Closer . . .

With three days to deadline, aka Christmas, we have one silly Jackie - Merry Catmas! - 

three finished pillowcases - mermaid, dinosaurs/power rangers and rainbow feathers -

and 24 - 48 hours until my C*vid test results. I don’t have time to be sick - tomorrow is baking day! 

Countdown

Despite the grandkids passing around a variety of germs

 Both of them were sick but determined to play

and the cat helping us wrap,

 Cat vs Croc, Christmas Edition

the house is decorated 

and most of the gifts are wrapped and “hidden” out of reach.

All that’s left is cooking, baking and getting everyone well. It’s countdown time!

Party Week

Rachel and her pal, Tanya, came out Sunday for a quick visit. 

In between then and when they flew home Wednesday morning, we went to Solvang (straight from LAX), had lunch on the beach in Santa Barbara, had lunch with Breanne in Culver City, shopped till we dropped at 3 different Daiso Japanese dollar stores (so amazing! and fun! although Pop elected to forgo that jaunt and stay home with these two) - 

hit the outlet stores, and - the highlight and main reason for the trip - went to see Hamilton* at the Hollywood Pantages. Whew!

And out of all that, the only pictures I took, the entire time, were at the Pantages. Major future memories fail, Batman!

 Leia was Wonder Woman in her school play they same night as Hamilton. Still bummed we missed seeing her on stage.

* It was much cheaper for them to fly out and see Hamilton in LA than to get tickets in Denver, where they are exPENsive and hard to find. 

Aliens #1

Finished!

I started this in August (here), sent it off for quilting in September and it’s been sitting ever since, waiting for binding.

Now that I’ve found a way to machine-sew binding that I don’t hate, I’m slowly making my way through the binding backlog. With hubby’s quilt the first in line, of course.

 Star Wars backing

One down, four five a bunch more to go! And yes, one of them is Aliens #2.

Ready For Scary

After the littles went home today,  I restitched tipsy trees with the narrower sashing - so much better! -

attached the borders and got it sandwiched, pinned and ready for quilting. 

 Pins and batting and backing, oh my!

Now comes the scary part - how to quilt it without messing it up. 

It’s been awhile since I did any free-motion quilting - one of the benefits of having a buddy with a long-arm machine - so I sketched out some ideas and I think I have a plan. Now we’ll see if execution can match imagination . . .

More Helping

I finished the binding on one quilt (pics tomorrow)

and got halfway through binding a second 

despite with help from Lily. 

The colder/wetter it gets, the more she wants to be snuggled into a quilt. 

Same, cat. Same. 

Bah Humbug

Seems like every holiday season has that *one day* and today was ours (hoping it’s the only one!)

These two spent the day in Grandma’s House of Feverish Toddlers, Jac recovering (she’ll be back in school tomorrow) and Donovan in recovery mode but not quite there yet. He’ll be back tomorrow and he’s going to be bummed that Jac’s not here for entertainment. 

Boring!

And one of my current projects also chose today to be difficult. I thought this would be fairly quick and easy but the first set of trees was borrrrrring.

Second set was better and I like the background (Jac and I decided it’s golden snowflake circles) but now the sashing is too wide. 

All I see is a big red +, rather than the tipsy trees. Ripped that, cut the strips in half and it’s waiting to be sewn tomorrow. . . .

when the big decision will be what color to use for the outer sashing and whether I want an outer border or just leave it simple. Decisions, decisions. 

My inspiration. There’s no pattern, just a how-to video for making the trees. 

Newbie

My buddy, Wenona, put the binding on her first quilt today

and started her second.

It’s off to the longarmer next, and probably won’t be returned until after Christmas,

but she’s decided to start a new tradition and plans to give them to her grandkids as New Year’s  presents. 

I like it! And I may have tried to talk her into buying a new sewing machine . . . not that I’m enabling her or anything. 😂

Extras

What do you do with a pile of leftover 5” blocks?

Make a table runner, using the same design as the quilt, was my first thought.

Plus it gave me an excuse to use my favorite Christmas-bunnies-in-holly fabric for the backing.

The runner is 21x70”, to fit a 21x64 buffet, so even if it shrinks with washing it should still be long enough to cover. And with that finished, now it’s time to decorate!

Visits With Santa

Tis the season for pictures with Santa. 

Leia, 13, and Donovan, 3.

Leanne, 10, and Jaclyn, 5.

And Jac being Jac. I love that kid.

Ho Ho Ho

With a bit of help from Jac,

the ping pong table and my favorite square-up ruler,

I managed to get this year’s Christmas quilt finished in record time (part 1 is here). 

But only because photos are due tomorrow 

 Christmas tree quilting

for my quilt guild’s “Front Porch Quilt Show”.

 Back

Working right up to the deadline, that sounds more like me. 

This thing is so big and heavy (I used extra thick batting) that attaching the binding became a marathon wrestling match…

until a chance remark by hubby lead us to put TV trays around my quilting table to support all the bulk. Genius! Should have done it years ago.

My tendinitis is still keeping me from hand-stitching bindings, and with 5 more quilts ready to be bound, I decided to try a new all-machine-stitched method I found on Jordan Fabric’s YouTube channel. (Here)

Stitch-in-the-ditch is slow going and this method isn’t as neat as handstitching, especially on the back (especially especially before I figured out what I was doing) but it’s good enough for a “me” quilt. And I’ll get better with practice, right?? I hope!

P.S. The quilt is washed, dried and hubby is sleeping under it tonight. 💕💕

Impressing The Grands

While in Colorado, we went to a drive-thru Christmas lights/music display and I fell in love with a giant gift box, decked out in bright white lights, with several smaller gifts around it. Decided on the spot that, when we got home, that would be what we ordered for our yard display this year. So pretty and elegant.

And so not what we ended up with. 

We took one look at this guy, 

pictured the look on Jac’s and Donovan’s faces, and hit “buy now”. 

So worth it. I guess our primary goal in decorating for the holidays will always be impressing the grandkids. . .