Five Shadows

Straight into the new year – it’s Birthday Season for my 2 grands, and also for my newest DIL. Plus January brings the 1st year Wedding Anniversary for my eldest son and his lovely wife!

I have a little appliqué in progress for my son and DIL. She loves vintage. Owning a vintage truck is on her bucket list. When I saw Buttermilk Basin’s vintage truck pattern, I just had to make it for her!

I’m still looking for the right background fabric. This piece still needs a lot of stitching to finish it up. Then framing.

I plan to make an apron for my DIL for her birthday. I did some digging in the fabric stash today and did find something I think will work. That will be next up. Photos coming.

What do you have new going on in 2020?

Last To Do List:

1. Finish quilting and bind Christmas Countdown quilt.  ✔️ see it here
2. Enjoy Christmas with family!  ✔️

To Do List:

1. Finish wall hanging for DIL & son.
2. Make apron for my DIL.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Home Sewn by Us.

Here are a few of my projects from 2019. Some are still tops waiting to be quilted.

I played with stencils to create little appliqué and machine embroidery quilts, 8 1/2″ x 10.”

My DIL asked for a table runner. She loves appliqué, here is what I made for her -

UFO! I pulled out this oldie. Only had 2 blocks to finish, then finished top.

Another UFO. Top was ready for quilting, finished it up and gifted to my nephew.

Yet another UFO finished for my son and DIL.

Hexie & Panel quilt top done, waiting to be quilted.

In December I followed along with Helen Godden’s Christmas Countdown Quilt Along and finished this little wallhanging. 19″ x 20 1/2″

Also in December I made a quilt for my Dad using his neckties.

To-Do List

1. Make up a working list for 2020 – UFOs to finish, tops to quilt, new quilts to start!

Happy New Year All!

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Home Sewn by Us.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Season’s Greetings!

For December’s OMG I planned on keeping up with Helen Godden’s 24 day Christmas Countdown Quilt Along.

Success!

I did keep up with the daily quilting, which was just a little bit each day. Then Christmas Eve was also quilting the background.

Christmas Day I finished with the binding before family came over to Celebrate Christ’s Birth.

In December, I also wanted to make six small quilt gifts for my quilting friends.

I used part of the Christmas Countdown Quilt Along design to create six little quilts.

I made little ‘pillow cases’ and slipped them over clear plastic free standing picture frames.

The Merry Christmas is hand embroidered.

The yellow flame, holly berries, and outline of holly leaf are colored with Sharpie markers.

These were really fun to make!

Happy New Year, All!

Linking to One Monthly Goal hosted by Patty of Elm Street Quilts.

I’m checking things off the Christmas To-Do List!

This past week I focused on making a quilt for my Dad using his discarded neckties.

Above is a little bud using a tiny bit of one of Dad’s ties.

This photo shows a flower made from ties and the quilting.

And here is the lap size quilt, finished at 47″ x 56″. The background is meandered. The vine is echoed, and little curlicues are quilted on each of the flower petals. Warm N Natural Batting, Superior and Auriful threads. Dad moved into assisted living last year and said he no longer wanted his neck ties. I talked him into selecting 2 of his favorite ties to keep, just incase he ever wanted to dress up. Then I suggested using the rest of his ties for a quilt. He liked that idea. I hope he likes what I did with the ties! I shipped the quilt to him yesterday. His birthday is later this week, perfect timing to complete & ship the quilt!

I have four more little quilties ready for gift giving. One will be gifted Christmas day, and the other three are for my Curvy Quilters group. We are meeting Thursday, so again, phew! I’m glad to finish them up in time to gift.

The design is adapted from Helen Godden’s free Christmas Countdown Quilt-A-Long.

My December One Monthly Goal is to keep up with Helen’s Quilt-A-Long.

At day 17, it’s looking pretty good, and I’ve kept up with the daily design. Phew!

This week I hope to start on a few Christmas Stockings. I’ve a few appliqué ideas. I need to dig through fabric and see if I have nice back ground fabrics.  Procrastination? Maybe. I want to make 4 stockings that show each person’s interests. Maybe I’m making it too hard on myself, and should just go with a Christmas theme.

What are you up to the week before Christmas?

