Thank you, Leah Day

If you haven't found her yet, Leah Day's blog, 365 days of free motion quilting, you need to go there and see the wonderful work she's doing and hte tutorials she's providing. I took two of her quilting patterns and used them in my medallion that I finished yesterday.

The first is tree roots. I used this one coming out of the inner points and around that little tear drop. This is from the back of the quilt where it shows up best, but even that isn't very clear. This is very tight quilting and it fills the spaces perfectly.

The next one I used was pebbles in a stream out in the outer border. That was perfect for a curving shape around the quilt.

And, here's a picture of the finished quilt. If you enlarge it, you'll see my blue marks. It's not even washed yet. I'll wash it when I finish the log cabin. I'm about half done with it now. But, have to stop.

Sydney and I are going to Goodwill to drop off a last minute donation and then we need to do a little shopping for dogfood and stuff. And, I think we'll go spend a coupon on a pair of earrings for her. Always busy.

No big plans for new year's eve. We can't stay up late enough. We've tried, and I"m sure we'll try again this year, but I'm also sure that we'll watch the new year in some earlier time zone and head off to bed. It's just who we are. Tomorrow we start a new year. And, for the first time in a long time, I have resolutions. I'll post more about that tomorrow. And, we'll see how it goes. Til then, have a great day. Lane

BORING!

Men that are 40-something should not have to entertain 12 year old girls for two weeks. It is not a pretty sight. Everything was BORING! Awww, don't you feel sorry? We've baked cookies and we've watched TV. We've done crafts. She's read most of Twilight. We've shopped. We've cooked. Still feel sorry for her?

Okay, so since all that was BORING and because I have to work yesterday and today, I put her to work. She's cleaned out the fridge, scrubbing it till it sparkles. She's washed all those specialty items in the kitchen drawers that only get used once in a while. She's scrubbed the kitchen floor with a brush and scrubbed the shower. Now do you feel sorry for her?

When I ran out of chores that needed doing, I gave her essays to write about things that have been going on around here. Feel sorry for her now?

Okay, well, here's what you don't know. She got in sooooo much trouble on the last day of school that all her electronics were taken away and I was counting on them as babysitters the days I had to work from home. But, when they ask her what her parents did about it, she has something to talk about. We'll never know the full truth about what happened. I'm not sure she does. It's all about hormones and holiday stress and wierd mother stuff and not knowing how to be friends. She won't tell us what's really going on...and what 12 year old does?

And, if that wasn't enough, Aunt Flo came for her first visit last week. 'SCUSE ME! Can we go back to crayons and Barbie, please??? I'm not ready. Oh, I thought I was ready. I really did. We've had two women friends come over and talk to her and make sure we had the supplies we needed. But, I weren't ready. And, anytime anything remotely approaching sex comes up, Rob puts his fingers in his ears and starts humming. Literally. Thanks. Last night, he even said, "You know, you're the one that's going to be talking to her about all this stuff." Yeah, like that hadn't already been made clear.

That's why, as soon as I'd done my part to make a fantastic holiday, I retreated to the sewing room. It's my refuge. And, I have spent every spare moment in there. That's how I made that mariner's compass I blogged about a few days ago and this log cabin table runner. There's one more section to the runner, but I couldn't get it all in the picture. The compass is to use as a table topper and the runner is to cover the top of a low cabinet. I've started quilting the compass, but as usual, have pulled out as much as I've put in. What I thought would look good did not.

Okay, so lunch is over and I need to get back to work. The kid is doing another writing assignment. All three have been really personal essays and when she's done with this one, we're going to burn them in the fireplace. Tomorrow, I don't have to work and she and I can actually play some more. Take care and have a great Tuesday. Lane

Back to work.

Hello, it's Monday. And, lo, I am unprepared. You saw what I worked on all day Wednesday, and Thursday I was no better. These were the days when it was good to be prepared. We didn't have to go anywhere or do anything except what we wanted to. We did get out on Thursday, just to see what was going on and it was crazy, but because we weren't doing any power shopping, we were free to enjoy the melee and without having to get our hands dirty.

Here are some of the pictures we took Thursday night. These are some of the people in our neighborhood that went the most all out on decorations.

This is Rob in front of the most elaborate village set-up we've ever seen. These folks finished their garage and put these picture windows where the doors were. Each window has a full village set up on shelves inside it. It's insane! The rest of their yard is just as full. As we were walking up, a man came out of the house. We spoke, he spoke, he got something out of his car and went back inside. Sydney was just apalled that we got caught looking in his windows. But, hey, anybody that has Santa dancing to music in the front yard wants people to walk up, huh?

