Category: Christmas

Finished: Patchwork Forest Quilt

2 Comments

It is so weird to finish up this surge of Christmas quilts these past few weeks because it’s requiring me to go back and re-read the posts I wrote about them when I started them, and wow. So much has gone on, especially since I started working on the Patchwork Forest Quilt in the autumn of 2019. I randomly decided to jump on the quilt along bandwagon that Amy put on that year, and it was a great experience that I immensely enjoyed. It was a sweeter time: My niece had just been born, I was homeschooling Nathaniel, things had finally settled down after the move up here…it felt like we were really getting ready to live “happily ever after” during that autumn.

I keep talking about this quilt as “the one I made before COVID,” which is weird because there were a couple of other finishes before COVID really got its wheels turning, but this quilt feels like the last one I made before things started getting stressful with keeping an eye on the development of the COVID situation, so in my mind it’s just from “before.”

I had originally planned to big-stitch hand quilt it, but ended up hating the actual work of it and ripped out the hand quilting after a week’s progress. Then Christmas was over and I set it aside to bring back out when Christmas 2020 got closer so I could finish it then…

But I don’t think I had the desire at any point during 2020 to pick it back up to finish for Christmas. Last Christmas is just a fogged-up murmuring in my memory. When I had the thought to maybe try to finish it this year, I almost cried: The desire, ambition, drive in my heart was finally back. We got through Hell and came out on the other side and some things are still relatively the same. When my drive to finish projects dried up towards the end of last year, I knew I was stressed and anxious beyond my max and to leave the crafty side of things alone and just focus on surviving. I’ve been through that particular cycle enough times in my life to know that it’s a temporary adaptation to stressful situations, and I allow it to run its course, knowing that the fabric and the yarn will wait for me to come back. The fabric and the yarn don’t judge. Thank the stars for that.

This quilt is twin-sized (~72″ x 90″), and Renaissance has claimed it temporarily for her bed until I make her requested Christmas quilt. (The plan is to do that in 2022.)

Details:

Pattern: Patchwork Forest Quilt, Pine Hollow version, by Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter.

Fabric: I used lots of well-loved Christmas scraps, random half-yard purchases, and forgotten Christmas fat quarter bundles for this quilt and had so much fun with the color palette. I absolutely love this quilt. A friend of mine called it the “Hipster Christmas Trees” quilt, and the name stuck; I actually have to go and look up my previous posts to remember what its real name is when I write about it.

Backing: A lovely, thick black and white plaid Mammoth flannel, #SRKF-16943-1 WHITE. This quilt is heavy. It’s amazing.

Quilting: I went beefy with the quilting thread, using Aurifil 12 wt in the top and Aurifil 40 wt in the bobbin, color 2021. I eyeballed straight lines about 2.5 inches apart, and I love the slightly wonky unevenness of the quilting because it matches the slight wonkiness of the tree blocks. I also used black Auriful 12 wt to quilt the black inner border, and then returned to the white Auriful 12 wt to quilt a few lines in the blue outer border. (Note to self: Straight line quilting only with this thread; the machine did NOT want to do a serpentine stitch AT ALL…)

Binding: I decided to do a scrappy binding because 1) I couldn’t decide which fabric to choose for the binding, 2) I don’t think I had enough of anything to do a full binding, and 3) The more wonkiness, the better on this quilt. It was an extension of the fun to randomly piece together the scraps into binding while I watched “A Christmas Story” earlier this week!

Dates: I pieced this in October and November of 2019, and quilted it in December of 2021.

We were busy making epic amounts of Christmas cookies on the day I took pictures of this, and I left it hanging on the couch afterwards. Renaissance was a cookie-making machine; she baked from 8am until 5pm and was absolutely exhausted come dinner. She decided to go to bed at 7:30, happened to see the quilt on the couch as she headed to her room, and wordlessly scooped it up before trudging up the stairs. When we checked on her later, she was out beneath her new quilt, hopefully dreaming sweet Christmas dreams.

