Good Fortune Pt. 5, Zip Pouch and Merry Christmas!

I’ve been stitching along with Bonnie Hunter’s Good Fortune Mystery Quilt-along. I’m only doing half (or slightly more) of the counts she’s giving us, but I’m keeping up. After the reveal, I can decide how large I want my quilt to be. Anyway, here are my Part 5 pieces. I really enjoyed making these! Come check out everyone’s participation over at the Mystery Monday Part 5 Linkup!

Yesterday I started on a new quilt, Saguaro Sunset, a free pattern by Kairlee Oakes.  This will be for my sister- and brother-in-law when we go to visit them in Arizona in February. They love and collect cacti.

The quilt contains 12 cacti, set four across and three down. Instead of a solid background, I’m using an ombre fabric and hoping to piece it to (roughly) represent an Arizona Sunset. So, the top four cacti will have the dark purples and oranges.  The middle four cacti will have the orange-reds, oranges and orange-yellows. And the lower four cacti will have the range of yellows, medium to light.

I hope I can pull it off. There is sashing involved, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to need to get more fabric. But the piecing itself is fairly straight forward.

Today, in addition to baking cookies (just enough for a small family gathering), I made myself a long-awaited zip pouch for my colored pencils. I use the pencils a lot when designing quilts (like Lattice Birds, and All You Need is Love), so with the new year around the corner, I knew it was time to corral these pencils in something cute.

I used that way cute colored pencil fabric (by Tamara Kate, “kayajoy” on Spoonflower) on the outside and quilted it with s simple loop design. The inside is a piece of regular pencil fabric I got who-knows-where.

And the pencils fit great. In fact, there’s enough room for me to add to my collection. Santa, are you listening??

Finally, I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I appreciate you all reading along and commenting and just being great friends. May your Holidays be wonderful and filled with love and good health.

Darla and Alfalfa would also like to add their greetings, especially to Molly and Buddy, Trixie,  Smitty and Sadie, and “cousins” Emmett, Bella, Pashmina, Teddy and George. Alfie says he’s been as good as he can be and promises that this will be him and Darla tonight:

HA!  Bruce and I know better. We’re pretty sure that as soon as we go to bed, THIS is what Alfie and Darla will be doing: