Christmas Quilt

I decided I needed a project to kick start my holiday mood. Because, it does NOT seem possible that December starts on Saturday. Wasn't I just taking the kids to the pool on a 105 degree July day? I can protest all I want, but I suppose it won't make time slow down any.

This is a super simple quilt that I sorta based on this design. Rag quilts are easy. They don't require true quilting, you don't have to baste or bind and you don't have to be a perfectionist.

I chose three different (but similar) Christmas fabrics, used white flannel for the "lining" and ended up using red fleece for the backing. Turned out to be a very cozy quilt that helped keep me warm on our Thanksgiving trip this past week. Granny likes to turn down the heat at night! I brought it along to snip on our trip and I was able to put it to good use.

Here's the finished project:

 

I asked hubby what he thought of it and he said, "It's very Christmassy." I guess I'll take that as a compliment.

Donkeys!

I'm just barely squeaking this in before the deadline! It's a fun little project that is part of a fabulous festival called, "Donktober!"


It's a gathering of crafts & sewing projects centered around a donkey theme. My entry for Donktober is this pair of sock donkeys. Full tutorial here. I've made several sock monkeys before and I just adore them. And I've seen patterns for sock elephants, but this is my first encounter with sock donkeys.

I was just going to make just one and give it to one of my kids, but then I decided they should each have one. That way, the donkeys can be friends and then there would be no fighting or hard feelings amongst the kids. There's enough of that going on anyway.

So, how adorable are they? Definitely not perfect and lovably lumpy (I'm not so good at the stuffing part).

 

 

 

I'm not sure how much mine actually look like donkeys. Perhaps more like moose, or a character from Backyardigans?
 

 

Oh well, whatever they resemble, they are definitely cute and the kids think so too. We're still deciding on names, so far, it's just Donkey and Mr. Donkey.

Now, this has got me wondering...am I making some sort of political statement by making these and joining in on a donktoberfest? If so, I should probably go ahead and make those elephant ones just to be fair.

Thank you to Missy Mac Creations for sponsoring this party!

Catching Up...

on a lot of things around here. It's been such a busy month.

We went on a nice autumn vacation to the Ozarks:

 

We survived Halloween! Spaghetti & meatballs turned out awesome-

 

My pumpkin creation won a prize-

 

My son's definitely deserved a prize too, but he's been first place three years running (time to let someone else win!)

 

And we survived the craft fair. It was fun, a bit stressful and sometimes a bit discouraging, but overall I'd call it a success and definitely a huge learning experience! Here's our booth during set-up:

 

So, now I'm awaiting the busy storm of the coming 6 weeks. I've vowed to try as hard as I can to keep things low-key and low-stress, low-budget and low-"gimmie". Hopefully when January comes I can say that we succeeded.

I've been doing a bit of sewing during the past week, mostly Christmas gifts and today I tackled a fun little project that I'll be posting about tomorrow...