadelphia airport....

So, while we're very carefully trying to drive in the snow making the 1-hour trek to our hotel, I get a text that our morning flight is cancelled!  So after a 1/2 hour wait on hold with the airline, I'm told they'd be happy to rebook our flight - for THURSDAY ?!?#$!!  So, what do we do?  Do we cancel?  Do we try to go to the airport anyway and standby?  Do we just drive to Florida?  We certainly weren't going to turn around on the treacherous roads and try to make it home as we were almost at the airport hotel, so we figured we'd just keep going and see what happened.   The view we woke up to...

Well, this certainly isn't Florida....

And, hey, neither is this!....

Yes, folks, we went to Florida by way of Baltimore, then North Carolina until finally - a day and a half late - we saw this....

Finally, Mickey and Minnie!  Luckily, we were able to get what I swear were the last two seats out of Baltimore to Orlando - on Tuesday at noon with a three hour layover in Charlotte (they have a great Sushi bar in the middle of the Charlotte airport by the way).  I was in EPCOT in Mexico at the Tequila Bar by 7:30pm that night!  Luckily, we also were able to extend our trip by one day to come on Jan 2 instead of New Year's Day and fly back into Baltimore instead of Philly.  Whew!  We wound up having a great time, and spending New Year's Eve in Disney World was a blast.  But, since we were told at 9:30am on NYE that the Magic Kingdom was C.L.O.S.E.D. already due to crowds, I'd definitely think twice about doing Disney World between Christmas and New Year's again!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone!  I can't believe it's Christmas Eve already.  I'm as ready as I'm going to be.  Most of the food is pre-cooked for tomorrow, we had some of the family over for Christmas Eve Chinese earlier tonight, we drove around the neighborhood looking at the lights and luminarias, and the present are wrapped, well mostly...

My grandmother was a crocheter.  She made us all afghans, baby outfits, hats, gloves, etc. etc.  She also made ornamental items (we all got bathroom skunks  - to hold toilet paper - really, I'm not kidding-LOL!).  One year she made a couple of sets of carolers.  One set she didn't quite finish.  The "faces" weren't done.  My gram passed away in 2006 and my mom has been asking for a set ever since. It required me actually finishing them.  I was determined she was going to get them this year.  I pulled them out of the attic, did my best at making "faces" (I quilt, I don't crochet  and I was kind of stumped as to how to do it).  Monday night I stitched little mouths and had them all set out and put their hats on.  All 4 figures.  They were sitting on my cutting table, all ready for their "eyes".  I went to the craft shop on Tuesday and got "eyes".  Got my glue gun out and began finishing them up.  I got to the last one and couldn't find the hat.  It was there Monday night, I swear!!  I've been looking for that hat all week.  It's now 10:15 on Christmas Eve.  I give up.  So, mom's getting the set like this...

This poor little girl is still hatlesss....

If the hat mysteriously turns up, mom will get her next year.  It's still baffling me and irritating me that I can't find it!  Gram, however, will be pleased that I finished them off.  I miss her more every year.  o)

My machine has certainly been neglected these past couple of weeks, so I thought I'd make her feel better by dressing her up...

It's going to be another week before I can spend quality time with her...we're leaving for Disney World day after Christmas.  I'm looking forward to seeing Santa Mickey and all the holiday decorations.  I'm not sure it's too much warmer in Florida than it is here though - LOLOL!

Merry, Merry Christmas to you all!!

I'm off now to finish my eggnog and dream of sugar plums and Santa!

Philly Modern Quilt Guild Challenge

We had our challenge reveals at the Philly Modern Quilt Guild Meeting last Tuesday.  What fun.  We were given 4 fat quarters of Kona Solids (ruby, chocolate, snow and holly) and allowed to add 1 yard of fabric (the same or different adding up to 1 yard).

It is amazing what people come up with - so creative.  Some were "modern" some more traditional - all were fabulous!  I, not being terribly creative, went with the Christmas theme.  As soon as we got the fabrics, I pretty much knew what I was going to do and I was happy with the result....a really large table runner.  What am I going to do with it?  No idea.

