Caught Up, For Now

I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas Day and continue to enjoy the Christmas season.  I was at my sister's lovely home and enjoyed my Polish heritage by eating pierogi which my brother made, golabki which my sister made, kielbasa, Polish ham,  babka, rye bread, horseradish and sharing of the oplatki before hand.  It was all delicious, and her granddaughters are so much fun.  Thanks, Ging.

Growing up we had the Polish Vigilia at my mother's mother's home (my Polish grandmother) and on Christmas Day went to my father's mother's home (my French Canadian grandmother).  Gorton (not the fish brand, but a pork pate) is still one of my favorite foods, although it's difficult to find now.  I'm a vegetarian the rest of the year but not at Christmas.  Shame on me.

Since then I have spent lots of time sewing to catch up on the Stash Busters QAL and the Ben Franklin QAL.  I was  seven blocks behind on the first and only one block behind on the second. 

And the Ben Franklin block called Strength in Union.

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Lots of unstitching on the Stash Busters, which I think are out to bust me.  

Tomorrow Linda will give us another Stash Buster block and I hope to get it done.  

Enjoy you weekend.

God Bless You.

A Few Thank You's

I want to show off some of the pretty things I've won lately.

 

Most recently I was a double winner on Jacquelynne Steves' Holiday Hullabaloo Blog Hop.  Teresa of A Quilt and A Prayer and Jacque of Lilypad Quilting both picked my name; Thank you, Ladies. 

Pretty nice, huh?

The notecards are beautiful, as well as the fabric and patterns.

During the Blogathon Canada I won a group of batiks on Krista Quilts' blog.  Sew-Sisters Quilt Shop sponsored the blogathon and sent me this lovely batch of fat quarters and one yard as well.  That was a fun blog hop and a nice introduction to new blogs.  Thanks to Sew-Sisters and Krista.

I also won the 8th issue of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks and a fat quarter bundle of Sunny Side by Kate Spain for Moda fabric. I love the raindrop print; it's so cute and different from polka dots.

I've made many of the blocks that have appeared in this resource and no doubt will continue to do so.  Thank you Quiltmaker.

 

No need for Santa Claus here.  I have some new things to play with when things quiet down.

 

God Bless You.

December QAL - Post 2

Compliments to all of the quilters who have linked up at Sue's blog.  I love every project I've seen, and the variety is wonderful.  Seeing all of our Christmas work in December is putting me in a nice holiday mood.

 

Those are the backs of my polar bear quilts and the long side measures 15.5 or close to it.  No red or green.

I just came in from pushing around the slush that is the result of the snow storm from yesterday.  Hope everyone else is okay.  We are having a very unusual year weather wise in that the temps just keep fluctuating markedly over a few days.  It was bitter cold yesterday and today it is warm enough for rain. 

I am continuing to work on my Nativity panel project that I began in June or July.  I was using metallic thread for the quilting and had absolutely no problems with the red color, but when I switched to green, the thread kept breaking.  I used every needle size there is and played with the tension to no avail.  Then I visited Joann's to get plain old thread to finish this project and found that the Coats and Clark was half price so I bought a variety, including their metallic thread which is made differently.  Their metallic is twisted around a core of thread, whereas the other metallic I was using was a polyester strip type.  I've been using the Coats metallic and haven't had a problem with it, so I'm going to finish this quilt with the gold metallic only.  I'd love to have this project hanging for Christmas week. 

This is the finished Modern Christmas Tree Quilt hanging in the living room. 

 

God Bless You.

December Christmas QAL - Post 1 or Got Cookies? Times 2

In the Christmas QAL world, today's the day we show our stuff.  If you are late to the party, we were given a challenge by Sue of Quilt Times to create a Christmas quilting project that did not use any red or green and did not measure more than 96 inches total circumference.  In order to be part of Sue's drawing for a prize you also needed to participate in our once a month qal's at least 3 times.  There were a loyal group of quilters this year and I made new online friends and discovered new blogs I enjoy reading.  So for me, because the journey is the whole point, I feel very satisfied.

My project is from Quiltmaker magazine's Nov/Dec 2012 issue and is designed by Sonja Callaghan, who named it You Got Cookies?  (FYI to our Canadian friends, Sonja designs out of Vancouver.)

I made two of these guys because I love them.

I will post of picture of the measurements of one of the panels in another post because I forgot to do that, but one is only 12.5" by 15.5".  I'll also show a picture of the backs.

I used yarn from my stash for the pompoms, buttons from my late mother's old stash and felt for the hat brims and noses.  

Back in June or July when I began the first bear, I had never tried paper piecing.  This was an easy project to begin that method and although I did have some tense moments (spell that GRRRRR) I made the second bear and another small project, and I love paper piecing.  

I'll show some other stuff later, but now I want to visit the other quilters and see their projects.