A Weekend of Family Christmas Fun . . .

Well you were right, once I gave "He Knows When You Are Sleeping" to my Dad, I felt great about it. My Dad was thrilled. I think he would have liked any quilt that I made, parents are like that, and I have an ugly Christmas quilt that would have fit the bill,

but I'm glad I gave him one that really suits him. I particularly liked Dianne's comment about me feeling sad to see this quilt go to a new home, "it will hug him when you can't, and you can't get any better than that". I could not agree more!

While I was home, I baked cookies with my Mom and niece and we made a great team. My Mom made the dough, I was the official roller, my niece the cutter/decorator, and then my Mom watched the oven, so technically I guess she was the baker.

This was the first time I'd made sugar cookies from scratch! I know, over 50 and just now making cookies, but it's never too late to learn!

When my daughter was smaller, we would make sugar cookies from the refrigerated prepared dough in your grocer's case. It was easy, they tasted OK, and the decorating was fun.

But once you've successfully made the real thing, I don't think there will be any going back to the old method. (I think wearing the hats was the secret to our success!)

As a matter of fact, they turned out so well, I'm thinking of buying cookie cutters for every holiday. I bought this Little Petite Candy Dish at Williams-Sonoma around Thanksgiving. They had it displayed in the store with candy and it looked so cute I couldn't pass it up. But once I got it home, it looked pretty sad, sitting empty on the counter.

Well it's empty no more!

yummy light buttery goodness.....

The funniest thing of all, I collect Christmas Cookie Jars, and my folks gave me #20 over the weekend... and I just love it and think it will look nice sitting out the rest of the winter.

But with all those cookie jars I collected over the years, they always sat empty! I NEVER made cookies.

And now that I've made cookies.....

they aren't going in a jar, I want to see them, so the cookie jars are STILL EMPTY!!

~

Two years ago, the Sunday before Christmas, we got the best present of all,

my folks gave us Cooper. It was a surprise, but aren't those the best presents! We couldn't keep him out from under the tree.....

and still can't!!

I hope you're enjoying the holidays at your house, from the decorating and baking to the time spent with family, it really is "the most wonderful time of the year".

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He Knows When You Are Sleeping . . . . . . . .

Towards the end of last year, Nicole of Sister's Choice Quilts and Allyson of Fat Cat Quilts hosted a sew along, The Red and Cream Snowball Sew Along. The pattern is Leftovers Again? by Evelyn Sloppy from her 40 Fabulous Quick-Cut Quilts book. The sew along was fun and some of us even swapped creams. The piecing was a breeze and my quilt went together easily.

I re-named my quilt "He Knows When You Are Sleeping" because I added a few Santas in the mix.

I took the flimsy to the quilter and pretty much put the whole thing out of mind, since I didn't need the quilt anytime soon.

Well I just picked the quilt up from Dawn at The Sewing Basket and am so happy to have it home on my red couch.

The back is cream Moda flannel, very warm and cozy feeling.

Dawn used a pattern that had the same look and feel as the Santas beards in the border fabric.

I loved making this quilt, am pleased with how it all came together, and am giving it away.

I'm wanting to make a quilt for every member of my family, my Dad loves Santas and all Christmas decorations in general, so once I got this quilt home, I realized it should really belong to my Dad. I'm a little sad to see it go, which is a first for me, I've never had any trouble giving my quilts away, but I'm sure once I see him sound asleep in his recliner, under this quilt, I'll feel pretty good about the whole thing.

Cooper thinks it's the right thing to do too......

or at least I think that's what that goofy face means......

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He Knows When You Are Sleeping . . . . . . . . .

Here it is, my red snowball challenge quilt, which I have named, "He Knows When You Are Sleeping". It's Quilt # 52 and finished at 60" X 72".

I'm am so happy with this quilt. I enjoyed swapping the creams, making the blocks, and looking at those smiling Santa faces everyday for 10 days.

At first I thought about going with a black inner border, and putting a block in the corners to separate the Santas.

I quickly dropped the black in favor of red. But I didn't like how this block looked in the corner.

So I made a different block, but I didn't like it either.

In the end, I decided I wanted uninterrupted Santas surrounding the snowball blocks. I matched the corners up as well as I could. I think once it's quilted it will be hard to pick out where the Santas meet.

I plan to use this material, cut on the bias, for the binding. It's a companion fabric to the Santa fabric.

I'm going with cream Moda flannel for the back.

