Starting to think about Christmas

It's been busy this week. Company coming, dinner(s) planned, appointments met.

Both of our adult kids are here for the holiday. SPECIAL!  Indeed.  We have a daughter and a son. Both are single this year, but finally happy. So they came to spend the Thanksgiving holiday.  They will be going home today. Daughter back to Denver, son with her and then to catch a flight to Phoenix on Monday.  Our youngest granddaughter and her special guy drove up from Fort Collins on Wednesday night. They will be here until Sunday. We had 11 at dinner including our two great grandchildren and daughter ex husband ( our granddaughters' dad) for dinner. It went really well and we are still "FULL"

I have been working on some Christmas themed items.  UFO's included. Some to gift and some to keep.

This one was finished and has now been gifted to our youngest granddaughter. She is 24 and has her own place. She decorates with purple and green and pink. She loved it.

This is the super big Mondo bag and has been gifted to DD. She is an entrepreneur in healing touch therapy. She carries lot of "stuff".

I put this teal snowman pillow in the bag for her. Her apartment is teal and coral and ivory. This will put a Christmas/winter feel in her living area. 

And for myself this week, I finished up the stitching together of these 4 felt angels. They have been languishing in my UFO tote forever. It was a kit from Creative Circle, the instruction sheet is dated 1988!  All the parts were still there, the only thing I added was a new packet of glue. The original had dried up ( go figure!)

There had to be a slight adjustment to the hair of the angel with the heart garland. I misread the instructions and used a single strand of rust colored yarn instead of the 3 strands. A friend suggested making the "skimpy" strands curly. So I brushed them with diluted school glue and wound them around a coffee stirrer cut into 2 inch pieces. It worked!!! 

On to the next project and good byes to family. I am linking up with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts. 

Stay busy and stay happy

A Little Friday Finish

It's been awhile since I have written a post. I have been "lurking" at all your blogs, but nothing has been finished!

I joined the UFO Challenge at APQ last January and was doing pretty well in getting each month's project complete. Then I hit a wall. October's challenge was to finally do something with a jelly roll quilt that I had done at a retreat several years back, 2012 to be exact.  I did not like it when the top was complete, so I put it away until I decided what to do!

I still don't know what to do with it and so October's challenge did not get done.  In this photo, I don't hate it, but in person....I do!

November's challenge was to finish another retreat project. This one was a "teaching project". The facility that our group uses has a stipulation that there must be a teaching element in our agenda. Three of our members planned this project. 

They supplied the 12 solid scraps, each of us brought background and batting. It is paper pieced and the teaching was a different technique using freezer paper. I'm sure most of you know this method. It is easy and the 12x12 project was done pretty quickly. It went home with me and there it sat.  Well , I dug it out of the bin where it had been living and set about to finish it. Wall hanging? Pillow? or something else?  

I settled on small wall hanging. Here is the finished little hanging. 

The multi-colored dotted fabric was just some scraps from my stash. I finished it using a technique I learned doing some small stitchery wall hangings from Sweet Stitches a few years ago. The colored strips that look like binding are just added like 1" borders. Then the batting is cut a little less than the new dimensions. The backing is added in two pieces so that there is a seam in the center. Leave an opening of about 3 inches in the middle of the seam for turning. It is then sewed together using the birthing method. Turn through the opening, poke our the corners, press well. Hand sew the opening closed. Quilt as desired. I have this hanger, the dowel need Mr. Busy's attention, it's a bit long! If I wasn't afraid of his scroll saw, I'd fix it myself!

So this is my little finish. Hopefully there will be more in the future.  I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and Busy Hands Quilts.