2018 Finishes - Sugar Pines - #51

This finish is another quilt from the Thimbleberries program called "You're Invited".  It was a kit for the month of July back in 2007.   I believe it is a table topper, but if I had given it more thought, I think it would have been a great Christmas tree skirt.

The piece measures 46" X 46", with four focus blocks that have an embroidered leafless tree in each block.  

I opted to do the embroidery on my domestic machine. using a simple zig-zag stitch.  Once it was quilted, it looked just as nice as if I had done it by hand.

This kit was done in darker Christmas colors and a border with a Christmas flower.

I the binding is done in red and the backing has all the colors of the front of the kit.

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Size: 46" x 46"

Fabric Lines Used:  Thimbleberries 

Colors: Gold, Green, Red

Pattern:  Sugar Pines (Thimbleberries "You're Invited" 07/07)

Designer:  Lynette Jensen

Long Arm Quilter:  Carol Nelson

Year Began: 2007

Year Completed: 2018

Post Christmas Pictures

Please note there are a lot of pictures.  I can finally post the pictures of all that I made for people this year.  If you remember, I did lots of pillow cases to use as wrapping paper.  The pillow cases matched the blankets I made.

These are for the three children that are a part of our family:

Here are the matching blankets

The pink and blue blankets were made with "Frozen" flannel and backed with matching fleece.  The black blanket is fleece on both sides, and it's matching pillowcase is an Army print, because his dad is in the Army, and it had the colors of the black fleece print.  I heard back that the kiddos went home and put them on their beds and asked to use them to have a "camp out" in the living room.  

The quilts that I gave my sons were received with awe and wonder too!  They both said they love each quilt that was specific to what they enjoy, and that it meant a lot to have something that will last and can remember for years and years.  They have all put them on their beds and are just delighted!

So nice to hear they not only liked them, but are wanting to use them all the time.  I couldn't have been more happy this year!

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MERRY CHRISTMAS from OREGON

Christmas is a great time of the year for Christians.  We get to celebrate the real meaning of the birth of our Lord and Savior.  It is a time for reflection of our lives as Christians and the hope we can find in Christ.  This is a short message wishing everyone who reads my blog to have a wonder Christmas celebrating Christ's Birth.

This is the view from my sewing room today on Christmas Eve.  It is raining steadily and about 50 degrees.  No hope of it being a white Christmas this year.  Although if we did have a white Christmas it would be atypical.  

This is our little tree, with the angel on top and the nativity scene at it's base.  I have had the angel and nativity scene for over 25 years.  I like that kind of tradition.   Oregon is one of the biggest states to grow and distribute Christmas trees.  We have several tree farms surrounding us locally, but the cost is still high and more than I want to pay for a tree, so we have opted for the artificial route.  

This is a fun little Christmas graphic for those of us who sew and quilt as much as I do.  Enjoy.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Christmas Completed Projects

Bonnie Hunter is having a link up party of people showing off their project(s) they have done for Christmas.

Here are my Christmas Projects of past and current:

This is a Thimbleberries project for one of the clubs I participated in a quite few years ago.  I just love the rework of Santa on the rooftop dropping toys down the chimney.  I also like the colors used in the borders.  I have this hanging on my door that goes into my sewing room.

During 2014, I worked on many of the UFO's I have, and this one is from a Thimbleberries Club from 2003.  You can read about the whole club and process of making this here.  I have this hanging in my hallway for this Christmas Season, even though I took the picture of it hanging on the door to my sewing room.

Again, here is another Thimbleberries project for one of those past clubs I participated in that you can read all about it here.  This is hanging in my office corner that I have set up in my living room.  While doing computer work and paperwork, I reach up and run my hand over the quilt top.  I am so calmed when I do that to quilts.  Call me weird, it just works that way for me.

So there you have it, my three small projects that I have done in "Christmas" themed patterns that sprinkle some added decorations around my house.