Free Gift: Sewing Room Cleaning Checklist

Leave a comment

Hi friends! As a token of my appreciation for your camaraderie all these years, I decided to make my sewing room monthly cleaning checklist into a PDF that you can use in your own sewing rooms! I wish you a wonderful holiday season and hope that the new year coming will be filled with beautiful, creative moments!

2021_sewing_room_cleaning_checklist_arrowsDownload

Well, That Didn’t Go As Planned…

Leave a comment

Oh my goodness, you guys, THIS MONTH. I thought I’d head into December all sparkly-eyed about my crafty goals and Christmas, but on November 30 I started getting a headache around lunch, and by dinner I was nauseous and gross, which continued for the rest of the week. It cleared up over the weekend, but meant I was behind on my December plan of action. I redrew my plan, squared my shoulders, and set off into the new week. “So I lost a week,” I told myself, “In ten years it won’t matter, so I’m not going to worry about it anymore.” Woo-hoo to practical reasoning abilities.

In-progress shot of the quilting on the Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt

I hit the ground running on Monday and killed it. I killed Tuesday. Wednesday morning started off with killing it again, but in the hour leading up to lunch my muscles started to ache as I stood to quilt the Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt, which I dismissed as post-workout soreness. I sat down to eat lunch. I realized I was too tired to eat lunch, so I thought I’d just keel over onto the couch and rest for a few minutes. When I woke up twenty minutes later, my face was congested and my throat was scratchy. Michael was working from home that day and he walked into the living room. I looked up at him and said, “I think I’m sick?”

“Congestion and a sore throat?” he asked.

I nodded my head.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s what I had last week.”

Awesome.

And, whoa, I must have gotten the Super Version of this germ because it knocked me onto my butt and I’ve been in bed all week. I think it’s starting to let up a little, but it also feels like it’s going to take a few days to start feeling totally human again.

So, in the spirit of sanity, I’m going to be missing from the online world a little bit this week. When a mom of four spends two weeks being sick, it really destroys the house, the laundry, the groceries, and the Christmas logistic schedule. I’m going to need this next week to catch up and then I’ll be back.

Wash your hands! Cough into your elbow! Merry Christmas!

Finished: Yuletide Botanica Orange Peel Quilt

1 Comment

Another Christmas quilt is complete! I’m really excited for this beautiful project to be out and usable!

The details:
Pattern: Orange Peel Quilt from Missouri Star Quilt Company
When I received this fabric from Blank Quilting last year, I didn’t want to cut it up too much because the prints were gorgeous, and, lucky me, I had picked up a MSQC Orange Peel template for 10″ squares from the freebie table at my last quilt guild meeting, so I decided to go forward with a super-sized orange peel quilt.
Fabric Collection: “Yuletide Botanica,” by Camelia’s Creation Studio for Blank Quilting, sent to me during my ambassador days in April/May 2020.
Background Fabric: A green with white polka dot print from American Jane’s “Bread ‘n Butter” collection, #21697-19. (Some of you may remember that I made a baby quilt from that collection a few years ago, and a tiny scrap of it was on the floor of my craft room when I received the Yuletide Botanica collection. I picked up the polka dot scrap and set it on the cutting table, and noticed that it paired nicely with the Yuletide Botanica collection. So I did some online shopping and got more. What a complete freak accident of happy circumstances.)
Backing Fabric: A green and white gingham flannel whose selvage disappeared somewhere. This quilt lived on on the TV room couch for a few days and every kid made a beeline for it because they love, love, love the flannel on the back. I’ve been informed that all future quilts should absolutely be backed with flannel.
Quilting: Aurifil 28wt & 50wt in color #2000 “Sand.” I quilted all the straight block lines, and then straight diagonal lines through the centers of the orange peels/footballs. It bugs me that I’m not doing more quilting, but my husband was using the last quilt I finished and he commented that he liked it better than most of my quilts because it was “floppy and not as stiff as the other quilts.” Sooo…I guess it’s fine?
Dates: I pieced this during May of 2020, and quilted/finished it in November 2021.

