Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas this year. Low key just how we like it.

We had a beautiful snowfall perfect for Christmas morning.

(Pretty time is over, the snow can leave now...)

We had a great visit with my mom.

We were thankful the snow stayed away until after our visit.

It was nice of the snow to do that.

It's not the greatest picture but it's Pepper on her new warming blanket.

We moved it to her doghouse the next morning.

For Christmas morning I made Grandma Schultz's cinnamon rolls.

I finally got them right!

Someone was excited to get Jim Carrey's Christmas Carol.

Oh look, more books on writing.

We also got him a book on writing fight scenes.

You need something to use those weapons for...

That would be Connor's itty bitty flash light that is from his new knife.

And yes, there's a stuffed duckling stuck beside his face.

I took the boys roller skating.

I brought along my hand quilting project to do in the snack area.

As much as I love quilting, I would have loved to have skated with the boys.

My foot is slowly returning to normal... very slowly.

Someday I'll be able to put my skates on again.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture.

He was squatting not falling.

The last several years the boys have not exchanged gifts with their cousins.

We have done an activity instead.

This year we went bowling and had a blast.

OK, I watched and the rest bowled but it was still fun.

Spare!

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It was a nice several days with food, family, and play time. I was hoping I would escape this holiday season without having a major mourning moment. I made it all the way to the evening before Christmas Eve. Then I fell apart for a short time that lingered into Sunday morning worship. I had a couple of sad moments before then but not the onslaught of tears like this time around. I'm pretty sure it was the predicted snowfall that triggered memories with my dad on Christmas Eve. I should have expected it. It's part of life. It's good to have good memories of a missed Papa.

One Last Finish

I got one more quilt finished for the year!

Truth be told it could have been finished a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to free motion quilt it.

I had never done that and needed to practice.

I practiced and practiced.

So I finally bit the bullet and did it.

Did I make mistakes? Absolutely.

Finished is perfect in my mind.

This quilt had a couple of firsts for me.

It was paper pieced and partly free motion quilted.

I designed this table runner in my quilting software.

I printed off the patterns, cut out the sections, and started sewing.

Look how closely the mock up matches the final product.
Isn't that cool?

 Here's a stack of tree sections.

Sewing by numbers goes really fast!

Once all the sections are sewn they get trimmed.

Next the papers are torn off.

All that's left is to sew the sections together.

They went together really fast.

(I used the polar bears as the backing fabric too. It was an awesome thrift store find.)

In case you don't know what free motion quilting (FMQ) is, it's you doing all the work.

You are the one controlling the material's speed and movement, not the machine.

It's harder than it looks.

After many practice sessions I finally decided to go for it.

I so badly wanted it to go perfectly...which is why I procrastinated for so long.

At first it was hard for me not to see the parts I didn't like.

But I did it and that's all that matters.

I'm still learning.

This section has nice rounded bends in the quilting.

The quilting motif is called stipple

It's a common quilting pattern.

I free motion quilted the tree blocks.

I used my walking foot to stitch in the ditch around the striped sashing

and add diamonds in the border.

Christmas tree table runner

12 1/4" x 35 1/4"

How About That

The other week I attended a painting party.

Before coming to the party our group picked a nice winter scene.

I'm not much of a painter.

The teacher took us through step by step showing us exactly how to do each thing.

Those of us who weren't painters kind of commiserated together over the harder steps.

There was a lot of laughter.

Oh and chocolate. We rewarded ourselves with chocolate after the hard steps.

Chocolate makes everything better.

We had lots of fun attempting things we don't normally do.

I'm such a visual person that this is probably the only way for me to paint.

All in all it wasn't so bad and I'd probably do it again.

Here's my painting.

Yes, there's a little Indian Runner duck.

I have to admit that this little duck is my favorite part of the whole painting.

He wasn't in the sample original.

There's supposed to be a fancy "peace" scrolled across the mid bottom area.

(You might be able to see them in the group photo above.)

I knew that my skill for lettering with a paintbrush was lacking,

so I attempted a duck from a photo on my phone.

I'm pretty proud of my little guy and I kind of wish he had some friends.

However, I knew that there was no way to do that again and

make it look good so I quit while I was ahead!

And that's the short story of my painting with a duck.