Christmas Day was wonderful. We all unwrapped our gifts and then I started cooking the feast. We were six for lunch and everything was wonderful...well, except for my rolls. Don't know why, but I had the worst yeast luck I've ever had. The monkey bread didn't rise, so the balls were very dense and dough-ey and the rolls didn't rise. Guess there was something wrong with the yeast I used. But, everything else was good and there were a few laughs about the "mini" rolls at lunch.

Saturday, I pieced a log cabin table runner and yesterday was chores. It was silver polishing year and I spent 4 hours on that. Luckily, I don't have to do that but about every 6 ot 7 years or it would not be worth it, but everything gleams so after it's been done. And, the wind has been blowing like crazy around here, so there were lots of sticks in the yard that had to be dealt with. Rob started taking down the decorations. That's really early for him. He usually wants to do that on NY day.

Okay, so now it's time to work. Fortunately, I can work from home today and tomorrow. School doesn't start again until next Monday! Goodness, what will I do in this house with Sydney until then????

Take care and have a great Monday. Lane

And in the heavens, a star shone to light their way...

Okay, maybe I've taken the drama one step too far. But, I did make a star and I did finally find a few minutes to log into the internet. We're going out in a little while to look at and photograph lights in the neighborhood. I've been baking all day; a pumpkin cheesecake and a lemon meringue pie...I know, that one's not too Christmassy, but I have all those lemons, after all, and a pie used up three of them.

This little quilt is to go on a round table between our two recliners in the family room. I have one more to start that's a little log cabin to cover a cabinet. I'd like those two finished when we take the cmas decorations down on NY weekend so I can put them out when the house goes back together. We've been using a cmas quilt turned upside down between the chairs...hey, it worked, but it wasn't very pretty.



Hope your holidays are working smoothly. I'm sure I'll post some of the pictures we take tonight as a cmas wish tomorrow. Take care. Lane

A queen size quilt in 21 days

Okay, that's a record for me. When I blogged about it previously, I really didn't think I'd get it finished. But, here it is and just in the nick of time. And, it's completely finished. Nothing to do after the first of the year, which was my backup plan.

Here it is with a little more of the texture showing.

And one block to show off all the feather quilting. Every large block got that same freehand, free-motion shape, as did every rectangular block and every small block. And, while all those feathers are pretty, I'm pretty tired of feathers, that's for sure. On all of them, I just marked the spine and then let the petals flow, which means they're all slightly different.

And, here's the backing fabric. You can just barely see the border feathers quilted along the edges. There will be a dustruffle made from a lighter flowery print and then the curtains and valance will be reversible, this blue fabric and the lighter print. The light print is almost the same design, but all the flowers and leaves are colors; blue, red, pink, gold and green on a white background.


Okay, that's all for today. It's my last day at work and I need to tie up all my loose ends. I don't have anything else that needs to be done before christmas except make a "monkey bread" for cmas morning. Frozen roll dough, rolled in melted butter and then cinnamon/sugar and baked in a tube pan with pecans sprinkled all in it...the perfect energy boost for unwrapping presents in front of a fire. Take care. Lane

Lovely days

What a wonderful 3 day weekend. Sydney was out of school on Friday and instead of having to work a half day, one of my deadlines got pushed back and I had the whole day off. We played and we had fun and we did a little last minute shopping for her bedroom stuff and some little gifts and to take advantage of all the JoAnn's coupons I could...and I used most of them.

Saturday, I quilted and they raked leaves. Another fun day for all of us. The neighbors came and brought presents, wonderful things for us all. They made sugar plums this year from a recipe he found on the internet. They were WONDERFUL and I intend to try to find the recipe today...all dried fruits and nuts and honey and holiday spices. Then we went out for a little dinner at our favorite Mexican Restaurant. I got my fill of holiday tamales. The tamales made me stay up late and I got the binding on Sydney's quilt, even though the last of the quilting wasn't done. But, I knew if it was bound, I could give it to her at Cmas and finish later if I had to.

