End of Year Wrap-up

Did you have a Merry Christmas? Ours was lovely. We spent Christmas Eve at home, just the two of us, noshing on a simple charcuterie platter.

Our simple but healthy Christmas Eve “feast”

On Christmas Day we went to my son Ryan and daughter-in-law Kim’s house. Both my sons were there, but my daughter and her boyfriend live in Washington so they weren’t able to attend. Kim’s family, minus one sibling and family were there too. This year, even my ex-husband Scott and his wife Cally joined in. It was a very pleasant evening, with lots of good food, good company and gift exchanging. There were 20 of us all together. 

Last Saturday I decided to spend the day basting quilts. For the first time, I spread everything out on our huge kitchen island to pin baste. I also brought out my ironing board to iron things as I went along. While listening to a Christmas music channel, I spent the afternoon basting six quilts. What a game changer the island is! It’s 53” wide and 80-some inches long, so it was plenty large to accommodate the quilts. And its counter height made pinning things easy without having to bend over. It was such a delightful afternoon! 

Rather than show every basted quilt in an individual photo, I made a collage.

And of those six, I got two of them finished, plus one I had already basted the previous week. First up is my Scrappy Stars quilt, a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project for this year. It finished at 47x59”.

Here’s the backing. It’s already been labeled to donate to Quilts for Kids. 

Next up was this scrappy column quilt at 39x50”. 

And finally, this Community Quilt, one of 5 that I have basted and would love to have quilted and bound for our mid-January Quilts for Kids workshop. This “Community Quilt” was made by quilters in Iowa and sent as a top for me to quilt and donate. I’ve had it (and four of its brethren from the above collage picture) for over a year and feel a pressing need to get these finished and finally donated. 

This is a small quilt, measuring only 33.5x41”.

I’ve got a few more days before year end, so I’m hoping to get them all done and into my meager count of finished quilts for 2024. I’ll report back next week with my final total, or you can check my 2024-2025 Quilts page (the tab is just under the blog header). 

My Bernina is in the shop for her annual “spa treatment”, so any quilting I do will be on my Brother back-up machine. That means it’ll have to be straight-line or serpentine stitching with a walking foot. But that’s OK. Yesterday afternoon I used the Brother to stitch up the year’s batting scraps into four large and one small Frankenbatt, and he did not let me down!

Have a nice and safe New Year’s Eve and Day. We’ll see you back here in January!!