Promised Pics...

This is the panel Christmas quilt that I won at the auction. I (my husband) hung it on the wall last night. It looks very festive.

This is the pics of the teapots I won in the Christmas auction the other night. The white one in the front was made in England. The one in the back is Cloisonnes. My favorite is the yellow and blue one to the left. It is metal. I love looking at them. (Looks like I have a sheep collection growing also.)

Here are two more favorite ornaments:

The one above I made about 3 years ago. I love redwork and found this pattern in a magazine. You can't really see it in the picture but the outline of the bird is trapunto. I had never done this technique before and thought this was a small project I could give it a try on. I have three of them on my tree. They all have a different red border fabric.

This is about 10 or 12 years old. It is Noah's Ark in the whale. It is heavy and I love it. I am real careful with it every year.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Late Start...

Getting a late start today. My husband and I had a dentist apointment this morning for a cleaning. It throws me for a loop when things happen out of the ordinary. I just caught up on the blog reading and I still have about a million things left to do today. I'm sure it is the same for everyone. So I think I need to get to it. But first, I had a great time at the Christmas Party/Auction Tuesday night. I bought a Christmas panel quilt (which I will take a picture of later after I hang it up in the livingroom). I also bought a basket of small teapots. I have an unexpected collection that is growing (you know the kind I'm talking about, the kind that you don't plan on but someone buys you a teapot then someone else buys you one, then they see you have two and assume you love them so it becomes a collection because after that people buy you more, then you think you have a collection because you do and you start looking for them to add more) anyway, they are small and I think so cute. Again I will post a picture later. For now I will post some pics of more ornaments for my tree. I hope you are not sick of them because I kind of like to look at them.

This one I got in an ornament exchange at one of the Christmas guild parties about 3 or 4 years ago. I love the embroidery work on it. She is sweet looking.

This one I made last year. It is made of felt and it was a set of 6. It is a little bag and I put money or gift cards in them last year. I like the colors and simpleness of this one.

This one is about 6 or 7 years old. The snowman is blown glass and the long swirl bottom is molded. It has already broken (one of his arms) and been glued back on. It is very delicate. I try to buy a glass ornament every year. My hope is that one year I will be able to put up the tree with just glass ornaments but for now I have alot of other ornaments I like. Maybe a smaller second tree somewhere will have to do later. Hope you enjoyed looking at my ornaments. Time to go.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Christmas Party/Auction...

Our guild's Christmas Party/Auction is tonight. It is our only fund raiser for the year. All year long our members donate items for the auction (or sale table, we take anything). We have a dinner then an auction to sell our things. The only problem with it is, it is only open to members. That's right, we donate the items and we buy the items back. How crazy is that! It started when the guild was small and I can understand why they started it this way but, we are a larger guild now and it would be wonderful if we opened it to our family and friends and others to buy our items. I also think we would earn more money, but we have members that have been with the guild a long time and they want to keep it the old way. You know the saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks"? Well that is abundant in our guild. We have members that are set in their old ways and want to keep things going the way they have always been. Good thing I just want to quilt and don't take all of these things personally. But it does stop progress. I for one am tired of fighting (I use this word loosely, we really just don't see eye to eye is all) with them so I have decided to stop volunteering for things. I can spend my time at home quilting. After saying all of that, I am looking forward to our Party tonight. These ladies are a funny breed and good entertainment.

I have some more ornaments to show you, if you want to see.

This one my sone made. It is a beaded crawfish. If you live in South Louisiana you usually love crawfish. I think he is real cute! It looks like he has shades on but it is really his black beady eyes. I know they don't look appetizing but I have already had some boiled crawfish and the season has really just begun. They are small in size and sometimes hard to peel early in the season.

This is a new one this year. We went on a field trip to a Christmas Tree farm and syrup mill early in November and they had these ornaments in their gift shop. I love blue and white and fell in love with this little beauty. It has holes in it, through the Christmas trees. I just love it.
Hope you enjoyed the ornaments. I have plenty to do today before the party (one of which is to decide what to wear) does anyone else do this? Wait til the last minute to decide what to wear to a party. I always do.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Manual Fix...

