Ho, Ho, Ho...

Merry Christmas in September. It's finally finished. I put the last miter in last night and we took a couple of photos. Today, it's gone to my mentor for her to look at. It still needs anything that would be 3 dimensional, like buttons and bells and ornaments, but other than that, I'm done.

I challenged myself to include as many fabrics as I could, so each of the colored fabrics in the 2 inch squares or the half square triangles could only be used in one square and one triangle. It couldn't be repeated anywhere else in the quilt. The lighter halves of the hsq's do repeat tho. My mentor and I together didn't have enough neutrals to avoid repeating there. And, within the larger blocks, no fabric is repeated across blocks except the greens used in the trees. I repeated them so I'd have consistency in the trees. And, there isn't one cmas themed fabric in the whole thing.

This was a very fun quilt to piece and I learned so much about machine applique! I used freezer paper on the back, stitched it down with a narrow, monofilament blind hem stitch and when the backing fabric and paper were cut and peeled away, I went over the edges with a machine blanket stitch in a 40/3 black cotton thread. I did have to fusible web all the stars. I wasn't satisfied with my ability to get the edges to fold over the paper, so I gave up and fused them and blanket stitched.

After that, I started getting set up to quilt a quilt I made in a class earlier this year. I have had it pin basted for a while, but had too much else going on to start the quilting. Now I need the pins so I can quilt this one, so I'm going to get started this weekend. I have everything set up, and cleared off. The machine is threaded and there's a new needle. The ironing board has been lowered and it's at my left elbow. Now, can I keep from getting distracted long enough to get it rolled up and in the machine? Heck, no! When I spread it out this morning, I figured out what has always bothered me about the top. It's three badly placed pieces of focus fabric that always catch my eye and need to be replaced with something else, something darker. So, I'm going to applique new pieces over them tonight before I start the quilting and cut them out. Then, it will be perfect??????

Now, what else could distract me?

Y'all take care and have a wonderful holiday weekend. We have nothing planned so I hope to get lots of quilting time in, around our normal stuff, and some resting up and preparing for next week. See ya' round the net! Lane