Merry Holidays Everybody

May the holidays find everybody not so busy to be able to enjoy their peace, their companionship, and their friends and families.

I feel like Christmas, in particular, has found such a commercialism opportunity and it's not the reason for the season. Even quilting stores and web sites have used the holiday to try to ply you with "deals" and "values". Hopefully this is a trend that won't stay around long.

For my Christmas giving, I volunteered to quilt five charity quilts for the ASQ guild in Charlotte. Five quilts in 10 days. They were delivered on Wednesday of this week (thank you mom once again for assisting in getting them here and back).

Four of the Five Charity Quilts

The fifth one was on the frame when I snapped the pic, but it was orange, orange, orange.

Hazel seems to be getting bigger by the day.

Hazel at 13 Weeks with her "cigar"

She is learning about studio time and self-play. She tries to "help" me in the studio and I have relegated to giving her left over handles from various bag projects so she feels like she's actually a part of my studio time. 

Since she's getting so much better at independent play she enabled me to actually get this finished this week for my father and his wife Charlotte. They are coming later today for a visit and I made this for them for Christmas. 

The photo and the finished project

Here it is a little closer...

This took me about a week to complete

I love, love, love doing art projects! This is probably why I enjoy doing my long arming so much. I get to enhance the quilt with my version of art (since drawing and painting are NOT my thing). Here's what's on the frame this week.

My New York Beauty ready for long arming

I have started putting curly feathers into the outer border, curls in each of the "points", half feathers into both small borders strips, and half feathers into the quarter circles. I haven't actually started quilting the quarter circle points or the spaces between since the art project above took up much of my time.

Katie and I have realized we are less then a month before our annual winter retreat! We look very forward to this event every year, and last year, due to circumstance and weather, we were unable to attend. Barb and Margaret are supposed to come along again this year, so it's going to be very nice catching up with them during the four days we get to sew together.

I'm trying to get all my pieces cut before we leave. Everything is cut for the Antelope Canyon top I'm going to make and am now cutting for a pattern Katie drafted (from a picture no less). It's a rather complex scrappy block, so to make sure I'm keeping myself organized I have devised labels.

Keeping things organized as I cut from my scraps stash

That's about all the news as of late.