I checked on the photo problem that Blogger is having. They said they are working on it but in the mean time there is a manual fix you can do to make the pictures enlarge like they used to. You have to change some things in the Edit HTML. You can find this fix listed under Known issues under the help center.(Just in case any one wanted to know that) I fixed the pictures in past postings and they enlarge now. Just thought I would let you know about it.

Our tree is finally has ornaments. We did it Saturday night. I thought about going with a smaller tree this year but, I tell you, after putting the ornaments, I don't see that I could. We have a lot of them. I'm thinking about packing up the ones that are each of my children's in a separate box for them to have when they want them for their tree. The children still want them on my tree but something has got to give. I could not even put them all on the tree this year. It was too full.

Here is a couple of my favorite ornaments on my tree. I am thinking of posting a couple everyday until Christmas. This one my older son made in elementary school. They used paper and paint. Isn't she cute. There are several of these in other shapes. He hangs this on our tree every year.

This one below is one I purchased from our guild Christmas auction a couple of years ago. I had one similar to it already (painted differently) and I love the way it was painted. Isn't it beautiful? (I could not get the full picture of it. It has another dog on the right of the lady.)

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Quilt til your arm falls off...

AHH...Friday

I love Fridays. The end of the work week (for some) and the beginning of the weekend (for some). I don't have anything on the agenda today except ripping out some quilting stitches. On Monday I was machine quilting on the frame and the freemotion foot broke. I didn't realize til later that is was acting up for a couple of rows back. I have a new foot but I can't continue until I rip out a row or two. It is hard work standing up. The stitches are too loose. The tension was off because of the foot (at least I hope it was because of the foot). If I rip out and start to quilt again and the stitches are still not right I will have to start trouble shooting. ARGH!

How about some pictures of some quillows that I made for my niece and nephews a few years back. They are so quick and easy. I tried to match the fabric with what they were interested in.

This one was for my niece. She was into Clifford the dog so I found the fabric and this is it. She uses it a lot.


This one is for my godchild. He likes to fish and I thought he would like this fabric. He uses it on his bed and to lay around on the floor.

This one is for another nephew. He is very much into cars and trucks (at least at the time, now he is into dirt bikes). I'm not sure where he keeps his but I know he uses it.

I love making things for people. I enjoy the moment when they open it or receive it. The look of surprise on their faces and then the satisfaction I get when I know they like it is like nothing else. That is why I give away so many of my quilts (that and the fact that I would have had to move out to make room for all the quilts I've made if I would have kept them). Another reason why I love Christmas so much is all the gift giving. There is no other time of year when people are so giving. I just absolutely love it.

Quilt til your arm falls off...

Yesterday was a long day. Our mini group met with the Christmas committee in our guild to organize all the things that were donated to our Christmas auction/party which is next week. There was a lot of stuff to sort through. Lots of boxes to load and unload out of our cars. I was so tired when I got home at 2:00pm. Then last night we were putting up the tree with our kids. I had to arrange it on a day when my son would be here and he was here washing his clothes. We had supper and we put the tree up but we had so much trouble with the lights that didn't have time to put the ornaments on. We will schedule another day for that. After every one left I fell asleep on my chair while trying to watch a movie with my husband. Oh well, can't watch 'em all. HA. This is our Christmas tree with just lights (there are lights on it but I used my flash and they don't show) The picture below is without a flash and you can see my husband and daughter working on the lights.

I really enjoy the holiday season and I love having a tree. This tree was given to our family by my husband's aunt. She bought it and realized it was too big for her house so she gave it to us about 14 years ago. (Wow, I had not realized it was that long ago) I sheds just like a real tree and to me it looks real. It fools people all the time. The only problem is because it is large I have to move furniture around to make room for it. This is the first year I have it in this area. It will take some getting used to.

I have a doctor's appointment this morning so it is time to go.

Quilt til your arm falls off...