2012

A Lovely Finish

9 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, Christmas, Fiber of All Sorts, Lovely Finish / By

This past year I have had a hard time actually finishing things. I have finished five good sized quilts and several wall hangings/charity quilts. I have about a million works in progress. Projects that I have started and for one reason or another stopped. When it comes to completed quilt tops my biggest, number one reason for not finishing is I can never decide how to quilt something.

In December alone though…I picked up the pace, I finished 2 quilts AND I made 5 blankets for my nieces and nephews, not bad since I am 800 miles from my sewing machine (thank goodness my mom was able to loan me hers!). Here is a link to the group quilt I helped make. Here is another link to the commission quilt I finished.  The past 2 weeks I have been sewing like crazy to finish 5 minky cuddle blankets for my nieces and nephews and I am so excited to say I have actually finished them – BEFORE Christmas!

Finishing is an important part of quilting, sewing, crafting, etc., and I was recently talking to my friend Shanna from Fiber of All Sorts about how it feels like we are always talking about what we are working on but never about things we have actually finished. Well 2013 is the year that all changes!  We have teamed up and decided to launch A Lovely Year of Finishes.

We have set a goal, 1 finish per month for the next year giving ourselves a grand total of TWELVE finishes!  AND…we are inviting you to join us!  We have lined up some awesome sponsors and will be running regular linky parties so you can show us what you are working on and a Flickr Group too! Oh wait! Did I mention there will be prizes too?

So go check out our page, grab a button and join the Flickr Group for A Year of Lovely Finishes. While you are at it, make sure you head of to Shanna’s blog to see her finishes from this month!

<a href=”https://test.sewbittersweetdesigns.com/?page_id=3033″ title=”A Lovely Year of Finishes”> <img src=”https://test.sewbittersweetdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2013btn128.gif” width=”128″ height=”128″ alt=”My Button” style=”border:none;” /></a>

Since I will not be back before Christmas, I hope everyone has a lovely holiday, filled with family and happiness.

Christmas Quilt

9 Comments / Christmas, log cabin block / By

I had really hoped this year that I would be finishing my Vintage Christmas Sampler which is now going on 1.5 years of being worked on, but alas, that did not happen. I do, however, have a different quilt to show you.

This is a quilt that I made for my mom 4.5 years ago for Mother’s Day. It is the first quilt I ever made for her, though I do have 2 tops currently in progress that will be hers. I followed the directions from the Log Cabin In A Day book by Eleanor Burns.

The only quilting that I did was stitch in the ditch around the borders, the rest of it was tied. I love the idea of an old fashioned tied quilt.

The reason I am showing you pictures of this quilt today is that we brought down all of our Christmas decorations this weekend and set up our tree, the quilt was in one of the boxes. Here’s a look at our tree.

Getting our Christmas Craft On

12 Comments / Christmas / By

I haven’t done much sewing since I have been on vacation, some, but not much…I’ve bound 2 quilts and made 3 blankets, I still have 2 blankets left to go, but hey I have 9 more days before those need to be finished, that’s tons of time!  I have, however, been doing a ton of Christmas crafting with Anne! Here are some pictures from our fun and messy adventures.

Rice Crispy Treat Christmas Trees made by Anne and I for my hubs. I tried to dye the marshmallow green, but as you can see, it wasn’t so successful. Note to self: use more food color next time!  The ornaments are m&ms and red hots. Anne had so much fun decorating these!

This is our take on the ever popular Felt Christmas Tree from Pinterest, here is the one I pinned last year. Here is Anne decorating ours in a nice retro Flower Power style – what can I say, she is a girly girl!

We made Salt Dough Christmas ornaments.

I just love the look of concentration on her face as she paints!

(Basic recipe – 1 cup salt, 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup water, if you dough is too dry to hold together add a bit more water. Roll out your dough to 1/4″ thick, cut desired shapes, bake at 220 degrees for 2-3 hours being to sure to flip half way. Then paint and seal with a varnish or gloss finish mod podge.)

She is so proud of her painting!

The idea for the Santa Hands came from a picture that was circulating around Facebook. From our batch of salt dough following the recipe above, we got 3 Santa hands and 5 medium sized ornaments.

We made 2 different types of cookies, Hot Cocoa Cookies and Gingerbread cookies. Here are some pictures from our baking days. I like this one because you can just see the wheels turning in her head thinking “Stop Taking Pictures so we can Start Making Cookies!”

You never know, if she doesn’t watch it turning, it might not actually mix!

Once the cookies were in the oven boredom set in, after all it isn’t really fun staring at the oven window. So she entertained herself with the fridge magnets.

The Hot Cocoa Cookies (which I forgot to take pictures of!) did not get decorated, but about half of the Gingerbread ones did. I’m not the biggest fan of Gingerbread, but I was informed by the 3 taste testers in the house that they were delish!

So there you have it, what Anne and I have been up to for the last week and a half. I am hoping that my hands will be in a much better mood to sew come next week so I can get the blankets done. There might be a review for a new product I bought last week if indeed it does help my hands…

Happy Holiday Crafting!

Christmas Care Package

15 Comments / Christmas, Personal Post / By

I’m not sure how many people who read my blog are military or former military, but I thought some people might be interested to know what Anne and I sent to my husband for Christmas in his care package.

This care package is chock full of goodies. I will start with the 3 (yes there are 3) green Tupperwares. They are full of home baked goodies: hot cocoa cookies, gingerbread cookies and rice crispy treat trees complete with m&m and red hot ornaments. Anne and I had so much fun baking for her Daya (that’s how she says daddy).

I wanted to be sure to include a couple wrapped gifts, so I put in his favorite Christmas movie, the original “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and my mom put in 2 dvds that she bought. Anne picked out the LED, USB Powered Christmas tree, I thought it was especially neat as it will run off any computer. He also has some See’s candies, a tradition from my family and an m&m toy – a tradition from his family. Anne and I made a salt dough hand print Santa Clause and I included some art we did together and our picture with Santa. We have yet to have a picture with just her and Santa, she is a big fan…from afar!

Since these aren’t “Christmas” gifts, I’m not going to feel too bad about the price tag being left on the dvd set…He has a thing for mint and dark chocolate so that is why there is a candy bar. I also thought he might like to be able to hold and see the pictures from Anne’s 3rd birthday whenever he wants, so I sent him a little book of all of them.

So that is it, our Christmas care package. No sewing, but lots of baking and love going into it. And now a favor, please say a prayer that this care package makes it to him on time. I missed the mailing deadline by ONE day!!! I am hoping and praying it arrives by Christmas, after all I sent it with 14 days to spare. We shall see I guess.

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