Nutcrackers!

Since neither of my potential quilt-holders are up yet (Jazzy is, but he's not tall enough to hold the donation quilt top up for display), I thought I'd post a couple pictures of the embroidery project I've picked up.

This is from a magazine from 1990 - Better Homes and Gardens Creative Ideas Cross Stitch Christmas.  The project was all done up to the point of the leftmost nutcracker's head.  He still doesn't have a face, technically, because I don't have the right shade in my stash.  I need to go buy sixteen skeins of embroidery floss later today in order to finish this work.  I only have six of the colors... and I definitely don't have enough black!

And here's what I was complaining about on the back:

Thread city, baby!  You can very easily tell where I took over on the hat and the second nutcracker's boots.  Having all those loose threads just hanging about is untidy and runs the risk of them showing through the white Aida cloth.  Not sure yet what I'll do about them.

What's black, white, and yellow, and has me feeling run over?

No writing today.  I'm stiff and sore for reasons unknown, and I'm counting last night's double writing for tonight's.

I finally got the Christmas tree stripped and everything holidayish except the outside decorations stored.  I also finally set down a thick layer of straw inside the chicken run.

And I finally got this quilted:

I trimmed the leftover backing and cut it up for binding strips.  But that is for tomorrow.  Tonight is an early night.

Christmas and Crafting

Seven quilts gifted at the greater family gathering on Christmas Eve.  (I made sure to say not to expect this every year.)  At least two of them have been slept under - Wonderful Husband actually napped under his Minecraft quilt, and Squiddle now has his rainbow quilt on the bed.  Jazzy was irked when he realized his dinosaur quilt is much too big for his toddler bed, but he decided that he wanted it on the sofa instead so he can cuddle under it when he's watching TV.  (Side note: Jazzy's speech is improving by leaps and bounds the last several weeks!  I actually literally physically cried with happiness a few days ago because he said "eight" and pronounced the "t" at the end, which he has never done before.)

I hosted Christmas Eve dinner this year, and pulled off the smorgasbord fairly well, I think.  My mother brought her potato salad and my sister brought the kottbullar.  And all three of the kids actually ate some things from the spread!  (Also, parts of the downstairs got a pretty good cleaning.)  One of the funniest parts of the evening was my sister giving Jazzy a drum set.  Backstory: when I was three, my grandparents gave me a drum set.  My mother never forgave them, and spent the next forty years swearing she was going to pay it forward on my children.  And did she?  No, she did not!  So my sister took it upon herself to fulfill that promise. ^_^  And I'm actually pleased about it - thus far, at least, the boys like it but in a less volumetric way than Niecelet was doing.

So, having done all that quilting leading up to Christmas, you think I'd be burnt out on it, wouldn't you?

No.

I went out into the garage this morning to find my bodkin to repair a few of the drawstring gift bags whose strings had been pulled through.  I also found a quilt top I'd been looking for, a round robin I did with the Orange County Quilt Guild a couple years ago.  I was thinking it might be a good baby quilt for my cousin's daughter, born in March.  (I know, I know.  But I lost a lot of mojo this year, like many other people.)  Except now that I look at it, it's so sewing-themed that I want to keep it for myself!  But I also found a purple mermaid-themed fat quarter, and realized I could use it to do a kind of reverse of Squiddle's rainbow quilt, and that would make a good baby quilt.  (Need to get more green, but I have enough of the other fabrics to whip it up.)  And I pulled in three projects-in-pieces.  One's a bundle of patriotic Friendship Stars I haven't looked at yet.  One's a Christmas wall hanging I'll blog about tomorrow.  And the third one looked like this:

It's 25 yellow churn dashes on black and white backgrounds, set on point and already pieced in rows with the setting triangles.  I have a vague memory of this - these were swap blocks.  Were they from Block Lotto, though, or the Orange Grove Quilt guild?  Or maaaaybe Orange County Quilt Guild - I never put my name in, but on the rare occasion someone else ran block party for me, they did.  But why did I get halfway on this and stop?  So I pressed all the creases out and seamed the rows together.

Not what you'd usually think of for a baby quilt, but given that babies rely on high contrast more than anything for their first few months, I think this would be good for an infant.  My friend Jamie from Orange County Quilt Guild was due to have her son late this month, and I think she might like this....

