It's begining to look a lot like Christmas

So here is what I have been up to this week.  Not much sewing but the 12 ft. Christmas tree is assembled, lit and decorated.  Oh and the new Christmas quilt is hung over the fireplace.  I know, its crazy early but once again we will be helping our son recover after surgery at Thanksgiving and I want everything done before then.
I've mentioned before that we have had some difficult times over the last few years and today is the 2 year anniversary of our son's near fatal car accident.  So, in 2009 the holidays were  in hospital and last Christmas he had a difficult jaw surgery.  Unfortunately he needs a 6th oral/jaw surgery done this Thanksgiving but we are just so grateful that he is alive and has had a miraculous recovery otherwise, that we look forward to a real celebration this Christmas.  And part of that is making our home extra festive looking.  Let the decorating continue!
Oh and you may notice the unusual tree topper staring down. I'll be adding more woodland decorations to the tree and putting this fellow on the top of the tree just seemed right!

I'm all over the place

 If you have read my blog in the past you will know that I have lots of projects on the go at once.  This really works for me as I always have something different to work on and I rarely get bored.  Almost everything gets done eventually and I am thrilled that the center of my Captain Russell inspired quilt is now done.  Just ready for a trimming and then I will sew it together.  I'm not doing the borders, partly due to a lack of interest and mostly because of size, so this one is almost a completed top.

And here is my Christmas top finished.  The photo is crap, cause I am a lousy photographer and cause it was just to big for DH to hold, but hopefully you get the idea.

Sadly I didn't have enough of the backing fabric that I had planned to use so while thinking about that I practiced some piecing with the leftover scraps.  One of my next projects calls for lots of  little 4 1/2 in star blocks so I used the time to test my pattern.  I decided not to use the method called for and wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into.  Perhaps they will go into the back or maybe a new little project.

And here is what I did today.  Sorry, again another crappy photo but not everything is glued or pinned in place so I could only lay it flat.  This is from the book "Pennies from Heaven" and I added some silk applique to the wool.  I belong to a small group "Wooly Women" which was formed after a Sue Spargo workshop, where we work on embellishing our wool projects. Since I finished the project from the workshop, I needed to get something to work on for our next meeting.  I hope to embellish this with lots of embroidery and beading so it should be a fun project.  So what will I work on tomorrow?

A little more piecing

This week I have had a bit of pain in my hip which meant staying close to home and continuing on my Christmas piecing project.  Due a variety of family circumstances I haven't really been able to decorate or get in the festive spirit the past few years.  Hopefully this year the stars will align and I will actually be able to put up a tree and decorate the whole house.  We are in a new home and I am really liking how this looks in our living room.  It has been a long time since I've done such a variety of pieced blocks and it has been lots of fun trying to improve my piecing skills. Most of this quilt is on a 2 in. grid so nothing was too difficult to match though I am by no means perfect.  I'm hoping to start a more difficult pattern soon and think that this helped get me in the groove.  Now a few more joining seams and on to the dreaded borders.  Have I mentioned before that I HATE doing borders.  Here is about where I usually stop, at the almost complete stage - I know what it will look like and for me, the fun part of piecing is over.  But I love the fabric that I am using on the final border so hopefully that will encourage me to continue and I'll be able to show a finished top soon!

In a piecing mood

Despite the fact that I love applique, sometimes I just get in a piecing kinda mood.  This week is one of those times.  I knew that I wanted a project that would just be pieced and since I really didn't have a project like that on the go I was able to start something new.  Yippee!  Kinda my reward for all the finishes I've had lately.  This is from last year's McCall's Quilting for Christmas.  I had been collecting some Christmas fabrics for a few years with no project in mind and decided to use them in this quilt.  It is really fun to piece so many different blocks and to select the fabrics for each block.  I'm over half way and can see that I'm really not making much of a dent in this stash so I guess there are more Christmas projects to come.  Maybe at table runner is next.