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. :-)

A Quilt Finished, A Living Room Unfinished

What is a living room called when you don’t live in it? It’s just another room, or in our case, a Room Under Construction.  I knew it wouldn’t be done by Thanksgiving, but I still have my fingers crossed for Christmas.

What I forgot about, however, is that instead of hosting Thanksgiving for our family (kids are married and go to in-laws, etc), we have Fiesta. Fiesta is on the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving, and everyone comes for Mexican Food (so, by the end of the month, we are sick of turkey leftovers AND Mexican food leftovers, LOL). But there will be no Fiesta this year. Because....

Yes, Alfie is inspecting (lower right)

This picture was taken a week ago. It took our contractor the better part of a working day to level out the sub-floor (long story having to do with the height of the cement base of the former hearth). But after this picture, he was able to get about 25% of the hardwood flooring down. The cats love to thunder around on this floor (subfloor and the new hardwood); their toys roll really well. This weekend we hope the living room flooring will be done and then we are expecting the custom cabinets and mantel to arrive, all of which will flank and surround the fireplace. That means Thanksgiving weekend will see a lot of activity of the construction variety, if not the family celebration variety.

In between painting the hallway walls, trim and doors (ongoing), I did manage to sew another litter of cats this week; the penultimate litter. Green. Now there is just one pink litter left to sew before Kitty Quilt #3 can be assembled. Why not join us over at Angela’s So Scrappy blog for Scrappy Saturday? The participants of this year’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge are all putting together their rainbow quilts!

If we ever have a Rainbow Scrap Challenge Slumber Party, Sally and I will be the ones sewing these kitties in our sleep!

This week I also finished a quilt. The quilting on Magic Carpet took For.Ev.Er. (It finished at 75x84”). After looking at several pictures of other finished quilts online, I realized that the color choices and piecing pattern would dictate what stood out and what receded, so I just  ended up choosing some basic quilting styles for each color.

I am not crazy about the lines on the bright pink, but they are staying. Other than that, I am quite pleased with how it turned out.  Below is a detail shot of some of the quilting I did. Keep in mind that I am a quilting hack. But practice makes better, and I’ve been getting a lot of practice lately. This quilt is also a finish for my Finish Along 2016 Quarter 4 goals. My list is here, and this is #5 on my list.

Now I am working on the quilt for my DIL Kim. I got half of it quilted yesterday and plan to finish the quilting (and maybe the binding) today.  This is also a Christmas present. I’ll do a separate finish post for this one later this week.

On Wednesday, my cousin Kim came over and we basted two quilts; the above orange peel and my RSC Sampler. I will start quilting the sampler this week and hope to finish it. If I can do that, I will begin on the final litter of pink kitties and baste my Cozy Christmas quilt this week.  Luckily, my new 25-yard roll of batting arrived last week, so I am good to go for the season.  :-)

I am on track to finish everything in time for Christmas gift-giving. Christmas presents for family will be quilts and gift cards, so that is covered. Presents for friends and neighbors are jars of apricot jam, prepped last summer. Nothing to decorate for Christmas (except put up a tree? that would be nice....)  So, all I need to do is keep the house relatively tidy and SEW. Not a bad prospect....

FIESTA!

OOPS!  I found this post in my drafts and just realized I never published it (almost a month ago).  So, here it is....

Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, usually on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we have our family “Fiesta”.  It grew out of a desire to begin a new family tradition when Bruce and I got married almost 8 years ago and began the task of melding our families.  All the kids are grown and married or on their own now, and grandkids figure into the mix.

 In the past we have had between 7 and 12 guests depending on who was in town (or who was even born!)  This year we had 8 (with three who couldn’t make it due to a furnace emergency and waiting for a repair person).  Plus Bruce and I.  Our little house manages to hug them all!

Oh, and the second motivating reason for Fiesta is to eat something other than turkey and leftovers after Thanksgiving.  It gives me a chance to pull out my brightly-colored dishes.  Not the everyday yellow ironstone, the fancy floral china, or the Christmas dishes.  Just my fun pieces gathered from Mexico (via Arizona), Pyrex from thrift and yard sales, bowls from here, mugs from there.... you get the idea.  If they are bright, festive and chunky, they fit in!

This year, the menu included chips and veggies with Bruce’s fabu guacamole that all the kids LOVE.   Then I did enchiladas (cheese with red sauce and beef with green sauce) and tacos.  We also had chicken tamales, mexican rice, and refried beans.  And soda, beer (Corona, of course), wine, and coffee.

In the past, we used to play board games for hours, but now with all the grandkids, that has been replaced by talking, laughing and watching the kids play.  A regular family gathering, you know.  Oh, and of course some of the guys had to watch football on TV.  Whatever.

So, the stars of the show were the kidlets, and I got precious few pictures once the action began.

Above:  Mike and Stacy (Bruce’s our daughter) with son Hunter.
Below:  London learning to climb up and down our stairs (very low rise) by herself.

London probably spent 40 or more minutes just going UP and DOWN.

Proud of herself!

She wore herself out, so Gammy (me) got to hold her while she rested!  

Life is good.