Snow......finally.........

This was the scene yesterday morning.  It was hovering around 33 degrees early but then dropped all day into the 20s so the snow is still here.  I don't think we are going to get above freezing for a few days. Winter began at 3:21 a.m. CST today. Christmas day is supposed to be around 40 so the snow will be gone.  

The Amaryllis my sister-in-law gifted to me is blooming.  The stalk is only about 12" high which is unusual.  More often they are close to 20" tall when they bloom.  There are 2 blooms like this and one more bud.  I have never seen one of this coloration in double petals before.

A Christmas card from Linda Swanekamp arrived yesterday in the mail.  She is such a talented watercolorist.  You can find her at the Art in Search blog.

A couple weeks ago a friend sent me this cross stitch which she made for me.  Isn't it beautiful?  This is 7" square so you can see how tiny the cross stitches are.  There are Christmas Cactus hanging at the top.  I wish I had a place to hang some of my cacti, but then because I'm pretty short I wouldn't be able to see how much water I was giving them.  I'm going to hang this in my studio. 

A December finish..............

This is the second of three neutral batik 16 patch quilts made from blocks pieced in 2018.  I finished the first quilt and pieced the top of this one in September this year.  The third top, waiting to be quilted, was pieced in April.

This one is now finished and is 71" x 93", the largest of the three.

I had enough yards of this backing fabric, also a batik, for this quilt.  The binding fabric was also in my stash.

Here is better view of the backing and binding fabrics.  It has Warm and Natural batting and was quilted by my longarm friend, Robin.  It is the last quilt longer than 80" in my backlog of quilt tops.  I still have more than 30 waiting in line for quilting, 21 of them small quilts, 66" or shorter.  

It started snowing last night.  Only a half inch was predicted for us, most of the heavy snow north of us.

 

Binding finished................

The binding was finished at 10:30 last night while I was finishing up the second batch of Chex Mix.  I'll measure it and take its full photo today.  It is big so it will cover my double design wall in the basement.

I usually use the mini pretzels in my Chex Mix but all that was available at my local store was regular size pretzels and these little pretzel sticks.  Batch one just about fills a gallon zipper bag.

Now comes the hard part, dividing up all of the cookies for several families and getting them into containers.

Cardinal in the snow

I am attempting to write a post from my Galaxy 9 tablet.  I can't figure out a lot of things so this will be short,  This snow globe is an early Christmas gift I received today.  It is snowing in the globe so that is why it's a little blurry. 

Added after the first comment, yes this is a Charley Harper snow globe.

More sweets..............

I started  the day by baking the English Toffee Squares.  A few family members like nuts on them and the rest prefer them without.  I am in the without group. Look! I took the picture before I started eating them.

Late in the afternoon I baked the shortbread cookies, a favorite with the grandchildren.

Now it is time to start making the Chex Mix.

Four corners are done but I have about 30" more to hand stitch.  I had 3 sessions of hand stitching between baking and vacuuming.

They are predicting light snow twice this week but no white Christmas.

Lots of trees............

I made the chocolate spritz yesterday.  I started out with trees and the second tray had other shapes.  One of the shapes was a fail and broke up when I tried to get them off the cookie sheet, more for me to eat..........

I did get a lot of stitching time on the binding.  The bottom corner shows up as blue but it is gray there too.  The combination of my lighting and the camera's ideas made this happen.  I start my bindings 6" before a corner so I have 3 corners finished.  I have 2 sides and 19" on a third side done.

Now I need to get busy and bake the last 2 batches of cookies this morning.

 

A busy day................

Last night I started the hand stitching on this binding.  I only got half of one long side done but I will stitch a little every night.

In the morning I ran the dishwasher (and emptied it) and did a load of laundry.  In the afternoon I made some fudge.

I also got the pale pink Spritz made.  The second tray got a little too brown on the bottom but that is the way I like them, so some of these are for me.

My rain gauge had a half inch of rain in it from Saturday.  Then there was fog yesterday morning.  It was a gray weekend.  The month is half over so that means the end of the year is a little over 2 weeks away and we will be entering the last year of the first quarter of the century.  Does that seem possible?

Onto a different project...............

There are decisions to be made on the other projects I have worked on lately so I sewed the binding onto the big neutral batik 16 patch quilt.  This one was 72" x 96" before it was quilted so the binding will take a while to do.  I'll start the hand stitching today between other things I need to do.

On other projects, I found 3 light Christmas fabrics I can cut 2" squares from so I can use up the remainder of the dark squares.  I also took the floral star blocks off the design wall in columns pinned together.  I'm not sure how I want to proceed with it so it's getting a time out for now.

We finally got above freezing yesterday and had rain.  lt is predicted to get even warmer the next couple days and then back in the 20s by Thursday.  

2 more table runner tops...........

Five stacks of 9 patches sewn.  There are 8 blocks in 3 of the stacks, 7 in one, and 9 in one totaling 40 blocks.

I got 2 table runner tops out of the 40 blocks.  Both are 13.5" wide and one is 26.5" long and the other is 31" long.  I pressed the seams all toward the dark corners so there were no nesting seams except where block meets block.