Thanks again to Allyson and Nicole for hosting the challenge, thanks to my cream swapmates, and good luck to all who are joining this challenge. I look forward to seeing your quilts.

The quilt looks so much better in person, these poor pictures do not do it justice.

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It's A Wrap . . . . .

I finished my "He Knows When You Are Sleeping", aka Red Snowball Challenge, quilt top today! I could not be happier with the end result, plus the piecing was a breeze. Thanks Nicole and Allyson, I would never have made the quilt if it weren't for your challenge.

It's a rainy day here today so I could not get enough light to get a good picture of the finished product, so instead I'm sharing a couple of techniques I used to assemble the quilt.

First, I arranged all my blocks on my design wall, to get the best placement and to avoid duplicate fabrics being side by side. But when I started sewing the rows, unless I worked with two blocks at a time, I was all the time mixing up my perfect placement.

Since my quilt had 8 blocks per row, making 4 sets of 2 blocks, I numbered the heads of these pins to keep track of their order. (I just used a permanent marker) So working on a row at a time, I would mark the blocks of the two block sets 1 through 4. Once the singles were sewn together, it was easy to keep track of which sides should be sewn together next.

Here's number 1.

Here's another little tip for piecing your border strips, "stay out of the crotch".

If you think of these two strips of fabric as legs of pants,

it's easy to remember not to draw your line the wrong direction if you think, "stay out of the crotch".

See how this line stays out of the "danger zone".

When I go to sew the pieces, I line my needle up right on the drawn line, then hit the needle over button on my machine one time. The stitches run right down the side of the drawn line.

Easy Peasy.

I hope these little tips help you the next time you're assembling your quilt top.

Hopefully the sun will shine soon and I'll be able to share pictures of my top. It probably won't be quilted in time for the holidays this year but it will be ready for next year. After reading all the Cross Country Christmas Blog Hop posts today with all their Christmas quilts, I've decided for sure, "I need more Christmas quilts" !

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Progress . . . .

Things are progressing at my house......I got some of my Christmas Village Houses set up....

Before......

And After.......(typical November at my house, Christmas decorations mixing with the fall decorations (placemats).)

And a few more over here.....22 houses unpacked, plugged in and ready for Christmas, 40 more to go.

I'm also making progress on my Red Snowball Challenge, or as I'm calling my quilt, "He knows when you are sleeping". I've got all the blocks made! If you follow the pressing instructions they really go together easily. I hope the rows go together as easily.

As I mentioned Monday, I'm throwing a few Santas in the mix with my cream snowballs. I've decided on 9, here's the random pattern I'm going with.

The Santa faces are so appealing, this one looks like he's deep in thought.....probably wondering if Thelma's been naughty or nice . . .

Here's one Santa with another Santa sneaking in......

I think this Santa looks tired but he's got a great beard......I love each little rosie cheek.

Nicole, at Sisters Choice, had a blog yesterday about shoes, which made me remember of funny shoe story of my own.

I'm not really a shoe person, it's just not in my blood. The first year after I retired my primary shoes of choice were tennis shoes. Summer, winter, fall, spring, I was in tennis shoes, and loving it!

One day my husband mentioned that maybe I could wear some shoes besides tennis shoes. I'm guessing he had some shoes in mind like the ones above. Which are beautiful shoes, but they have a better shot of being a decoration in my living room than getting on my feet. So being the dutiful wife that I am, I went out and bought new shoes.....

these...they're Rocket Dogs!! My husband laughed when he saw them, but they are all me!!

I do have one favorite pair of shoes that aren't tennis shoes.....

Santa Shoes!!!

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It's Beginning To Look A LITTLE Like Christmas . . . . . .

Hello, how was your weekend, it was a busy one here, the time just flew by.

We started the process of getting ready for Christmas this weekend. My husband helped me get all my Department 56 Christmas Village houses down from the attic. It's definitely a two person job. I get up in the attic and drop the boxes down one by one. My husband does the catching and stacking.

I started collecting these Christmas houses over 20 years ago. I would get a few each year as gifts from family and before I knew it I had a whole town. Every year I say I don't have room for any more, then a new one comes out that "I just need" to complete my collection. I set them up all over the house.

I get them out before Thanksgiving for several reasons. First, my daughter is only home for a few days at Christmas, so I like to get some of the decorations out for her to enjoy at Thanksgiving. I also like to take my time setting them up, I enjoy looking at each one, the details amaze me every time. But mainly, I just like having them out, they are the first decorations up and the last I put away.