A funny note about this quilt that is totally a symptom of its times: The pattern has you use interfacing for constructing the orange peels/footballs, and I used medium-ish weight interfacing in this quilt, and realized I’d need to use a heavier weight quilting thread to make sure the quilting could withstand the extra weight of the beefier interfacing. After a few days of mentally berating Past Cara for choosing to go with the heavier interfacing and all the potential problems it could now cause, I finally remembered why I went with the heavier interfacing: I couldn’t find sheer or lightweight interfacing because it was sold out everywhere because people were making masks with it.

I’m making sure to note on quilt labels if they were made during Quarantine, because my historian heart adores facts like that. (I basically make quilt labels for my great grandchildren to read someday.)

This quilt will live on Em’s bed during the holiday season, and seeing how they’re graduating high school this spring, it will welcome them home from college for Christmas Break over the next few years, and that just makes my mother’s heart ache a bit. Hopefully it will be soothing sight.

#craftygoals: December 2021

Leave a comment

A new month means some new goals!

I’m hoping to finish the Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt, the Christmas Sew Many Stars quilt, and three secret knitting projects this month, which I will lovingly refer to as “Secret Knitting No. 2: Stripes,” “Secret Knitting No. 3: The Pattern I Don’t Like,” and “Secret Knitting No. 4: Fair Isle.” I probably can’t even show you the yarn for Nos. 2 and 3 because the intended recipients would probably figure them out, but I think I can get away with showing you mystery shots of No. 4 once I get going on it.

November’s #craftygoals were a success! I finished the Fresh Cut Pines quilt for Nathaniel’s bed, finished the Yuletide Botanica orange peel quilt for Emms’ bed (but haven’t done the photo shoot yet, so no finished pictures just yet), and finished up Secret Knitting No. 1: “Rainbow Ombre”.

Whew! Christmas season is always a whirlwind of projects, and I’m thankful for the focus they’re giving me this year while things still feel a little unsettled. It’s good to have projects and it’s good to have goals. I hope you have great success with your goals this month!

Random Christmas-adjacent Thoughts

Leave a comment

If I had the money, I’d do a complete Christmas makeover of my house every year, from the bedding to the living room curtains. Yes, I am secretly that person.

And, yet, simultaneously, I wonder why in the world we spend so much money on temporary decor that only goes up for a month. I try to cheat this system and decorate before Thanksgiving, but it seems to take a lot of energy to defend that decision to the very vocal “after Thanksgiving” crowd. (Honestly, why is this even an issue?)

I really thought Christmas parties were going to be more of a thing when I was an adult. I’ve watched too many movies that take place in the 1950s and 1960s. Also, I suspect that the no-drinking thing has soured that significantly. People generally don’t want to go to dress up and go to other people’s houses to just eat and talk without the promise of inebriating spirits, I’m finding.

My kids are obsessed with these little seasonal bird decorations from Walmart. They’re $5 a piece and we have to look for the newest ones each year and my children have informed me that it is my collection of $5 birds that they will fight over when I am dead. Not, oh…the quilts I’ve lovingly stitched for them, the hats I’ve knit for them, or the embroideries I’ve spent hours and hours working on…no, it’s the mass-produced blobs of styrofoam covered in cheap fabric scraps with metal legs sticking out of them that they’re going to fight over.

One of my biggest memories of childhood Christmas decorations was a book that played music. I don’t remember what the name of the book was, or what song it played, but I remember holding it in my hands and pressing the little hidden button/circuit that would make it start singing. And it always smelled like fake spice soap because it was packed away in a box that contained little polymer gingerbread people that smelled like that.

I’ve still never made a wreath, despite planning to do so every year.

I’m still chasing my dream of Christmas quilts on each bed. I’m getting closer with a few finishes this year, and I am very excited about it.

I bought buffalo plaid sheets for Nathaniel’s and Emms’ beds to match their new Christmas quilts. Because I had to, obviously.

I never did buy a Little People nativity set. That was the most adorable children’s toy set I’ve ever seen.