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Done, Done, and Done

I have officially completed all the projects I set out to do for Christmas this year!  I can say I achieved this by having a good idea of what I wanted to get accomplished early on (around the beginning of October), actually starting fairly early (around mid-November),  and setting out a schedule of what I wanted to get done when.

I made 5 quilts, 7 pillowcases (for wrapping paper), several microwave bowls, and lots of candy.  Yesterday, I put the final touches on the last quilt, i.e. stitching on the binding.

I am a big fan of striped binding.  I didn't quite have enough fabric to do this stripe on the bias, but once this was stitched down, I am really pleased on how it turned out.

Now back to my regularly scheduled sewing.  Mostly UFO's and older projects.

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A Few Activities This Week

I have worked on some other actives this week besides the Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt.

I have an older dog who is having a harder time eating dry dog food.  I don't want to start feeding her the boughten canned food, as it can get expensive.  So once a month, I make her my own recipe for soft dog food.  Basically, it contains, about a pound of meat (I used some older frozen meat that had started to get a little freezer burned.  This time I had a small baggie of leftover turkey, left over ham, and a couple of salmon patties), six cans of vegetables (I used some of my canned carrots from prior years) and enough cooked rice to hold the mixture.  Rice is very gentle on her stomach as well.  I scoop out about 3/4 cup size onto cookie sheets, freeze them, and then take out one a day for her evening meal.  Total cost is about $4.00 and about 2 hours of time.

A few posts back, I posted about a quilt I did for one of my sons that will be part of his Christmas present.  His twin brother is also getting a quilt for Christmas quilt that I posted about awhile back when I first started working on it.  I managed to get it quilted this week.  

I quilted it using what I call the straight line method by quilting lengthwise down the long prints and then quilting crosswise on the various different prints.  

This is a peek at the backing of this quilt.  I had do some piecing of the backing fabric, as I did not originally purchase enough to do a backing for this sized quilt.  I rather like the look of the stripe down the middle of this one.

This is just a close up of the fabric used on the backing.  Perfect for this son who is a avid fisherman. 

I also did work on the next part / clue #3 for the Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt, but I will save that for my post tomorrow, so I can link up on Bonnie Hunters blog.

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Making Christmas Progress

I am making a little progress every day.  I am so excited because I will have it all done by the fist or second week of December.  No stress of working right up to Christmas Day.

I finished the Dallas Cowboys quilt for one of my sons:

This is a close up of the quilt with the backing and the binding all done.

Here it is folded and ready to go into the matching pillow case to be used as the wrapping paper.

I used the same "piano blocks" for the top part of the pillow case, and one of the lighter colors for the middle band.

I know it is hard to see the quilting on the back of this quilt, but if you enlarge it you can see I traced the stars on the front middle panel.    I came out really nice and I think he will really enjoy it.  The size came out to be approximately 50" X 68".  A good size for a throw quilt.

Next up is a octagon tabletopper that I made for a neighbor of mine who has a couple of cats that she adores.  The center has all kinds of cats getting into Christmas mischief.  

This picture shows the backing I used, and I also used it for the binding, as I always like to do a diagonal type binding if I can.  I quilted it doing a straight line method of outlining the octagon shape spacing the lines about 3/4" apart going around continually.

I took some time out of sewing to get some canning done.  This last summer, my chickens were giving me about 9-10 eggs a day.  Way more than we can consume.  So I stacked up about 14 dozen in our spare refrigerator, to can at a later date.  Fresh eggs need to rest for quite a while, about 6 - 8 weeks, in order for them to peel without half of the white parts staying attached to the shell.  When canning eggs, they need to be perfect without any craters or cracks in the white part.  We canned them in a red chile flake and peppercorn brine this year, giving them the red color.  The men in my life eat them like candy.  Me, no, not so much.  