Yesterday, after the grocery, I spent the day in the kitchen, making a dip for today's potluck at the office, baked ravioli, and two pans of chicken enchiladas, then Sydney and I made gingerbread cookies and decorated them. Neither of us had ever done that before and you can see from the picture that our efforts taste better than they look. But, hey, taste is what it was all about. She worried me crazy...are we still going to bake cookies? Can I cut them out? Are we going to decorate the cookies? Can I decorate? I did one or two and just gave her the pastry bag. She had a ball and some of them are cute in a kid-happy kind of way. And, with all the sugar on top, you can imagine that they taste fantastic. Too bad the frosting was a little too thick and because I'd never decorated cookies before, I didn't know it until we were well under way and I wasn't going to step back and do anything about it. Oh, well. Live and learn.



After my shower, all I could do was lay on the couch. But, it was fun while it lasted.

Take care and have a great day. Make a happy holiday memory if you can. Lane

Hoodwinked by a scoundrel.

My daughter ran a con on my this morning, apparently taking advantage of my gullibility this holiday season. She got me to take her to school so she didn't have to wait for the bus in the rain and cold. On the way, I found out she couldn't find her umbrella. Oh, brother! And, I fell for it hook, line and sinker, even rushing to get all my stuff done and giving up my few minutes of quiet meditation before I leave for the office so I could get her there on time. Sucka! But who could resist those big, brown, puppy-dog eyes.



Anyway, that meant that I didn't get the chance to post a picture for Vintage Thingies Thursday, but don't let that stop you from cruising on over to Suzanne's blog to see her great vintage ornaments and the other items linked there.



I also pre-ordered my copy of Bonnie Hunter's upcoming Book Adventures in Leaders and Enders. I have thoroughly enjoyed the leader/ender project I'm working on. If you're not familiar with the process, you can go to her website Quiltville.com to learn more about it. If you scroll down from this link, you'll find a scrappy triple irish chain. That's what I picked as my first one. I'm making a queen sized bed quilt and I've got over half my blocks pieced, using the leaders enders method on every step. It takes a long time and it didn't work out too well when I was paper piecing, but other than that, It's a great way to make a quilt without even thinking about it and using up small scraps. The hardest part for me has been cutting all my scraps to the sizes I need. I don't have all the sizes Bonnie cuts to, but I am collecting various size HST's and 1 1/2", 2" and 2 1/2" squares, all for use as leaders and enders.



I'm still quilting feathers. By the end of this project, I'm either going to be an expert at feathers or completely insane. The issue I've run into now is that if I'm not paying close attention, my loops get really big and start to fill the space. That would have been fine if I'd planned that from the beginning, but I was trying to get them to all be a standard size so I have to be careful to keep it that way. Anyway, for a bed quilt, the feathery quilting and the very mature prints are going to be perfect for a girl that's on that precipice between little girl and young woman.

Since I didn't take a new picture for the day, I dug way back in the archives for this little snowman. He's a holiday UFO, like the island of misfit toys. He was a very early piece of fusible applique and I apparently used the wrong fusible, so he's stiff and I never tried to quilt him. I really should get to it because he's cute as a button. But, he got forgotten until we pulled out a pile of holiday quilts and there he was, buried in the middle and too late to finish this season. Oh, well. I laid him across the back of a chair and there he waits, big smile and all. After the rush, maybe I'll finish him and put him our for the winter. That's probably as close to snow as we'll get.

Take care and have a great Thursday. Lane

Quilted Christmas Wreath

Good Wednesday! Wow, can the holiday really be this close? And, even though I've finished my shopping and finished my wrapping, I'm still feeling stressed about it. I'm not taking as much time off this year as I normally do because there's just so much to do around here. Not to say that I won't be home, because I'll be working from home. Sydney gets out of school this friday and is out for over two weeks. That's going to make it double tough to concentrate because my sewing machines will be sitting right there, calling out to me "It's okay to take time away from work, you work hard all year, take some relaxation time, you can sew for 15 minutes and then get back to work"...RIGHT!!! Even I don't believe that one.

This is a little wreath I made a few of two years ago. It's from Martha Thompson's Magical Hexagons book. I gave all of them away as gifts except this one. It was a test. If you click the picture and expand it, you'll see all this crazy, busy quilting all over it. I was checking whether I wanted to do that on all of them.



It's actually an outline of the backing fabric. I flipped it over and quilted around the red flowers, the white flowers and the green leaves in matching color thread. It gave me a kind of crazy scene on the front.


Needless to say, I did NOT do that on all of them. At first I didn't like how the quilting overwhelmed the pieced wreath. But this year, when we pulled it out, I decided I did like the effect of the flowers quilted on the front. But, the biggest reason is that it took forEVER and I didn't have the time to do it on 5 wreaths.