People who get in a tizzy over fresh Christmas trees would really get into a tizzy if they knew that my family actually cut down two trees each year so that we could drill holes into the “good” tree and insert branches cut from the other tree in order to make sure they were no bald spots in the overall fullness of the tree.

One of my neighbors had an inflatable turkey on their lawn this year for Thanksgiving, and every morning that Ren and I saw it, it was slightly deflated so that its head was leaning back like it was yelling, “Why, God, WHY?!?!” to the sky.

I don’t like inflatable lawn decorations. Don’t let that keep you from using them. You do you. I’m just not going to have them on my lawn.

I didn’t get to making a tree skirt for my craft room’s Christmas tree this year. Again. I’m hoping really hard it’ll happen next year.

Our Christmas Eve PJs this year all match. I’m smug about it. I think the kids are all apprehensive about it. Mwa ha ha.

In an effort to make the Isolated Christmas of 2020™ a little more special, I changed our Christmas morning breakfast into a Christmas Tea. It was well-received and I think I’m going to make it a tradition. Anyone know of some great breakfast finger/tea foods?

Finished: Fresh Cut Pines Quilt

5 Comments

You guys, I finished a thing! Like, completely finished it all on my own! I made a plan to finish a thing and it WORKED. No crazy injury to derail the plans, no pie-in-the-sky wishful scheduling that was impossible to maintain…just realistic, practical planning and showing up to do the work and it made me actually finish a thing. That is a big freakin’ deal to me because finishing things has not been something I’ve excelled at for the past year.

And it’s a Christmas quilt! For my kid! And he loves it! And it’s for Christmas! I love Christmas quilts! I finished a Christmas thing!

The details:
Pattern: “Fresh Cut Pines” from the book, Winter Wonderland, by Sherri Falls of This and That Patterns.
Fabric Collection: “December Magic,” by Emma Leach for Blank Quilting (from my brand ambassador days), paired with some random greens from my stash.
Background Fabric: “Fog” Bella Solids by Moda
Backing Fabric: A fantastic one-inch red buffalo plaid 108″ wide backing made by Windham Fabrics, Style #51462
Quilting: Aurifil 40 wt in Natural White in the needle, and Aurifil 40 wt Red in the bobbin. I quilted straight vertical lines, 2.5″ apart. I now wish I’d done a little more, but I was nervous about quilting my first twin-size quilt and wanted to keep it super simple.
Dates: I pieced this during May & June of 2020 and quilted it this November.

I’ve mentioned before that it is my dream to someday have a Christmas quilt on every bed in my house during the holiday season, and this is the first such quilt towards making that dream a reality. I am extremely, extremely pleased with its completion!

Teacher Gifts 2021: Include a handwritten note

Leave a comment

I’ve been helping out a lot in my kids’ schools since we stopped homeschooling forever ago, and I’ve seen the entire gamut of teacher personalities: From having their world revolve around their students to having a chip on their wizened shoulders about everything and only showing up to do the absolute minimum with a scowl on their face. I started substitute teaching last school year, and I’ve really seen what’s going on in my kids’ schools as a result, rather than just the professional face you get to see at conferences and school functions.

And oh my goodness, my kids’ teachers deserve some gifts this year. (They really deserved them last year, too; but I was in abject survival mode at that time and the thought didn’t even cross my mind. We’re all doing the best we can in the moment.)

Teachers are tired, man. Kids are stressed, depressed, they can’t stop looking at their phones for more than two freakin’ minutes, and can’t stop spewing their parents’ opinions about masks and vaccines if the shadow of an opportunity presents itself, which it often does because there’s still a lot of “Masks up, please!” reminders happening throughout the day. Parents are stressed and depressed, and super prone to flipping out and shifting the blame of their kids’ poor behavior choices onto the schools. It is absolutely insane right now.

To the teachers who are smiles and sunshine and there for the kids: I don’t know how you’re doing it, and THANK YOU SO MUCH because it has made a difference in my children’s lives to have your enthusiasm and optimism shining in their lives these past two years. I hope you’re finding healthy ways to cope with all this stress so you can keep up with the cheerfulness.