From the beginning I've always written the date I got the piece and the name of the person who gave it to me on the box. This one was from my Grandmother in 1992, she sadly passed away a couple of years later. But I think of her often, and always when I get out this house.

Looks like I picked this one up while on vacation in South Carolina in 1991.

I could not pick a favorite if I tried.

Although this pie shop is pretty darn cute.

Even the back of the houses, which folks don't normally get to see, have interesting detail. Here's a coat and broom by the back door with snowy logs stacked on the step.

Stay tuned for pictures as I get these houses all set up for the holidays.

I also squeezed in some sewing this weekend. I worked on snowballs for the Red Snowball Quilt Challenge.

I thought I had all my red snowball blocks done. I thought I counted 40 plus 3 extra.

But when I put them on my design wall for this picture I came up short. Not only did I not have the extra, I didn't have the 40 I needed. I'm not sure where I went wrong. My goal was to have all my red blocks done this weekend, and I had the time, if I would have counted correctly.

That's OK, I have plenty of half square triangles made up ( as I've mentioned before, I'm an over cutter) so I'll make a few more then get started on the cream snowballs.

I've got around 40 different red fabrics in the red blocks.

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Snowball Challenge and Challenging Shopping . . . . .

I've decided to participate in the Red Snowball Challenge.

Allyson saw this quilt in a shop in Utah, Nicole fell in love with it, so the two of them decided to share the fun and host a challenge, thus the "Red Snowball Challenge" was born.

The pattern is by Evelyn Sloppy, this is one of the first quilting books I bought. Not only are the patterns amazing, Evelyn's strip set directions are wonderful. I incorporate her stripping methods whenever I can. I will even rework a pattern to use strip sets. I think pieces are easier to fit together when they start out as a strip set.

The red snowball quilt pictured above is this pattern, "Leftovers Again?" Isn't it amazing how different this quilt looks totally scrappy versus red and cream scrappy?

At first I considered doing this pattern using scrappy pink and scrappy brown civil war fabrics. But you know me and red, even though I have two red and cream quilts and two red, white and blue quilts, I figured I could always use one more. Plus I have so many cream and red fabrics, I didn't need to buy any new fabric to make this quilt, you know what that means, it's a free quilt!!

Here are a couple of sample blocks I made to get a feel for the project. The finished block measures 6 inches square. Since I have so many red quilts hanging around my house year round, I thought I would add just a little something to this one to give it more of a Christmas feel.

I'm going to add some of these Santa faces to the center square of a few of the cream snowball blocks, no more than 8 or 10.

I'm also going to add this fabric as a border. I just love this fabric. I made a Irish Chain quilt with this fabric a couple of years ago, it lives in Los Angeles.

I'm naming my quilt, "He Knows When You Are Sleeping". Another blogger mentioned she was going to use flannel for the backing, I plan to do the same, making this a warm and snuggly quilt that I plan to nap under.

Since I'm adding a border, but also wanting to keep it around the original pattern size of 58" x 70", I'm going to make fewer blocks. Which translates to fewer half square triangles!!

Yesterday Nicole blogged about how she's using the Easy Angle to maker her half square triangles for this project. I gave it a try and like this method. I still like to make them a little bigger and square to perfection, but it's really not necessary. If you cut your strips accurately, the hst are pretty much spot on. I sure didn't miss drawing that line down the back of all those little squares. So far I've made 120, only 200 more to go!!

On another note, over the weekend I had the opportunity to visit a wonderful quilt shop in Indianapolis, Indiana, Quilts Plus, it was a Better Homes and Garden Quilt Sampler Shop in 2005. They do not allow pictures to be taken in their shop, but if you visit their website, you get a feel for what they have to offer.

They had many beautiful quilts on display, all with available kits. They had a kit for Miss Rosie's True Blue pattern that was lovely. They also had several of those wonderful fabric towers for many gorgeous families of fabric, like Rouenneries, Aster Manor, and Wiscassett. This shop is also participating in the Bonnie Blue Block Sampler and had their finished quilt on display, I loved it! So I wandered all over the shop, visiting with the friendly shop folks and trying to decide what to buy. In all honesty, it was overwhelming, there were just so many things that I loved......so after considering all my choices, after swooning over everything in this shop, this is what I bought.....

1/4 of a yard of three fabrics! No towers, no kits, no patterns, three 1/4 yard cuts of fabric that I liked but really have no plans for!! I spent a whopping $7.77

Could I be a bigger ninny!!

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