Day of Rememberance
If you click on the image above it will bring you to a website to make a donation in remembrance of the victims.
Thank you.
Getting our Christmas Craft On
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
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.
Connections
I have been part of this wonderful online community for a little less than 2 years and actively on Twitter for about a year now. Through this community I have made so many wonderful friends and connections. These friends have brought such joy to my life, and this past week I was blessed enough to work with 2 friends to bring some joy to another friend’s life.
I met 3 wonderful ladies on Twitter, @h2ogirl76 (aka. fiberofallsorts) – real name Shanna, @sewhappygeek – real name Jenna, and @HQSuz – real name Susan. Earlier this year, Susan wrote a heartfelt blogpost about losing her father. It is never easy to lose someone you love and Shanna, Jenna and I teamed up in the hopes of doing something that would honor her father and show her how much she is loved and supported. Thus a quilt was born.
- Photo courtesy of The History Quilter (Susan)
The ever talented Jenna from Sew Happy Geek, took the Navy Star block and enlarged it giving Shanna and I this amazing pattern to work with. Shanna was the guiding force behind the colors and figuring out how to assemble the extra large blocks, and let me tell you that lady has an eye for color! My role was to stitch a couple of the blocks and quilt it. I also needed to figure out how to send it and keep it a surprise, and in walks another wonderfully talented lady, Jaye from Artquiltmaker. She was the essential link in getting this quilt mailed and keeping it a surprise. She is friends with Susan and was willing to package and ship our quilt for us, putting the wonderful final touch on this quilt of love.
Susan has since named this quilt “The Navy Quilt” and I have first hand knowledge that she has already spent some quality time snuggling underneath it. Being part of something like this just solidified the importance of this community and the connections we make in my mind. Sometimes it is about stepping outside yourself and doing something for someone else in need. Thank you Jenna, Shanna and Jaye for letting me be a part of this, and Susan, I truly hope you enjoy your quilt.
If you would like to read Susan’s blog post about the quilt, please go to History Quilter and read all about it. If you would like to read Shanna’s post, please go to Fiber of All Sorts and read all about it there.
Tutorial – Leftovers Pillow
This post was originally a guest post over at Quilter in the Gap as part of the 3rd quarter wrap up for the Finish-A-Long. I thought it might be good to re-post it now as the days left until Christmas are quickly dwindling. This tutorial will show you how to breathe new life into a leftover quilt block.
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Today I have a fun pillow tutorial for you. I am calling it the “Leftovers Pillow”. I thought this project couldn’t be more perfect for the Finish-A-Long, this project, with the exception of the pillow form, was made entirely from leftovers from projects I’ve made this quarter!
For this tutorial I will not be giving you measurements, aside from seam allowances, because I want you to know that you can make this pillow with ANY SIZE block!
Supplies:
- Leftover Quilt Block
- Leftover Strips for block border
- Leftover batting from previous quilt (at least 2.5” larger than block on all sides)
- Leftover Muslin from quilt backing
- Leftover Scrap for Zipper – 2” x 4”
- Zipper – leftover from a purse project that ended up not needing a zipper
- Pillow form – size will depend on your finished quilt block (my block was 15.5” x 15.5” – I added a 1.5” border all the way around to finish the block out at 17.5” – I bought a 18” pillow form so my pillow would be extra full and squishy.)
Let’s Get Sewing!
Step 1: Baste your quilt block – this project is so small that I decided to pin baste my block. 
Step 2: Quilt your block to your heart’s content.
Step 3: Add your borders – I added mine to the block after I finished the quilting
Step 4: Prepare Zipper
Step 5: Prep Backing fabric – mine was significantly larger than my quilted piece. I cut it to be as wide as the block – in my case 17.5” wide and then I cut it in half, not worrying about the length yet, you will trim the whole backing down to size after you have installed the zipper.
Step 6: Trim backing down to same size as quilt block – make sure you OPEN the zipper!!!
Step 7: Pin and all the way around and sew using ¼” seam, trim corners
Step 8: Turn Through the zipper and use something to push out the corners – I used my purple thang, but almost anything will work!
Step 9: Insert the pillow form, zip and enjoy!!!
Have fun with your Holiday Sewing!