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.  

Warmest...

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.

Warmest...