I can't remember if this is an exact pattern in the book or just made with that method. The method is to cut out hexagons and sew them all together, then cut the resulting top into triangles and sew them together. You end up with a hexagon shape again and all those gear shapes spinning across the top. Add a border and you have a quilt. It's a pattern I'd definitely make again and might try to use for something bigger in the future.

Have a great day. Two more days until the weekend. Lane

When life gives you lemons...

But, even in Texas, it's too cold for a frosty glass of lemonade. The first year I grew lemons, I couldn't figure out what to do with them short of lemonade, but last year, we started using them in chamomile tea and my family found a new winter drink. I have three lemon trees, two are very small and I usually get 4 or 5 lemons on each. I also have this larger tree and we get 30 or so lemons from it. And, we have an orange tree that should bear about 20, but this year, it bloomed very early, while it was in the green house and there were not bugs to pollinate it, so we only got about 8. The drought meant that all the fruit is smaller this year, but it's still as tangy and sweet as ever.



The trees are in the greenhouse now and when we want a cup of tea, we send Sydney out to get one. She can eat them just sliced, but they're too tart for me.

On a quilting front, I'm still quilting in feathers. And, despite yesterday's interview, they're nice and loopy. Didn't get to quilt last night because we were wrapping the last of the gifts that we need to ship and playing with the kid. She's so 12. And, it's really nice to see her starting to relax around us. Last week, she got into trouble and when we were all around the dining table talking about it, she actually started talking to us instead of giving us that blank 12 year old look and saying "I don't know". I think we're really making progress.

Take care and have a great Tuesday. It's going to be another busy one here. Lane

The great Christmas Orphan event

I've never done this before, but I hear from lots of other quilters that they hurriedly finish those orphan blocks to give them away as cmas gifts. And this year I had orphan blocks that were perfect to finish and give. These are two extra January blocks from Bunny Hill A tisket, A tasket 2009 BOM. I was just learning to applique and these two blocks were my discards. But, they were just too cute to throw away, so I've been planning all year to add a little of this and a little of that and turn them into gifts. I even had left over binding I was able to use and they went together very fast this weekend, with just a little outline and ditch quilting. They're rustic and the quilting lines aren't at all straight, but they made me want to keep one.


I also got 50 - 5"x10" feathers quilted into Sydney's cmas quilt and one of the border sections. Feathers are fun, but we all got a good laugh at how my mood affects my quilting. Stress meant lots of tiny feathers perfectly spaced along the spine and being relaxed meant large fluid feathers with big loopy petals. And, unfortunately, I started in the center because the more I made, the better they looked. I've decided that if I get all the feathers in before the holiday, I can bind it and give it to her, and then finish quilting the blocks later....you know, during that mythical first of the year when we should be finishing UFO's and instead we're picking out BOM's.

Y'all take care and have a great Monday. I'm interviewing candidates to fill an opening in my department this week. Serious work, so I guess this week's feathers will all be teeny tiny. Lane

Oh, Christmas Quilt; Oh, Christmas quilt...

How lovely is thy sashing....

It's beginning to look a lot like a Christmas quilt, Ev'ry where you look...

Can I make one more?

Rudolph the Red Nosed Christmas quilt, Had some very shi-ney beads...

Okay, now that's out of my system.

The Christmas quilt is finished! Almost a year in the making. If you weren't with me when I started this, I had done very little applique work. My mentor bought this quilt as a kit and hers is very lovely. So lovely that Rob fell in love with it and asked me to make one too. So, in the heat of the summer, I taught myself to applique, bending over a hot iron and starching edges under. I appliqued them with a blind stitch and invisible thread and blanket stitched over that. There's not a lot of quilting. Just outlining and the occassional curlique and a couple of fun things.


This is top left. See the ornaments quilted in the dark green strip? The black on the face and the shirt are beads.


Middle-left. Here the black dots are french knots.


And Bottom-left.


Top right.

There are buttons on the wheels and one of the gifts and bells on the tree for ornaments.

Love the headless snowman and the sleeping Santa. And, the infamous nutcracker. I spent several days trying to do teeth and finally gave up and just did a solid fabric.

The border has a string of cmas lights, right down to the male and female plugs.

On my ebay purchase, tried contacting the seller again. No response. I did find them on ebay yesterday selling fabric under a different identity, but with the identical ad, except they removed the email address. If I haven't heard by tonight, I'll just post truthfully that the fabrics advertised were not the fabrics shipped. If it happens, it will be the first time I've ever had to leave anything but glowing feedback on ebay. I layed the fabrics out the other day after I posted and if I change the order and take one out, they might make an okay log cabin...I mean for a gift or something. Not everybody would even notice, huh?