Last To Do List:

1. Make lap quilt for my Dad from his neckties. Mail by the 16th!  ✔️ Made, photoed, and mailed!
2. Finish up the 3 gifts for my quilting friends.  ✔️ Phew! All done and ready to gift Thursday and Christmas day.
3. Dream about making some Christmas stockings.  ✔️ I did a little checking around on the web, looking for ideas.
4. Bat Moon Rising – probably not. Putting on back burner until holiday prep is complete.  ✗

To Do List:

1. Host quilting group Thursday.
2. Start on Christmas stockings.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday Hosted by Home Sewn by Us.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! With celebrating our Savior’s birth comes time with family and friends. Part of the celebrating brings gift giving. Today I’ll be meeting with friends and I made each a little giftie.

I traced and slightly altered one of the candles from Helen Godden‘s free Christmas Countdown Quilt-A-Long. I made a pillow-like-case and slipped it over an acrylic photo frame.

I used Sharpie and Fabrico pens for coloring and outlining. Auriful and Mettler threads for the FMQ. Merry Christmas is hand embroidered  with Auriful thread. The finished quilt is 8 1/4″ wide by 10″ tall. I have three more to do the hand embroidery on before stitching them to slip over a picture frame.

That’s it for this week. I caught a bug – going around my family – and spent a couple days in bed. Not how I wanted to spend my time, but I’m glad to be over it! Hope it stops with me, sparing everyone else.

Hope you are all staying happy and healthy!

Last To Do List:

1. Continue stitching up Bat Moon Rising ✗  Illness struck, and most quilting stopped for a few days.
2. Make a few quilted gifts for my quilting friends. ✔️ 4 complete, and 3 to finish up.
3. Keep up with Helen’s quilt-a-long ✔️So far so good!

To-Do List:

1. Make lap quilt for my Dad from his neckties. Mail by the 16th!
2. Finish up the 3 gifts for my quilting friends.
3. Dream about making some Christmas stockings.
4. Bat Moon Rising – probably not. Putting on back burner until holiday prep is complete.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Sewn by Us.

Thanksgiving Day our town holds the Galloping Gobbler 4 mile race. This is my second year to participate with my kids and their spouses.

We didn’t have any full out runners from our family this year. Usually my eldest is in the top 200 finishers of the almost 2000 people participating. This year he and his wife decided to power walk together as she had back surgery and was just not up to running. Our fastest time was Nathan (middle of the photo in black hat) at 9 minutes 39 seconds per mile. My DIL and I walked in at 19 minutes 16 seconds per mile – 2 minutes slower than last year. There is always next year to make improvements.

Here’s the snowman mug rug I put together and mailed to my SIL.

This was a kit from a LQS. The pattern is by Quilt Doodle Designs. Finishes at 7 1/2″ x 10 1/2″

I am playing along with Helen Godden and her Christmas Countdown Quilt-A-Long.

Each day we will add a little FMQ to the design.

Last To Do List:

1. Thanksgiving baking, cooking! ✔️
2. Enjoying Thanksgiving with family and friends. ✔️
3. Make and mail a little snowman mug rug for my SIL. ✔️ Mailed yesterday!
4. Any quilting or piecing I might find time for this Thanksgiving week ✔️ Prepped for Helen Godden’s quilt-a-long

To-Do List:

1. Continue stitching up Bat Moon Rising
2. Make a few quilted gifts for my quilting friends.
3. Keep up with Helen’s quilt-a-long

Linking to To-Do-Tuesday.

My December One Monthly Goal will be to keep up with Helen Godden’s Christmas Count Down Quilt-a-long. Helen is posting daily videos on YouTube and Facebook.

Here is my piece all ready for the first day of free motion quilting.

From December 1st – the 24th, Helen will demo filling in one part of the her holiday drawing with a different FMQ motif. She offers a free download of the drawing, follow the links above to join in.

And here is my first FMQ for day one.

Echoing the candle flame in yellow thread. That was easy enough.

I also have a snowman mug rug to finish and mail.

Plus I’d like to make 6 little quilty gifties for my quilting friends. I haven’t landed on an idea yet. We’ll see how that goes. I might just have to do store bought gifts this year.

I’m linking to One Monthly Goal hosted by Patty over at Elm Street Quilts.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays All!

