Sunflower

 With the impending snowstorm on our doorstep, I thought I'd post some photos from warmer weather. Enjoy these sunflower photos!

Christmas Quilt

 I squeezed one more quilt finish in 2020.
This was a kit I bought while on vacation in Tennessee.
It's a super simple quilt.
The instructions said to cut all fabric into 8 inch squares and create 9 rows of 7 blocks.
My goal was to be done by Christmas. (Insert some chuckles here.)
I missed my goal by a few days.
I did get it done the same weekend as Christmas. I think that's pretty good.

It took me 4 weekends to get this done.

That's record time for me!

Laying it out to see where I want the blocks to go.

Sewing technique called chain piecing.

I learn something new with each project I work on.

This one was no exception.

I learned how to chain piece entire rows.

So much easier to keep track of where the pieces go.

I had the top sewn together in no time.

I found a piece of batting in my stash that was from a thrift store.

It was sort of the perfect size.

I say sort of because you're supposed to have batting that overlaps the top by a couple of inches all around. The extra allows for possible shifting of the fabric during the quilting process. This piece had about an inch on the sides. That's cutting it pretty close, which meant I had to be really careful with the quilting. I wanted to baste this on the quilting frame so I wouldn't have to crawl on the floor with my grumpy knee. I'm not experienced enough with my frame yet to do that...so it was the floor.

I survived the basting and iced the knee.

I'm happy to report that the quilt didn't shift at all while it was being quilted!

I bought this quilt kit with the intension of keeping it as a family Christmas quilt.

I liked the old fashioned ornaments on the fabric.

This is evidence of one lesson that was learned the hard way.

I have used Crayola's washable markers for YEARS to mark my quilting lines.

You're supposed to test it on a scrap piece before marking on the project. I actually did that this time but not on all of the fabrics, just a few. I don't usually do this because I've NEVER had an issue. Ever. As you can see, I had some lines that didn't wash out. The funny part is that it's only on the poinsettia fabric. It washed out of all the others. The good news is that it's hardly noticeable at a distance...and it won't change how snuggly the quilt is. ;)

I found some simple holly fabric for the backing.

The boys thought the fabrics looked like wrapping paper.

So I decided to quilt simple lines to imitate the look wrapped gifts.

I also decided to name the quilt "Wrapping Paper"

I can't believe it's my 39th quilt!

Wrapping Paper Quilt

#39

51" x 65 1/2"

machine pieced and quilted

Happy New Year!

 Happy New Year!

1. I'm not going to apologize any more for lack of posting. I think y'all understand I work full-time and posting is harder than it used to be. I'm going to post what I can when I can.

2. This will be a long Christmas and New Year's post. :)

3. I'm still quilting! I know, silly thing to say. I even got one more quilt finish for 2020. Eventually I'll make a post about it. :)

So Christmas was a little different this year.

I think that's something everyone can say.

For the most part we stayed home.

We visited Dwayne's parents down the road on Christmas and went to his brother's New Year's Eve.

We video chatted with my mom and some dear friends. That was different but fun!

We got snow for Christmas!

It did take a couple of days for all of it to melt.

This is our first Christmas with the new camera.

I captured quite a few good smiles!

:)

Why use a pocket knife when you can use a bigger knife.

Someone's excited!

Happy writer.

Happy for hearing protection.

Really cool powerful spot light.

It's so powerful it reflects the stop sign a mile away!

New knife.

I missed the smile on this one.

How many 15 year olds are excited to get the complete collection of the Federalist Papers?

This history buff certainly was!

We got this silly melting snowman.

It's basically softer silly putty with snowman pieces.

It's been fun watching it melt over and over.

Three generations.

Really bad photo of the video chat with Grandma Knapp.

Chicken feet socks!

(Connor pulled up his pant legs so you can see.)

Bolt tank top that he really likes.

I got a couple of quilty things.

One of them was this cool pin-cushion magnet.

The pins lay so that the heads are easy to grab.

You can drop them on it and they turn to lay like this... well most of them anyway.

Then we discovered that you can balance one on its point.

We did manage standing two at once but the photo was blurry.

The aforementioned quilt! It's a Christmas quilt for the family to enjoy.

And we got ourselves a new stove!

I've named it Big Iron.

So that leaves us to today, New Year's Day.

The new year has begun with an ice storm.

Maybe 2020 wasn't ready to leave yet! ;)

The power went out for about 30 seconds and thankfully came back on.

I know others in our area weren't so fortunate.

An ice storm isn't exactly how you want to ring in the new year.

It is beautiful though!

I'll end this post with photos of Nolan playing with Pepper.

Quite cute!

Not a spoiled dog in the least!