There are about 130 squares leftover and 90% of them are dark so it's a toss up whether they go into a zipper bag and get put away or whether I will cut any light squares to go with them.

 

Did you know?......................

This is my stash of Kaffe yarn dyed woven stripes that I started collecting in the mid-1990s.  They have been discontinued for several years and next February four of the styles of stripes, each in several colors, are being re-issued.  My stash has diminished some since I took this photo in 2022 because I made 4 quilt tops with them and have a 5th partially cut out.  I won't need to buy any of the new stripes since I still have a decent amount of the originals.

I didn't take any photos yesterday but I accomplished a lot.  I turned on the iron and pressed the 2 Christmas table runner tops and a fabric for the back.  Then I ironed 3 small backings for a colorwash wall hanging and 2 baby quilts.  I layered the colorwash piece on one of my cutting tables and will start basting it soon.  I also pressed the gray batik for the binding of the neutral batik 16 patch and cut the strips.

Last night I sewed 24 of the 9 patches for another Christmas table runner.  I have one more set left to sew and then I'll get all of those blocks pressed and I can start figuring out the layout.  Today I need to start baking cookies for Christmas packages.

Two...............

While the little Christmas fabric squares layout was still on my sewing cabinet, I sewed another table runner together.  It's as identical as it gets when some of the prints were larger and different areas are in the squares.  At first glance they look alike.

There were still 7 squares in some of the stacks so I did a layout of 9 patches.

This shows the secondary layout when the blocks come together.

I sewed the first pile of nine patches.

Happy mail!!  I feel so fortunate to be on the list to receive a Christmas postcard from Vicki Welsh every year.  This one is so pretty.  The blue is a little darker than it looks in this photo.

I just moved 2 to fit the new one in my collection.  I'll probably rearrange them at some point.  The blue is a nice addition to the group.

 

Little squares....................

 I planned a layout yesterday morning for half of a table runner.  I figured I could piece the same layout twice and then sew them together into one long unit.

I couldn't believe it took over 2 hours to sew the two halves.

One final seam and I have a 12" x 24" table runner top.  I could sew another identical top or I could rearrange the squares for a new design for the second one.

A friend gave me this little holiday lantern last year.  I love the fact that it has a 6 hour timer and turns itself on and off each evening.

I liked it so well that this year I added 3 trees that also have 6 hour timers.  I rarely ever have a light on in my living room so these are like little night lights.

Trimmed, binding, little squares................

The brown fabrics are so neat on their shelf.  That is because I took them all off and sorted them while looking for another choice for binding.  I didn't find any but I like the neatened up shelf.

I got the neutral 16 patch quilt trimmed and confirmed that the gray will be the binding.  I wish I would have found a piece of medium brown but none of the pieces that matched the quilt had enough yardage.  

Last night I sorted the 2" squares of Christmas fabrics that were rotary cut over 20 years ago.  I am planning on making a table runner or two.

Here are some table pieces I have made in the past with the same group of squares.  I like the one with the red/green border so maybe that will be the first one that I recreate. 

 

Choosing binding...............

I spent a lot of time looking for binding for this neutral 16 patch quilt.  The light fabric at the left is the backing, the gray design and black with stars are the binding choices.  The gray one is in a few of the blocks in the quilt.  Most of the other fabrics that I found that might work were too small to cut the number of strips I will need.  My only other choice would be to use a variety of strips.  I need to trim the quilt first so I can think about the right choice.

I decided to just knit last night instead of sewing and finished this purple dishcloth.

It was over 50 degrees yesterday and will be 10 Thursday morning.   I need to go out today while it's still in the upper 40s or low 50s and see if there are any branches to pick up.  I think everything else is done outside.

No progress...............

I didn't get around to sewing the floral star top, just not interested in doing it yesterday.  So here is a lot of miscellaneous.

This is the leftover block that didn't get used in the layout.  It will go into the orphan block box most likely.

I was cleaning off the dining room table so my birthday cards were gathered up.

My orange cactus is starting to bloom as most of the others are done.  I'm happy this one waited a while.

I baked Aunt Ethel's Kringlas last night.  I had to test them, over and over.  I think I ate 3 of them and pronounce them delicious.

 

Playing with layouts..............

Off and on throughout the day yesterday I came back to the design wall and moved a few blocks.  Here is the progress as I worked.

Still not quite there so I moved more blocks.

This is getting close and may be the last layout.  I'll look at it again this morning and see if I need to move anything.

Here are all three side by side so you can see better where the changes have been made.

 

30 blocks................

One more block finished, bottom right corner.  I have decided 30 blocks is enough so now I just need to decide on a final layout.

But then I decided to make one more block to replace one in the layout above, one that had a very light background.

I took out the block at the beginning of the second row and put in the extra block.  There is still one more block with a very light background that I may decide to replace.  I won't take that block apart, I'll just make a new one.  That is why I have 3 boxes of orphan blocks.

The red cactus is so pretty this year.

One more close up photo, just because it is so pretty.

I spent the morning yesterday going through my closet and pulling items to take to the thrift shop.  I made the trip to the shop right away so I won't change my mind on any of the items.  I had a few household items already chosen to add to the load.