To the teachers who hate their lives right now: Wow, I totally get it. It is rough out there, and you are being asked to do a lot of hard things and it makes sense that it feels hard…because it is abso-freakin’-lutely HARD right now. I hope you’re able to find some way to release the stress and frustration that has been heaped upon you in recent years. I hope things start feeling better soon.

With all that in mind, I’ve got a hankering to spread a little cheer to the people who have been showing up for my kids via Zoom and from behind their masks after wiping down desks between classes, because I am so thankful that they’ve kept pushing through the difficulties of the situation and kept showing up, regardless of how they felt about it all. I do not take their presence in my kids’ lives for granted at all after these last two years.

So I’m trying to come up with an easy idea for teacher gifts this year because all my kids are now in high school and middle school, and 4 kids X 6 teachers = 24 teachers, which is a lot of teacher gifts, plus gifts for music lesson teachers, club teachers…it’s a very large list.

Whatever I come up with, I am going to insist that my kids each write a note to their teachers, personally thanking them. In all my subbing this past year, the one thing I’ve noticed that almost all the teachers have in common is that they keep those notes. They’re usually tacked up on a wall, but sometimes arranged on the inside of a cupboard door, or secretly taped to the inside of their desk drawer. One teacher had a well-thumbed stack of thank-you notes wrapped in a rubber band, with the note on top dated 2012. Quite a few teachers have printed off emails from students expressing gratitude. Those notes matter a lot to them.

And maybe I don’t get around to including a physical gift to go with the notes, because things are still a little crazy at the moment, but I can make sure my kids take a little time in the next few weeks to write a few sentences to their teachers.

And *I* can also write a handful of thank you notes to let these persevering souls know how especially thankful I’ve been for them these past two years. It’s been a long journey together and I haven’t expressed my gratitude nearly as much I should have.

Quilting the Fresh Cut Pines quilt

Leave a comment

Alright, then, crafty friends, we’re at the end of the first week of reinstituting crafty goals and WOW did I get stuff done this week. All hail the power of setting goals!

I had to rip and re-sew on the top border of the Fresh Cut Pines quilt because I originally sewed it on upside down, and then it needed one more solid border all the way around. I basted the quilt sandwich on Tuesday, and would have started quilting it too, but the power went out at my kids’ school and I had to go pick them up and deal with the aftermath of all that.

So I started quilting it Thursday while my kids baked and giggled downstairs, and it was a great, warm and fuzzy kind of day. I’m shaking my head over how fast this quilting is going now that I finally just started doing it. You ever just psych yourself out about even starting a task? Quilting is one of those things for me. Sewing in sleeves is another. And then one day you just start doing the work and voila, you’re done in a fraction of the time that you thought it was going to take to do it all. Sigh. Oh, Anxiety, you relentless liar.

Nathaniel is really excited about his Christmas quilt! Despite telling him quite a few times that I’m making it for him, he keeps forgetting that it’s for him, so I’ve been able to witness him go through “initial” excitement over this quilt a number of times, which is very heartwarming. It’s going to look so great in his room during the Christmas season!

The secret knitting is coming along nicely as well. (I totally want to keep this project for myself.) I finished up the first half of the project and am starting work on the second half today. This project/gift should be done by the middle of next week, easy. Yay!

I’ve got more secret knitting to do after that, and I’m trying to decide if I use a stash yarn that…will suffice, or order new yarn that will elicit feelings of perfection. I’m leaning towards sufficing because I’m apparently super jazzed over finishing UFOs and using up stash right now, and it’s probably best to capitalize on that feeling. The new yarn I want to order will probably happen eventually anyway (like for next year’s version of this project), so it’s not like I’d miss out on that yarn in the long run. I’m strung out on the feeling of being responsible, y’all…it’s been a long time since I felt like I was on top of things and it’s nice to experience this again!

How are your holiday crafting goals coming along?