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Next Christmas Project

Yesterday, I spent most of the day working on this quilt for my other son for his Christmas present.  He is an insane avid fisherman.  He spends every spare minute either fishing, planning a fishing trip, or doing prep work for fishing (like tying flies).  He is such a die hard, that when he works on finding that "special hole", sometimes hiking in 5 miles just to do a little fishing.

I picked up this pattern and the fabric about 5 years ago, with the intent of making the quilt for him at some later date.  Well, this is the year that I have enough free time to do the quilts for both boys (30 year old twins).

This pattern is true to it's name, it takes 5 minutes to shop and 10 minutes to cut it out.  Layering the eleven fat quarters and cutting them from the diagram included in the pattern, really lets you get it cut out in 10 minutes.  Credit:  5 & Dime, by All Washed Up.  It looks as though her blog has been idle since 2011, but you can find this pattern all over the internet by just googling All Washed Up.

This is the focal point fabric, a Robert Kaufman "Wilderness Ridge".  It is a screen print, rather than a woven design or pattern. This is a close up of this fabric, which includes fishing poles, flies, lures, bobbers, etc:

Here is the completed top.  the smaller blocks cut from the eleven fat quarters includes prints with fish, river bed rocks, grass, woods, sunrise/sunset, sand, and other fishing gear. 

I chose this simple pattern, because he also, like his brother, like things simple.  So I will be doing some simple quilting on his as well.  Probably some straight line quilting from top to bottom about 4" apart.

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A Little More Christmas

I have three sons, and I have made a quilt for the oldest, when he joined the Army.  He has taken it wherever he has been stationed, even overseas on his deployments.  I have been meaning to get the quilts done for the other two boys (twins), but just keep getting side tracked.  I think it is because I feel I needed to have both done at the same time (it's a twin thing)  and the task was to daunting to get done, say for their birthday or Christmas.

I finally decided to tackle this goal of getting their quilts done for Christmas.  I can also share the progress of these quilts, as neither one of them ever read my blog.

So, this is the first one that I worked on the night before last and yesterday.  This is a wonderful pattern for a panel or focal print, as the center theme is surrounded by piano block strips and borders. That being said, it works up really fast, and looks great.

This son is an avid Dallas Cowboys fan, so I picked up the focal print a couple of years ago, and it happened to be a 60" wide cotton/poly mix and in a print I have not seen since.

The piano border blocks were a selection of nine prints and tone on tones.  Seven of the prints are batiks, and the other two are the tone on tone called "Rock Candy" by Blank.  The two light colored borders are also the "Rock Candy".  I picked the prints for this border, trying to pick ones that would fit color wise, but also had a star in the print.  This would tie it into the Dallas Cowboys logo of a star.

This is a close up of all the prints used in this quilt.  I finished the top early in the afternoon, and then paired it with the backing of a nice thick gray fleece.  I am not sandwiching in a batting for this quilt, as my Son doesn't like a heavy blanket, and using a thick fleece, it will be soft and warm for him without the weight.  He also is of the younger generation that is not to hip on the quilting part of my quilts, so I will be doing nothing but stitching in the ditch around the two light borders, and in between each piano piece.  I think in the middle focal point I will outline all the stars in the print.

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It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

This year, I am getting into the Christmas mood earlier than in the past.  Not sure why, but it is better than being Bah Humbugish?  Right?

Anyway, I hung up my Christmas Wreath wallhanging that I completed last week, on the corner wall in my office corner.

I have also been making wrapping paper for gifts on my list.  I started it last year, making pillow cases for the wrapping paper, because the cost of good wrapping paper is almost the same as fabric.  I now refuse to pay that much for paper when I can get fabric.  Just sayin'.  

Here is a peek for the kiddos gifts:

Quite awhile back, I posted about working on this quilt, and it went to my son's apartment, because his girlfriend gets colder that he does, and he wanted to know if I had a quilt I could send his way for her.  Now for Christmas, I want to get her a gift, so I dug out my scraps to the quilt and had enough to make two pillow cases.  

Another one checked off my list!!

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