Monday Miscellaneous

Christmas Gifts:

I was the ever so fortunate recipient of this lovely piece of quilt-work from P. at The Way I Sew It:


The colors, the funky designs in the fabric, coupled with the black border..., well, it just makes me happy.  Every time. 


I left it on the floor, where I could admire it no matter where I sat, until this fuzz butt quilt inspector decided she needed to test her claws on it.

To quickly remove this already cherished piece from danger, I grabbed it and put it on the back of the couch.

It looked so good, that there is remains.

I also received a lovely purse and tissue holder (although I keep my driver's license and credit cards in it) from my mom at Suzi's Stitchin'.  She is one talented lady. 

She used all my very most favorite colors in the creation  Talk about "custom made!"

A Tale of Two Table Toppers...er Wall-hangings:


For Christmas I got on a handmade kick.  I showed off some of my work here and here.  But there were two items I didn't show because the recipients read my blog.

The first was made for P. at The Way I Sew It:

The second was made for my cousin:

Same pattern ~ one I've decided I like a lot.  I enjoyed seeing it made up in two different fabric groupings.  While my cousin's uses the traditional Christmas colors, I used one of the later Christmas fabric collections for P.'s.  (Actually, I won that bunch of fabric in a giveaway a year and half ago, so it was nice to finally use it.)

I put the border around P.'s, but as I knew my cousin would likely use hers as a table-topper on a very specific table, I left the border off.  The border would have made it too large for the table. 

I am quite pleased with them both.

If you look carefully, you'll see that besides the color and the border the two are not exactly alike.  

When I was making P.'s, I accidentally inverted the pieces attached to the center square.  I decided it looked pretty cool and left it that way.  I think I may actually like it better, design-wise.  A happy accident.

And I must add that I really enjoyed quilting these. The free motion holly ~ well, it's organic, and proved to be a lot of fun to do. I remember when I started free motion quilting, I was terrified.  Now an unquilted project is my playground! (Cue the maniacal laughter.)

A Christmas Table Topper

This diminuitive table-topper ~ yes, it is just slightly larger than 8" square ~ is a gift for a friend in Germany.  I shipped it her way yesterday and hope it arrives safely and in time.  If all goes well, it she should have it in a week.  One Christmas her gift didn't arrive until February.  I guess the post office sent it by wagon train that year.

With each project, I expand and attempt to perfect my free motion quilting skills.  I quilted these Christmas trees on the points.  As Sarah from Confessions of a Fabric Addict would say, they are "organic".  Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Actually, it's an interesting phenomena.  When I look at each individual Christmas tree I quilted, I see all of the flaws.  However, when I look at the topper as a whole, those Christmas trees really look kind of cool.


I quilted the outline of the gingerbread man.  It made him puff quite nicely.


As I tend to immerse myself in rather large quilting projects, I am finding these small projects exceptionally rewarding.

Monday Miscellaneous

Slack Before Christmas:

It's been an entire week since I last posted.  I'd love to regale you with stories of pre-Christmas busyness that interfered with my posting, but the fact of the matter is I was just not feeling well.  Picked up some mild bug somewhere.  I'm still shaking off the effects.

Photo by Clara S.

Christmas:

Christmas proved to be a restful day, here at the Prairie Quilter household.  A much needed reprieve from painting and feeling that we simply had to be productive.  So we lounged around, except for making the pancake brunch that the four of us (my grandparents, mother and me) enjoyed.

Also we were preserving our strength.  My cousin, Lori and her family are here, arriving yesterday, the 26th.  While a visit from my cousin is always an enjoyable occasion, the thing that will make this visit special is that we will celebrate our birthday together.  Lori is two years younger than I am to the day, both of us born on December 30th.  This will be the first time we've celebrated together as adults.  In fact, it will probably be the first time either of us has done much celebrating in years.  Having a birthday stuck between Christmas and New Year's is really rather inconvenient.  Most people are just happy to have made it through Christmas and are hoping to regain enough steam to push on to the New Year--myself included.  But with the two of us together the formula this year has changed.

Photo taken and modified by Eric H., Lori's husband

This Year in Review:

I don't tend to be an overly prolific quilter, and this year with all of the turmoil, it was particularly true.  Still, I'm proud of what I did finish this year:

Robynn's Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

The Teddy Bear Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

Matt's Quilt

From The Prairie Quilter

Sunshine in Winter

From The Prairie Quilter

I need to work on my quilt-naming skills, don't I?  Sunshine in Winter isn't bad, but the others could have been more poetic.

