Guild Christmas party....

Monday night was such an enjoyable evening with all the girls in our 'Material Girls Quilt Guild'.  Our president treated us to delicious soups & sandwiches after a nice tour of her home as she showed us all the improvements she and her husband had made.  Quite an accomplishment for sure.  
This was our yearly Christmas party so after the good food we all gathered around the Christmas tree and a couple of Santa's passed out everyone's gifts.  A lot of happy surprises when we all found out who our Secret Stitcher was.

What a wonderful gift I received!!!  She gave me a pkg of Clover Binder clips (I've been wanting these) and a Bohn marker (awesome)  AND.... a generous gift certificate from my favorite quilt store in Holdrege.   I am a happy quilter I tell ya!  Thank you again Roxie.

And I gave my Stitcher a wire table stand for her desk at work.  (I'm showing it off here on my end table.)  I made her the paper-pieced tree quilt to hand on it.   Isn't that cute?  She could also hang two more if she wants.
It was a fun night!!  
I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

I have a finish to cross off my Hope List for our Leisurely Race to Christmas!!

My "Deck The Halls" is now a completed table topper.

Sorry about the sun glare but I was in a hurry to get the picture taken so I could dish up my dinner.   Later when I saw the pic I realized I didn't do a very good job of smoothing out the ripples.  

Size approximately 37" x 40".  

 Here's more pictures to show you closeups.

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Deck The Halls {again}

The last border is finished and attached.  I know it's a little hard to see the outside white border.  Sorry.

I'll be binding it with the dark fabric after I quilt it.
Here's just a couple more pictures.....

Now I'm going to head over to Judy's Patchwork Times and link up to her Design Wall Monday.  Come along and check out some of the projects other quilters are working on.  

I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

What's on my Design Wall??

My finished Christmas Bows & Boughs!!  Woo Hoo!
Now it's off to my Quilt Bugs so the gals can do their thing.
OOPS... looks like I forgot to smooth down that bottom corner.  ;-)

I chose to use the green fabric for the borders.  I also have this same pattern in red but I think the red will go better with the rest of the Christmas fabrics I have left 

sooooo for this quilt the green won out.  

 I'm heading over to Judy's Patchwork Times to link to her Design Wall Monday.  Come join us.
...... and I hope you're having a great day. Glad you stopped by.....Linda

Leisurely Turtle Race to Christmas….

….with Squirrels Allowed  :o)

Trees.  Trees.  And more trees.  Oh and one package.  Saturday I started paper-piecing some of the trees and yesterday I finished the rest of them.   And before I stopped for the day I did get one of the small packages done just to see how it looked. 


Grab your cup and let's go over to Judy's Design Wall Monday to see what others have been up to.
Have a great day!  
Glad you stopped by. 

Christmas Snuggle

 For the last couple of weeks I've been searching for a Christmas quilt pattern that wouldn't be too fancy or take too long to make.  I bet I've chosen at least a dozen different ones.  And each one I've chosen turns out to not be ‘the one’ after all. 

So I move on and look for something else. 
Well, now I've found ‘the one’!  And this one will be exactly what I was looking for.  Finally!

It’s called Bows & Boughs and designed by Heidi Kory.  It’s a free download from EQ7 and the size is about 25.5 X 49.0 without borders.   You can find it in the Project downloads at Do You EQ (if you have EQ that is)
But I wanted something much larger so in EQ I started adding several more blocks and a 5” border until it became the size I want.   Mine will end up being around 55”x70”  by the time I get it finished.  A nice snuggle size!!

And so it begins.....
Today is Wednesday and today we (Kitty & I) start our engines.

Today is the day we pull our Christmas fabrics.  
I found several Fat Quarters and a pile of fabric yardage. 
 I must admit that I thought I had more than I have.  (See I told you I wouldn't remember).
Last year I worked up three snuggle quilts and used pretty much all of the older Christmas fabrics and then turned right around and ordered these new pieces.  
  

I also found a cute little Redwork bear that I made a few years ago.   I think this will be my first project.
Hummmm what to do with it.... 

Thanks for stopping by....Linda

Soooo here it is.... the beginning of September.
WHAT????
Are you SURE it's half over already?  Sheesh!!

Ok Truth!  I already knew that because my friend and I had been talking and "should'ing" all over ourselves.
I should do this.  She should do that.
We both should be getting serious about working on some Christmas stuff before it gets to be the week before and we're both frantic.
Well....me frantic anyway.   I don't think she's the frantic type.
    Well she may be....we're so much alike in thought.... but still.... (come to think of it, I don't get to frantic either).

Ok back to the subject.  We both decided that we really should get some of our Christmas fabric pulled out and get to sewing it up.  You know, before it turns so old that it turns into vintage fabric.  I don't need any more of that!!  I have plenty..... OLD fabric that is.... not vintage.

So tomorrow will kick off our Race to Christmas!!  We'll be pulling all our Christmas fabric that's hiding in drawers and bins and showing it off (because we probably can't remember what we have) and then..... 
We'll quickly decide on our first pattern and start wielding our rotary's. 
Did you catch that "quickly" word?  hahaha  Yeah Like that's really going to happen! 
Stay tuned tomorrow to see how we do. 
Oh and by the way.... You want to join us? 
             RACE YOU!!

   Thanks for stopping by....Linda

Now that the packages have all been opened and there are no more "secrets" waiting to be unveiled I can show you the rest of the pillow cases I made for everyone.

This was soooo much fun to pick out the fabrics for each person.  The cases are so easy to construct and I was almost sad when I was finished with them.  Everyone was happy and very much surprised.  Altho there was a bit of a squabble between a couple of the women arguing about their case being the prettiest!!  hahaha  All in fun of course.  

And here are the 'Boys'....

 I hope your Christmas was as wonderful  as mine.  It was much too short and even though we were short on days together we were able to squeeze in a special celebration dinner for our 'Collage Graduate' before we celebrated Christmas Day.

Congratulations Jessi.  We're so proud of you!!  You will be a wonderful teacher.

  
Thanks for stopping by....Linda

So if today is Monday that means I can show what I've been working on this week and link to Judy's Design Wall Monday.  I made each of the greats a Christmas pillow case.   There are directions all over the web about how to make these but the one I used was from Missouri Quilt Co.

These are so easy to make and it was a lot of fun picking out the different fabrics for the kids.  I plan to use each case as wrapping for one of their presents.

I have no Orca Bay results to show today.  I had to put it on hold so I could get caught up on the Christmas chores.
You know ... like the tree and decorations up.  Criminy!   That part of Christmas gets harder each year it seems.    So these last few days have seen an improvement concerning the house decorations (at least what I'm going to do this year)
Now I'm thinking today I can get back to my sewing room for sure.  I want to get at least a few of Clue #5 done so I can at least pretend to be keeping up.  lol


Thanks for stopping by....