Christmas Eve Eve

Little boys got baths last night and clean jammies and I changed their bedsheets and pillowcases as well, surprising Squiddle when he came into his room after his bath.  He didn't understand that changing his bed meant different pillowcases as well, I guess?  Jazzy opted to keep the same quilt he's been sleeping under, but Squiddle wanted a change, so I dug out one of the more bohemian quilts I've done - a scrappy vintage top with fabrics dating probably from the 1950s through the 1970s.  The more important factor, to me, was the flannel backing.  Why?  We have central heating!  They're not going to need the extra warmth!  Sometimes what the instincts want has nothing to do with reality.

Yesterday I went out-and-about and got food for our Christmas Eve dinner, as well as stocking stuffers and chalkboard labels, since at this point we are largely a gift bag family.  I've grown to dislike the sheer waste of wrapping paper and have been shifting us over for a few years now.  But we don't have quite enough gift bags on the large end of things, so four presents got wrapping paper regardless

And I finished, washed, and wrapped Squiddle's quilt!  All done.  Seven quilts for Christmas - everyone who will be here tomorrow gets one this year.

The house is cleaner than it was, all the pots and pans are washed and put away, the kitchen counters are clear, the duck eggs are hard boiled, the shrimp is in the sink thawing, the jello chilling out in the garage (with a towel over it; the fridge was full) and all I need to do in the morning is prep cold foods. And possibly send Wonderful Husband to Costco for a cheesecake.

Christmas Quilting (Do Not Panic)

 Quilt #3 for Christmas done, run through the washer, and currently tumble-drying with its matching pillowcases.  (This being the first one that's bed-sized; thus, why the other two haven't had pillowcases.)  I've pulled #4 (this one being for my sister) out of the closet and am ATM piecing together the backing.

I also dug out in the garage and found some possible backing bits for Jazzy's quilt, or maybe for the one for my mother... and also some fabric to expand the one for my mother, as it's a sampler quilt that currently measures ~50"x70".  If I put a couple borders on it, it could become bed-sized.  The problem is, my grandmother made the quilt top in the 1990s, and fabric colors and patterns are very different now than they were then!  Fortunately, I have a too-big fabric stash, and have found some pieces of the right era.  Including some that appear in the quilt!

Four and a half weeks.  Four quilts.  I can do this!

Beds and Pillowcases

Yesterday was Niecelet's third birthday, which was a good way to fill up the afternoon for two little boys who didn't have school on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Mummy, OTOH, got to fill up her morning and evening with four loads of laundry.  In part because Jazzy woke up half an hour before the alarm, very unhappy, because he had soaked himself and his bed.  So beds got remade as well, and I thought I'd show them to y'all.

This is Squiddle's bed.  It used to be mine, from when I was maybe 12 up until I got married.  When we were upgrading him to a big boy bed after moving here, he had the choice between converting his crib to a double bed, or using this bed.  He chose this one.  Currently it's actually got two quilts on it, both blue.  The upper Galaxy quilt is Jazzy's, but I wanted one with a flannel backing for warmth when I was changing Squiddle's bed last weekend after the vomiting incident, and this came to hand.

This is Jazzy's castle bed, which after two moves is showing a bit of structural damage, but it's sound enough to last until he gets upgraded to a big boy bed in a couple years.  The Dinosaur Crossings quilt on it is, I think, actually Squiddle's.  We live in a sea of shared quilts.

This is one of the pillows on Squiddle's bed, and is actually his Christmas pillowcase from this year, which I sewed up while in England.  I use the Roll It Up pattern and just insert a 1.5" width-of-fabric strip, pressed in half the long way, between the layers for a flange.  The alphabet fabric, chosen because Squiddle is learning to read and write this year, was actually printed slightly askew, so I had to twist and nudge it a bit to get it to line up. I think it turned out pretty nice.

Jazzy got a Christmas pillowcase too, but as his bed is still using toddler pillows, neither of these are it.  Though I did make them; two of the sets of these pillows are matched, where this particular set is only matched in that they're both "star" pillows.

Christmas 2.0 and a Rag Quilt

Wow.  It's almost 8am and yet no one under the height of 5' (or, for that matter, over the height of 6') is awake yet!  I have the house to myself!

Yesterday we went over to my sister's house for Christmas 2.0 (and her belated birthday).  I definitely need to practice more on making the family Swedish meatballs recipe.  They weren't inedible, but neither were they perfect.  A good time was had by all, and I think everybody was largely satisfied with their presents.  I got a Hang It Dang It for hanging wall quilts!

