Friday, December 23, 2011

1930's Christmas Cactus



I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a most Happy New Year!


Happy Stitching Always!


Cheri

Friday, December 16, 2011

Santa's Helper

My daughter in law mentioned that cutest grand baby in the world was in a new big bed and she needed a bedspread, would I make a quilt?

"Would I make a quilt?" Hmmm, let me think about it a few minutes...of coarse I would.

This request was made not to long ago with no time limit, but don't we as quilters love to work under pressure? I, on my own, decided this quilt needed to be done by Christmas, so...I enlisted Grandpa in the process and last weekend he very willingly rotary cut and ironed half square triangles, cut out snake eyes, etc. while I kept sewing. It was the funnest weekend, Jasper the dog kept watch - sort of - wondering what we were both doing in the sewing room.




Ta Dah we did it! A whole top sewn in a weekend. I quilted it on my long arm on Tuesday and worked on the binding the next couple evenings.

The quilt is wrapped and on it's way to Texas to be opened Christmas morning. This pattern was called "Snoozin with Snakes" in the book Quick Quilts by Fons and Porter in the early 90s. I found this pattern at www.trianglesonaroll.com/ under their free patterns page. I increased the half square triangle size from 3 to 4 inch finished blocks and drew a new bigger head to make the quilt large enough for a full size bed.

In all this last minute quilt making craziness I did manage to get some Christmas cookies decorated. My sweet daughter baked them a couple weeks ago and I just had to pull them out of the freezer and decorate. The doves are my favorites because they turn out so pretty and are soooo easy. Royal Icing and a toothpick used to drag the blue icing to create the feathering. All of the recipes and cookie decorating instructions are found at:
http://kitchengifts.com/learn.html

I hope you are also enjoying the last few days before Christmas, what ever you take on, have fun!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

What Was She Thinking?

I came upon this old quilt (circa 1880 to 1890 from the Pennsylvania area) at a recent quilt show and it really tickled my funny bone. I love red and green applique so I was drawn right to it.
The quilting is lovely, double line striping.
A simple pretty border.
I do not mean it in a mean way at all, but really I wonder what happened?




I stood there and just had to smile. My first thought was maybe the quilter just got sick of the applique and cut that third block in half and said "this is it". My friend could imagine the quilter saying "that bed is only how big?" It became a game, another friend thought maybe the quilter's husband got into her fabrics and used her red fabric on a scarecrow and she did not have enough for the quilt.



Whatever happened, it is still a lovely quilt and my quilt buddies and I enjoyed it. So if you are working on a quilt that is not going quite right you never know, you may be working on a quilt that sometime in the future just may give quilters a giggle. Happy Stitching!