Food for Thought:
(Snagged from One Piece at a Time)



Blog Schedule:

If you don't hear from me again before next Monday, don't worry.  I'm just out with my cousin having fun.

Monday Miscellaneous

Quilters Know How to Spoil Other Quilters:

And spoil me, P. from The Way I Sew It did!   I was the lucky recipient of one of her adorable little clutches.  We've all been admiring the pictures of her clutches, but seeing first hand all the work and care she put into these, well it's just darn impressive.

See, even the inside has such nice detailing.  I love the musical print she used for the inside (I don't know if she remembers, but I happened to send her this one--how cool is that?).  And it's got pockets for carrying your driver's license and credit cards.





Since the purse I use isn't much larger than this it will be easy for me to make the switch.  The clutch is so pretty, I almost hate to use it, but then I've had people say that about quilts, and I really want my quilts to be used, so I'll be using this clutch.

And pillowcases!

I love the way she made the edging on each one from a different fabric.  Such a delightful bit of whimsy. 

Lighting:

In the sewing room, it's so important to have the light right.  We've been struggling with that.  The house came with these light fixtures.  They're pretty, but the frosted glass cuts out more light than one would expect.  The fixture holds two bulbs.  We tried changing the two bulbs to brighter bulbs.  Not good enough.  We tried changing them to CFLs called "Daylight".  It's bright, but weird.  Kind of like the light you would expect standing next to a blue O class star.  Made me feel creepy.

Then we decided to change out the light fixtures.  There are two in the sewing room and we managed to get one done.  This arrangement is much better:  3 bulbs, uncovered, and we can point them any direction we'd like.  It was our first time changing out a light fixture, and I must admit to feeling a bit of accomplishment.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand:

Every once in awhile I get it into my head to read a novel considered classic instead of my usual mystery or sci-fi genres.  Apparently Ayn Rand has somewhat of a following.  People either really like her work or really hate it.  Their opinions seem to be based on some philosophy she is supposedly promoting through her novels.  Eric, my cousin, and I had neither one read any Ayn Rand, and so he bought The Fountainhead, read it and passed it along to me.

I've made it only slightly past halfway and have put it down.  It's looking very unlikely that I will resume reading it.  I can't tell you how rare that is.  First off, if she's promoting any particular philosophy I don't see it.  I'm still at a loss about all the hullabaloo surrounding that issue.  I'd say it was because I haven't finished the book, but Eric has, and he doesn't see it either.  My reason for discontinuing the book is that I simply despise all the main characters.  I've found that I really don't care what happens to them.

Now, what I'm wondering is have any of you read it?  What are your thoughts on this book?

Redecorating the Blog:

Following in the footsteps of others, I've redecorated my blog.  Honestly, I'm not sure I'm pleased with it.  It seems a bit loud and busy to me.  However, I'm also a person who takes awhile to get used to change, so this often clouds my opinion.  We'll see if this remains or not.

Delayed Luck

I won!  I won!  Woo-hoo!  It's my first giveaway win ever.

Some of you may remember Kristen's July giveway.  I entered, but at the time of the original drawing my number didn't come up.  Okay, so while I had been imagining fondling the fabrics and squeezing the pincushion, I knew some other quilter would enjoy them as much as I would have, so I wasn't totally disappointed when I didn't win.  Luck of the draw, right?

I guess my luck was merely delayed.  One of Kristen's winners failed to contact Kristen and give her her contact information.  Bad for her and good for me.  When Kristen ran the random generator doohicky again, my number came up!  Yippee!  (I certainly hope that for the quilter who missed out, it was because she was on a cruise or a trip to Hawaii, or something fun like that.)

Anyway, the giveaway stuff is so cool!  Included is a generous piece of fabric with kitchen motifs--cups, pears, toasters--and cute little sayings like, "Hey good lookin', what you got cookin?".  Kristen included one of the pincushions she made.  This one has strawberries in the center and is simply adorable.  Finally, there were 42 five inch squares from Moda's 12 Days of Christmas collection.  Wow!  I feel like I made out like a bandit.

Thanks Kristen!