Random Notions – Whew!

The day has finally arrived and for me, it is just about over! What's left?  A wonderful dinner Casey is cooking. YAY!  The last few days have been really busy with last minute work – or at least, it is always last minute for me – and I actually got it finished in time.   I can now start to focus on me again!  <LOL>

I finished Harry’s Fishbowl quilt – I can’t believe I did it in two days, but I did.  Like Layla’s sampler quilt, I did not do the greatest job on machine quilting, but I really don’t think a 3 year old is going to mind, and I am happy that I actually finished two good sized quilts entirely by myself.  I washed it and love how it got all crinkly, which hides many of the issues on the back –

(The back is a solid light blue cotton)

I also wanted to make something up for my cousin Frances who collects elephants, so I made her a pillow- 

I had gotten an e-mail from Martingale Publishing that an out-of-print book on paper piecing had just come available again – it’s called A Quilter’s Ark by Margaret Rolfe.  It has over 50 animal blocks and I was instantly in love.  The e-book is not that expensive, and you can print the block patterns out really easily.  You can find the book here – if you buy the print edition, you get the e-book with it.  This is the first time I have actually paper pieced, even though I have been collecting books and patterns for it for a very long time.  I messed up, quite a bit, but I did finally get a finished block I really liked – and Frances liked it, too.

At the last minute – Monday afternoon to be exact – I decided to make stockings for the kids.  I had recently watched an Eleanor Burns video on making them, and decided it was something I could do fairly quickly.  I did Layla’s with a crazy quilt patch-

The crazy quilt patch is something I have always wanted to do, but was a bit intimidated by it.  Now I see how incredibly easy it is, so there may be a bed-size crazy quilt in my future.  I used some trims, sparkly threads, and decorative stitches all over -

This took all of Monday evening so when I went to work on the one for Harry, I kinda cheaped out – not blocks, just a solid piece of fabric with dragons and castles, but I did do some bobbin sewing with sparkly thread in the bobbin-

  

Kind of hard to tell it is sparkly, but it is a really cool iridescent thread – I have a huge cone of it, and now that I know it will work well in the bobbin, I will probably be using it a lot.

I made the backing on both Christmas fabrics, just so they still had a Christmas theme.

And then, in a fashion typical for me, at the last minute, I remembered that I had all kinds of buttons, and I should look for something that would work with them –

I love the buttons!  I was sewing them on while they were filled with stuff!  (Not easy to do, by the way.)

So how did all this stuff go over?  The kids loved their quilts, but I didn’t get any pictures of them with them. (Alexis, how’s about helping me out here?)  Santa got the kids each one really cool present (because Santa has an HSN card) and they loved them-

Layla was thrilled to get a tablet all her own, and its pink-

(Of course, she had to turn her head just as I took the picture)

And Harry got a motorcycle which he was tickled pink over- 

It’s motorized and he got the hang of it pretty darn quick!  The pajamas were his Christmas present from his Mom and Dad that he got to open last night and didn’t want to take off before they came over today.

The kids gave me a beautiful cat figurine, which I love-

And to GG went a really nice Buddha figure, and Casey the Farmer got a set of starter pots with seeds.  Penny (Casey’s dog) got a bag of treats, and my girls got new mouses, which they went nuts over -

Just a few minutes later, the girls were zonked out, sound asleep – catnip must really pack a punch!

All in all, I have to say that it was the nicest Christmas I have ever had, and I am so glad it is over.  I have less than two weeks before classes start again, so I am going to really try to get busy sewing some stuff for me! J 

Wishing you the best Christmas ever – thanks for stopping by!