I chose 1 yard of a paisley Christmas fabric from my stash that incorporated all the other colors.  I pieced together the red, brown and green "zig zags" first and my thought was to do all four fabrics that way - including the white.  Then I thought, I'd never put white in this quilt.  That was the challenge for me!  So, not wanting to take the easy way out and just do a white zig zag to get it done, I gave it some thought and decided to use it in the border.  Then, I thought I'd quilt the heck out of the white to give it some texture.  I really like the way it came out.  My first thought was pebbling.  I don't have microhandles on my HQ16 and I got about 1/4 of the way done on one triangle and my hands were a-hurtin'!  I quickly changed to very close loops and swirls and that was a bit better, but I was glad when it was done.  I then just did some straight lines in the solid zig zags. 

You can see the fabric I chose better in this photo.  You'll see it has gold in it.  So, when I got to the binding I was stumped again.  I didn't just want to use one of the solids (besides, I didn't have enough).  Black didn't work either, so I rummaged and pulled out a great gold I had in my stash and it worked great!

The second half of our meeting was an applique workshop with the wonderful Liz Hawkins of the Lizzie B Creative girls.  I was so looking forward to the workshop and got about 1/2 hour in and the headache that had been plaguing me all day reared itself again and I started feeling pretty bad so had to leave.  Up til then I was having a ball!  I'm looking forward to next month's meeting.  Our challenge is to come up with a challenge!  At first I thought, I could never think of something.  But something came to me a couple of days later.  I'll reveal that next month!

So, this weekend we had another Santa's bakeshop in my house.  Yesterday, I made more shortbread (I'm a little sick of shortbread about now), pizzelles, toffee, and got a start on the Hot Tarragon Mustard (from Robin Sue's Big Red Kitchen blog - she's doing an Advent recipe-a-day which has been fabulous - so many great holiday food items) that I'll finish up today.  That's a new one on my Christmas food-gift list. 

Oh another easy recipe for a fun food gift item is the recipe for Caramel Corn with Salted Peanuts I found last year on Molly Wizenberg's Orangette blog (well, easy if you can pop popcorn in the microwave properly - it's a long story, and many bags of popcorn were harmed in the making of the Caramel Corn this year.  But, I wanted to bring it to the guild meeting last week so I perservered).  This stuff is divine, I'm telling ya!

I can't believe this time next week "it will all be over" as we say in our house!

Challenge - Completed!

There was absolutely no sewing going on in my house this weekend.  A VERY rare occurrence in this household (and my fingers are itchy!!).  Instead this was going on all day yesterday...

It was Santa's bakeshop yesterday - all day long.  I made 16 pans of shortbread, and a batch each of peanut butter cookies,  Toll House Cookies, and Russian Tea Cakes.  I was exhausted by the end of it!  I'm not used to standing for 8 hours at a clip!! Today, we went to see the new Harry Potter and I made my Easy Refrigerator Pickles.  People L.O.V.E. these things.  They are a bit sweet and a bit spicy and super easy to make.  Hint though if you make them - I make a double batch and then make 4x the amount of liquid.

Luckily, by Thursday, I had already completed Sandy's (Quilting for the Rest of Us Podcast) Holiday Challenge to complete 3 gifts by the 15th of December!  Here we go...

Chris's quilt...

I used a feather pantograph and quilted in light lavender which worked really well...

Sandy's quilt...

I quilted in white and used a daisy pantograph....

Cathy's quilt...

This is quilted with the Happy Times pantograph in goldish thread...

It's nice to know I won't have to be sewing late on Christmas eve - unless I want to!  Now, I have to go wrap more presents!

Christmas Decorating

I wanted to hang this on the door in my kitchen this holiday season....

Unfortunately, it still looks like this...

So instead I hung the usual....

I was on a roll making these cute little advent wall hangings a number of years ago.  I don't remember how many I made and gave as gifts.  It was fun buying little tiny ornaments to put in each of the pockets around the border...

I just have to remember to hang an ornament each day ...

Now that it's back up again, I realize how much I like it.  I think when the other wallhanging is done (next Christmas at this point), I'll hang it on the living room closet door.  This one's kind of sentimental.  o:)