And!  I also managed some crafting yesterday.  I now have this stack of flannel squares quilted and ready to sew into a car quilt for Jazzy:

At one point while in California I took all my leftover bits of batting from quilt trimmings, etcetera, and cut them into 7" squares.  And even after making these two 5x7 layout quilts for the boys, I've still got a ton of them and a ton of flannel, so I'm thinking something bed-sized with the rest.

To make these rag quilts, I sandwich those batting squares between two 8" flannel squares, sew an X across them, and then sew them together with 1/2" seams, all the raw edges facing toward the front.  The raw edges then get clipped every 1/4"-3/8" up to the seam, and they fray and fuzz and curl up nicely in the washing and drying process.  For Squiddle's quilt I sewed all the way around the edge and ragged that too, but Jazzy doesn't seem to like the rag texture against his neck, so I'll likely sew a traditional binding around the edge of this quilt instead.

Anyway, on to sewing while the house is quiet!

And as soon as I type that, Squiddle is up. :)

2020 Reappearance

A month later, I reappear!

Wonderful Husband and I took the boys to England for nearly four weeks over the holidays.  We spent the bulk of that time with his family in Southampton, but also hied up to Cambridge for a week over New Year's to visit our very dear friends Sergei and Morag and see/stay in the new third story of their house.  While we missed one of our traditional Christmas visit activities (riding on the Eastleigh miniature train), we did keep up with others (a post New Year's pantomime in Cambridge, this year Cinderella) and take a stab at making new ones (ten-pin bowling the day before leaving; I am horrible at bowling, and Wonderful Husband is awesome at it; nonetheless, a good time was had by all).  And I had the luxury of getting to see two movies in the theater while we were there: The Rise of Skywalker with Wonderful Husband and his father, and Frozen II with Squiddle and my mother-in-law.  Squiddle's first cinema experience!  I overall liked both films, but also have certain issues with each of them. *shrug*

And while we were in England, I got to give the Scrap Stars quilt to its intended recipients!  Despite my best efforts at obfuscation here on this blog, Sergei and Morag had guessed (or at least hoped) that it was for them, and it was!  Here's the finished object, with its matching pillowcases, displayed on my and Wonderful Husband's queen bed pre-departure (see the suitcase in the background):

And for the sake of the query: do you see dark circles first, or light stars?  Almost everyone's answer has been the circles, but I see the stars.  (And, huh, funnily enough to me now, one of the fifty-two dark fabrics in the quilt was from the first Frozen movie.  Sergei, Morag, a Where's Wally challenge for you: find the one square with a perfectly framed Elsa!)

Our return flight back out of Heathrow was delayed by two hours, but fortunately the airport has a children's play area, and equally fortunately my sister picked us up from the airport and drove us home.  It was raining relatively hard, and it had been a very long day.  Twenty-two hours, by the time we all tucked into bed!  And yet despite that, Jazzy woke at 4am this morning, so so did I, Squiddle wasn't abed much later, and Wonderful Husband got up around 5am.  I'm hoping we can beat the jetlag by Monday, since it's a school day!

Our lovely neighbor Marianne and her daughter Grace came over to feed our cat Sushi each day while we were gone, so he's healthy and wasn't too lonely, but unfortunately she's not as good at plants.  I think I can return all of them to health, but we'll see.  Good thing I gave them all a deep watering right before we left!

Christmas Success

We spent Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle's, Christmas morning on Skype with my husband's family, and Christmas afternoon at my parents'.  The quilts were all a success - well, Jazzy's slightly less so.  He was very distracted by the various toys he got.  But Niecelet apparently buried herself in her quilt when she opened it, and Squiddle spent a solid minute jumping up and down saying "Tinkerbell!" when he opened his.  Both boys got a shower last night, then into the new jammies Santa left for them, and read the new books Santa left for them, then slept on fresh bedsheets, with their new quilts and matching pillowcases.  Hooray!

For myself, I got several books I had wanted, a couple of them quilty.  And my sister-in-law, who makes the most wonderful cards, sent me a very neat quilty card!

So all in all, it was a good Christmas.  I hope yours was, too.

Christmas Sewing, Done Done Done!