Crafty Goals: November 2021

2 Comments

I’m resurrecting the idea of monthly crafty goals because ever since I stopped making them, my crafting performance has plummeted. Let’s hope this little bit of effort gets me back on track. (Although, to be fair, the last couple of years have been kind of crazy and full of obstacles that massively hampered consistent ANYTHING.)

Alright friends, it’s November, and the Christmas bug is biting hard. For years I’ve outlawed Christmas sewing this late in the year because of how stressful it can be, but I’m throwing that out the window this year because…I’m a grown woman and I can do what I want.

With all the slowdowns in shipping happening, I made the decision to not wait for Black Friday sales to order my kids’ gifts, which meant I needed to access my gift list that I update throughout the year. Whenever a gift idea pops into my head, I just jot it down in my little gift app, and come holiday gifting season I have a ton of ideas. And, shocker, there’s a lot of handmade gift ideas on that list. Many of those handmade gifts are already in-progress but living in some “time-out” pile in a shadowy corner of the craft room.

Well…the more I read through my gift lists, the more I liked the idea of checking some of those projects off, which has stoked the fires of Mt. Mojo and has me pretty excited to start working on them again.

November’s list is big, but most of these things are almost done, so I’m hoping they’ll go quickly?

Fresh Cut Pines quilt: One of my Blank Quilting projects from last year, it just needs to be quilted and bound. I keep hoping that I can send out my quilts to be long-arm quilted, but they’ve now been sitting for over a year. That means it’s time to just suck it up and quilt them myself, even if it’s just straight line or serpentine quilting. Done is better than perfect. This is Nathaniel’s Christmas quilt for his bed, and I still haven’t made him a regular day-to-day quilt, so his Christmas quilt is the first on the list so that he can have some sort of quilt to his name!

Yuletide Botanica Orange Peel quilt: Another Blank Quilting project, needs borders, quilting and binding. This is Emms’ Christmas quilt, and seeing how the kid is a senior in high school, it’d be nice for them to have their Christmas quilt done before they graduate.

Some secret Christmas knitting: A little gift for a special someone, and that’s all I can tell you at the moment.

If I’m going to limit myself to “practical goals,” I think I can feasibly get those three done this month. However, we all know I like to plan big, so there is hope that I’ll…somehow…magically…also be able to finish:

Patchwork Forest quilt: aka The “Hipster Christmas Tree Quilt.” I can’t believe I made this two years ago. Remember life before COVID-19? Those were the days. Anyway, I was going to hand quilt this one, but I really disliked the process and ripped out the hand quilting. It’s got a beautifully thick Mammoth flannel backing that makes it an incredibly heavy quilt that I cannot wait to snuggle under…the quilting is going to have to be extremely simple on this one because it’s a beefy blanket! I think I added borders to it to make it twin-sized, but none of my kids has claimed it for their own. It might live on Renaissance’s or Rachel’s bed until I finish up their requested Christmas quilts. And if not, it will make an excellent living room quilt.

Sew Many Stars Christmas quilt: Remember how I designed a whole quilt along last year? Geez, I kept myself busy! (Probably too busy, though…hence the almost zero amount of quiltiness that happened this year…oi.) It needs quilting and binding, too.

So yeah, it’s a big list, and I’ve still got to be careful to not overdo stuff with my healing foot. I’ve got the Fresh Cut Pines quilt up on my quilt wall as I type, and I’m already lamenting the supremely simple quilting I’m going to have to do to get it done. BUT…I wanna use this quilt, and if I wait for perfect conditions to finally get it sent out, I’ll be waiting a long time. There will be time for better-looking quilting in the future, but there’s not a lot of years left with my kids being at home and it’s important to me for them to have Christmas quilts on their beds. I don’t know why, but it is. Straight-line quilting will accomplish that, and someday, when I have my own long-arm quilting machine, I’ll do fancier quilting and we’ll wax poetic about the early quilts and their simple quilting designs.

Onwards!

What are your crafty goals for November? Are you doing any holiday crafting, too? Let me know and we can cheer each other on!