Starry, Starry Day

So much sewing this week, but not a lot of finished results to show for it. But our annual family FIESTA is today, and I spent a good part of the week in preparation for that. In addition to some housework (have to break down and do it sometime), there was a lot of prep and cooking of the enchiladas, fajitas, mole’, etc etc. Today I still have to wrap Christmas presents for the grandkids - the best place for them is under the tree, wrapped, to avoid curious eyes and little snoopers. Of course, I will outsmart them by writing their names on the tags in shorthand so no one will know what belongs to whom.  HA!

OK, so let me start with the most underwhelming things first. My brother, who is living with us until spring, needed some flannel pajama bottoms for our cold winter. Thanks to JoAnn’s Black Friday sale (which started on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, when there were no crowds), I bought some FUGLY flannel for him. PJ bottoms made. He loves them.

I also worked and finished up my Clue #2 to Bonnie Hunter’s On Ringo Lake Mystery Quilt-Along, and that was detailed in my last post. Just lots of coral-colored geese.

And then your Christmas fabrics overflow-eth, make table toppers and runners! I have NO Christmas table runners, so I did get a start on one, using my oldest scraps. It’s a basic patchwork of light and neutral background squares onto which I fused/stitched holly leaves and berries.

The red and green are left over from Steve’s quilted Christmas stocking that I showed last week. It’s pin basted, and the backing will fold over as the binding/facing once quilted. Should be quick work to finish this up tomorrow. And then maybe I can pull some cute scraps out and work on something more fun!

The Tulip Quilt is quilted and delivered to my friend Terri, who will be binding it this week in preparation for Christmas gifting to our friend Diane. Terri will get a finished picture and send it to me so that I can post it here in the next next week or two. We plan to have a luncheon get-together (the three of us ladies plus our hubbies, The Muddy Gutter Boys) before Christmas to exchange gifts.

And Friendship Stars is coming along. I’ve finished the green round of stars and have moved on to the next ring, which is red and orange. It’s grown enough now that I have to hang it sideways on my design board.  Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog.

The pattern, with the movement of the white patches, is very forgiving overall. The myriad seams, which are crazy-awful to press, help line things up as one is sewing. There are a lot of cut-off points and not-perfect seams, but they get lost in the busy-ness of it all. I’m loving it, even though it is far from smooth and flat. But all that will be inconsequential once it is quilted and washed. And my thoughts are turning to..... how should I quilt this?  I’d welcome your thoughts.

Once the flimsy is sewn, it will go on the back burner until January so that I can begin putting together my Plus Quilt top. Or start the promised Hot Rod Quilt for my brother (groan). I’ve collected the fabrics for that, and narrowed the design ideas down to a couple, and am running out of excuses not to start it. The up-side to the hot rod quilt is that my dread is inversely proportional to his excitement, so I’ll be focusing on his excitement to carry me through. :-)