Got up yesterday morning and trimmed the Tink quilt.  Found the Tinkerbell-dress-green remnant I'd set aside for binding.  Prepped that, and sewed it on:

Wrote out a label.  Stitched that on by hand.  Pulled together some leftover fabrics and whipped up matching pillowcases for each quilt.  During the middle of which, my 401 developed what I'm assuming is a timing issue.  Switched to the 15, finished things up, wrapped some presents, went to bed.

*thud*

(Also did other stuff - last bit of grocery shopping, dinner at my parents', post-sewing-jag cleanup, etc.)

Quilting, Done!

No pictures again, because I was jamming on quilting the Tinkerbell quilt yesterday, and was up until half past midnight doing so.  Bad Kristin!  But it's done and dusted and just needs trimming, binding, and a label.  And, honestly, the label can wait until after Christmas if needs be.

Also done: 90% of the grocery shopping, and converting some of that shopping into three batches of gurka (Scandinavian pickles) for smorgasbord with my aunt and uncle's family on Christmas Eve, and smorgasbord again with my parents on Christmas Day....

Short Post

No pictures today because yesterday's main sewing was Wonderful Husband's Christmas present!  and he might peek at this blog, or see it on my monitor.  But it's successfully done, dusted, and wrapped.  He is taking this week as vacation time and did me the favor of taking the boys to the Long Beach Aquarium for a couple hours while I sewed.  He also bought Christmas cards and made sure we got them written, addressed, and sent out.  Hooray!

I did get the backing for the Tinkerbell quilt sewn together, but that was all quilting-wise.

A Tree!

At Wonderful Husband's urging, we put up the Christmas tree today!

It has ONE breakable ornament (a glass heart) on it.  Which I made Wonderful Husband put up high, out of Jazzy's reach.  Good thing too, as he's already pulled off a dozen of the wooden ornaments within his reach zone.

I took the Autumn Colors quilt with me to dinner at my parents' this evening and started hand-stitching the binding down on the back.

And after we came home, I pulled out Niecelet's mermaid quilt top and the fabric I had set aside for a backing... and discovered the backing fabric was 36" wide, not 42".  Argh!  So I had to cut and piece a 7" strip into the center.  But, hey, I took the opportunity to piece the label into the quilt back so it can't be removed without cutting a hole in the quilt.  And this uses up some of my "free" fabric - the (gorgeous) main backing I got at Costume College in the $5 garbage bag full sale, and the (pretty) strip came from an estate sale last weekend where I got something like 9 yards for $3.

Tomorrow, I baste the mermaid quilt, quilt it, and ponderificate binding fabric.  And take Autumn colors with me to Jazzy's speech therapy to work on there.

Ooh!  Ooh!  Ooh!  Jazzy may or may not have said his first word!  Thanksgiving day, he several times indicated he wanted an apple with either "a-pa" or "a-pu."  And he's also asked for an "ana" (banana).  Hooray for progress! *happy mummy dance*

Recovered!

Thanksgiving happened, it was awesome, nothing went wrong except the whipped cream half deflating at the end.  Que sera sera.  This year was a rather small crowd - myself, Wonderful Husband, Squiddle, Jazzy, my parents, my two cousins on my mom's side, and one cousin's boyfriend.  We put the leaf in the dining table, hauled in the long wood card table, tableclothed 'em both, set them slanty and put all the food on the kitchen counters buffet style.

There was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, succotash, green beans, carrots, corn bread, both chunky and smooth cranberry sauces, mahi mahi for the ovo-pescatarian cousin (and vegetarian versions of the stuffing, succotash, and gravy for her as well), and pumpkin and apple pies for dessert with whipped cream and ice cream to go with.

I almost needed bigger counters.

But that utterly wiped me out.  It took a day to recover - a day during which I donated blood, and picked up fabric for Squiddle's Christmas present quilt.  And today I took advantage of continuing post-Thanksgiving sales and picked up a 20 yard roll of batting, which I will need to make any of the Christmas quilts!

Also today, I cut out the pieces for Jazzy's Christmas quilt:

And I maaaaay have also started cutting the pieces (not pictured above) for Wonderful Husband's Christmas quilt while he was out.  Shhhh!  Top secret!

(Egads, four quilts to do in four weeks.  Better get cracking!  At least Niecelet's quilt top is done.)