As stated at the beginning of the month, I pulled out this UFO to baste and work towards quilting as my goal for November.

I’m glad I worded it “work towards” quilting. I did get the quilt spray basted. This is the largest quilt I’ve attempted to spray baste at 92″ wide by 104″ long.

I only completed the quilting 4 of the twelve 16″ square blocks. That’s a start.

2 of the blocks photoed below

With the large expanse of white background, I think I’ll just do diagonal quilting. Not sure. At this point I’m just not enjoying the process. And with Christmas just around the corner, I will set this quilt aside – again – and switch to some Christmas gift quilting.

I’m counting this as a finish for November as I was not anticipating finishing the top back when I wrote up my goal in the beginning of the month.

How was your month? Check out other OMG at Elm Street Quilts.

This week filled up with lots of doing, but not much quilting. Here are just a few things I did get to this week.

First, I had to tackle my messing sewing room since I couldn’t get to the cutting mat to continue with Bat Moon Rising!

I did get the mat cleared off, but not the rest of the counter top to the right of the mat.

Anyway, that gave me room enough to cut out more Bat Moon Rising pieces.

I only got a little bit of piecing completed.

Sunday was a day spent with family. Birthday celebration and a Train Show. Our granddaughter thought the Hodges Hand Cars was the best part of the Train Show. Here she is riding a Hand Car.

You turn that wheel round and round to go around the track. She thought it was great fun. Husband thought it was great exercise and a fun way for kiddos to run off some of their energy! LOL

Our grandson, not yet big enough for the Hand Car, sure enjoyed watching the bigger kids!

He stood there going “whoo whoo!” He loves anything with wheels and loves to imitate the sounds too.

Woot! I finished stitching Dropcloth Sampler last night.

I’ll figure out how to frame it, most likely an embroidery hoop, after Thanksgiving. I’ll try to remember to keep an eye out for a hoop while shopping this weekend.

Next up – Thanksgiving baking! Remember those Pumpkin Dinner Rolls I posted last Tuesday? I’m making them today, and putting together the dressing. The turkey is defrosting in the fridge.

I hope you are all enjoying gearing up for the Holidays!

Last To-Do List:

1. Continue with Curve it Up quilting ✗
2. Keep piecing Bat Moon Rising ✔️
3. Piecing block 4 of Happy Little Things ✗
4. Finish Satin Stitch in the Dropcloth Sampler ✔️

To Do List:

1. Thanksgiving baking, cooking!
2. Enjoying Thanksgiving with family and friends.
3. Make and mail a little snowman mug rug for my SIL.
4. Any quilting or piecing I might find time for this Thanksgiving week

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Home Sewn by Us.

Bat Moon Rising is coming along. I’m using an ombre fabric for the background, which means more fussing with placement of the fabric.

I’ve started with light background around the moon and will work into the darker fabric as I move away from the moon. This is a Sew Kind of Wonderful pattern from the Mini Wonderful Curves book.

Happy Little Things: Block 4 embroidery is all stitched up. I’ll be using the fabrics shown for piecing the block.

I didn’t think I got much hand work done this week, but when I pulled out Happy Little Things last night, I only had a little bit of stitching to complete the design. Plus, since I took a road trip last Friday, which included stopping at a new-to-me quilt shop, I bought larger embroidery needles that worked well with the Perle Cotton.

With Thanksgiving in the USA just around the corner, I’m dreaming of making these cute pumpkin rolls for dinner – and use them as part of the table decorations.  Or this version. Maybe both, since I have some vegans in the family.

(photo from Handle the Heat)

Do you have any special recipes that always make it to your dinner table during the Holidays?

Last To-Do List:

1. Continue quilting Curve it Up ✔️ I didn’t get much done, but any progress is better than none.
2. More fabric cutting, then start piecing Bat Moon Rising ✔️ I’m happy with the out come so far!
3. Hand embroidery in the evenings ✔️Finished block four of Happy Little Things, but didn’t get to Dropcloth Sampler.

To Do List:

1. Continue with Curve it Up quilting
2. Keep piecing Bat Moon Rising
3. Piecing block 4 of Happy Little Things
4. Finish Satin Stitch in the Dropcloth Sampler

Linking to To-Do Tuesday sponsored by Home Sewn by Us.