christmas etc!
Sunday, December 29, 2013 at 11:20PM Christmas in this house usually means handmade, but I ran out of time! I suppose that's not a surprise with two small, dependent children, but ugh. I always feel like such a jerk buying gifts when I could have made them instead.
So, on to what I did manage!
My brother-in-law and his wife got a little quilt for napping under. It's for couches and I tried to stay in their color scheme, which is to say, mint and navy and purples. (I had to add pink. It needed it.) Some Denyse Schmidt fabric from her Shelburne Falls range came in really handy for this color scheme - you can find this at Kim's. The rest of the colors are Konas and I am way too tired to drag out my color card. :)
I love the simple line quilting I did. I'll be honest, I was half and half between stippling loosely and doing straight line quilting - I'm glad I went with the latter.
Here it is all washed, tumble-dried and crinkly.
Simon's Grandma lives an hour or so north of us, but taking the kids up is super tricky, so we don't often make the drive. I was determined to do it this Christmas, though, and even more so, I wanted to take her a quilt. What better than a quilt I started as a challenge with Sel more than a year ago?
This is Many Mountains. Made with Kate Spain's Terrain and Kona Snow. I backed this with the infamous Ikea number fabric and I did an all-over very loose stipple with Aurifil in a coral shade. It came out 67" x 70". My favorite parts were the flying geese! I think they make nice bright borders.
This quilt was hard to finish for a lot of reasons but I am so happy it has gone on to a new home and I rather think it suits Grandma Jean perfectly.
We took the kids up a few days after Christmas. Owen and Grandma got on great.
She was absolutely delighted to meet her first great-grandson!
Few things are better than deploying my charming baby in order to make someone's day. I think it worked very well in this case. :)
Tonight I wrapped up another embarrassingly long WIP. This has been quilting with a cross-hatch pattern in the center and the outer border is loopy FMQ. I used the same Aurifil coral because it was actually pretty perfect...and I had bobbins to use up! Haha. :)
Tomorrow is binding. :) I am feeling exceedingly productive this week.
Oh! And the biggest change of late - I decided to bite the bullet and do something I have always wanted to do: I gave myself mermaid hair.
It involved bleaching, toning, dyeing, and now upkeep. I'll write a post about it at some point just for reference but suffice to say I LOVE it! I feel more me with bright blue hair. :)
I expect all my last-second purchases to be arriving in the postbox in the next few days. panic-ordered show quilt fabric, another bolt of Michael Miller for backgrounds (Fog, to go with Bright White and Soft White), more magazines, and a new color card, to name a few things! I am also thinking about a New Years' Eve destash sale. I'd like to shift some fabric to start the new year correctly - but we'll see if I can get organized!
Hope you have all had a happy holiday season :)
Cheers,
Penny x
Reader Comments (3)
I have to say, you are rocking that hair color!
I love that first quilt and the fabrics you choose for it! Congrats on the hair too, my sister and friends have amazing colored hair too, but I know after a month I'd be "screw you maintenance" and be dying it back to brunette. Have fun with it, it looks great :)
The look on Owen's face in that first picture is adorable!!