This evening, whilst Wonderful Husband entertained the boys by playing a bit of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I made registration marks and finished the last bit of quilting on the Autumn Colors quilt, and sewed the binding on.  And found out I'd mismeasured the (fortunately scrappy) binding by a whole side.  I went out to the garage, dug out the bag of bindings, found two pieces that were in the right colorway, stitched them on, and had like two inches left over.  Score!

And I did a tiny bit of holiday decorating.  I hung my Christmas Landing quilt just inside the front door:

Wonderful Husband was far more productive, and put up the outdoor lights as well as the string around the crown moulding in the boys' room.

Back Home

We arrived back in California Saturday afternoon, jetlagged and varying degrees of sick.  What fun!  The jetlag is slowly wearing off (up with Jazzy at 6am yesterday, up with both boys at 5am today...) as are the headcolds.  Tidying up the unpacking mess is going a bit more slowly, unfortunately.

I gave myself yesterday as a grace period, but today I need to start doing stuff.  Excavating my sewing area, contacting the guild members who covered for me, getting ready to resume my Wednesday night writing class, etc....

I didn't do too much sewing while in England, but I did borrow my mother-in-law's sewing machine and stitch a bit on some block bits I'd brought with me.  I also finished one of my half-done thrift store embroidery finds.  For Christmas, I got several quilting books, about a yard of fabric that various gifts were wrapped in, a giant silver thimble to corral scissors and the like in, and a vintage quilt top from my sister!  I also purchased about four and a quarter yards of fabric.  I think this year I'm going to try measuring my fabric in-vs-out.

I also gave away six quilts this holiday season.  One each to my sister, sister-in-law, father-in-law, aunt and uncle, our dear friends whom we visit in Cambridge, and the baby quilt to Wonderful Husband's friend.  Whee!  Room to make more quilts!  I also made something like seventeen pillowcases for Christmas gifts, and a pair of Lilo and Stitch pyjama bottoms for Wonderful Husband (which I need to hem up because apparently the pattern thinks his legs are like 5" longer... and he's 6'1" so it's not like he's particularly short to begin with!).

And!  My mother-in-law made her first finished quilt!  She had the top done, and I helped her figure out how to sandwich and machine quilt it.  I have a picture to be posted later, after Wonderful Husband wakes and I can get my phone from the bedroom.

For now, little boys need entertaining....

Catching Up With Myself

I spent this morning running around doing errands, and this evening is to be spent at quilt guild, so I have... four hours here in the middle of the day.  Which I should be spending packing, doing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning the house, cleaning the patio.  Eek!  Well, I do have a few more hours tomorrow morning before we leave for the airport, but still.  Tall list!

Here's the block I'm presenting at guild tonight for January's block of the month: a 9" yellow churn dash with either black or white background.

For now, time to relace my white trainers since they've been through the wash, and then, when Squiddle wakes, go raid the boys' dresser for socks to pack for them.

T-Minus Three Days

Getting ready to fly on Wednesday!  It's obviously been eating into my sewing time, though I did have time to finish the final round of my guild's Round Robin challenge for 2017:

We all get them back on Tuesday... and given that when I asked my fellow board members for suggestions on this one, Lorraine said she worked on it last, I know who has mine now! ^_^

Tonight we did mini-Christmas, exchanging gifts with my parents, since we'll be in a different country from them on Christmas, and more especially since their gift to Squiddle will be useful on the flight.  Among other things, I had made my mother some pillowcases, and I was pleased that when she opened them she thought the fabric was very Scandinavian, as that's exactly why I'd thought she would like it. ^_^  I got a couple books and a rust eraser for use on my vintage sewing machines.  The only downside was that one of the gifts for my father hasn't arrived yet.  (Neither has one for my niece.)  Well, they'll get here when they get here.

Sometimes it's not me...

Having got most of my to-do list done, and the minutes for last night's board meeting already typed up, I decided I could participate in this year's Christmas ornament exchange with my guild.  So I looked for a tutorial for Scandinavian Woven Stars, which I have made before.

And the result was a MESS.

Being confuzzled, I checked out another tutorial.  And this one worked.

So, no, it wasn't me.  It was the directions.  What a relief!

And I've decided to make six.  One for the guild, one for me, one for parents, one for parents-in-law, one for sister, and one for sister-in-law.  They're pretty easy and fast, so I've got three done now and am turning in for the night.

The GOOD tutorial is here.