Take care and have a great Friday. I hope to make significant progress on Sydney's quilt this weekend. With the shopping over, I'm really hoping for lots of free time. Lane

Vintage Thingies Thursday - Toys

Welcome to Vintage Thingies Thursday, sponsored by my friend Suzanne at Coloradolady. Today, I'm featuring all items that are NOT vintage because they were my toys, or replacements of my toys, and since I am certainly not old enough to be considered vintage, my toys are also not old enough to be considered vintage. Stop laughing.

First, are my Tinkertoys. Remember Tinkertoys? I'd be afraid to give them to a kid now because they might poke their eye out and they'd need that eye to play video games. Anyway, I spent many hours designing and building wonderful things with this very set.

This next toy is the oldest. My sisters and I apparently put many a mile on this little dog, dragging him around the house.

And, my matchbox cars, which have more miles on them than American Airlines. Many happy hours were spent with the kids in the neighborhood, pushing these around on errands, or racing them on orange plastic tracks.

Now, these next two aren't really vintage...really. They're toys I had as a kid, but don't know what happened to them. But, when I was starting to use my sets as cmas decorations about 15 years ago, I replaced mine because of the many happy memories. My Mr. Potatoe head was very like this one. It was not one of the originals where you actually used a potatoe. And, the barrel of monkeys usually hung from the bottom of my tree every year. .

And, finally, Lincoln Logs. Again, fond memories of building things with my Dad and my Lincoln Logs. Oh, childhood. Passes way to fast to appreciate it.


So, that's a glimpse into my past as I pretend these things are not vintage. Take care and have a great day. Lane

Let the buyer beware...

I have always had good luck on ebay. I've recently bought bobbins and the foot I showed yesterday and before postage got so high, I bought a lot of stuff there. Always a pleasant transaction. This week, I found fabric on ebay....Oooh! Inexpensive fabric; a quilter's heaven. But, I was leary of buying something I couldn't see so I didn't dive right in. I decided to start with a little honeybun of the most fantastic set of brown fabrics. Perfect for a log cabin table runner for the living room. I bid, I won, I paid, I waited.

Da da da dummmmm. What I got was not what I expected. None of the fabrics in the honeybun were in the photo on ebay. The ebay photo showed a perfect set of matched fabrics, with an even mix of darks and lights. This is what I got.



They don't go together and frankly, some of them are down right ugly. And, even though the seller guaranteed 100% satisfaction, they aren't answering my emails. So, all that I can think to do is replan my log cabin and toss these in the scrap bin. They'll be perfect to cross cut into squares for some small scrap quilt...someday. And, I'll have to pull new fabrics for my log cabin. I might go ahead and use a couple of these, especially the lighter ones. But, all together, they don't amount to much.

I did a few more feathers last night and then I decided it was time to stop practicing and put the quilt in the machine. I got started on the ditch work, even though I still don't have a plan for what to do in all those squares and rectangles. I'm hoping that now that it's in my face, so to speak, it will tell me what it would like. Sydney found something she liked on the cover of my free motion book this morning, but I'm feeling a little intimidated by it. I brought the book with me to work today so i can look at it periodically. Lots of lines with a very gentle curve that even the author didn't get straight. Am I willing to try?

Take care and have a great Wednesday. We're one day closer to the weekend, but unfortunately, that means we're also one day closer to the holiday and I'm not really sure I'm quite ready for that. Lane

A new foot

This is my new foot for my Bernina 930. I've wanted one of these forever, but thought; oh, really, how much difference can a foot really make, huh??? I am surprised. I finally figured out a way to get it for less than the $35 price that a real Bernina foot costs. I have an adapter that converts me to a low shank foot, so that's what I got, and a generic low shank foot was about $13. Okay, so what difference did it really make? My stitches got longer. Right away. I'm still practicing feathers and this morning, I switched back to the old darning foot which has a circle about one quarter the diameter of this foot. And, my stitches got tiny again. I like a nice long stitch, at least 1/8 inch, and I was having trouble consistently moving the fabric fast enough to do that in my free motion work. Switched to this foot and my stitches immediately lengthened and my curves became more even.

The feathers are getting better. I've done about 32 and now I can plan what I want the feather to look like and how much space I want it to take up and I can make it do that. I just haven't figured out which design I like best; large petals, overlapping petals, small petals with outlines, make the petals larger to fill in the corners, start in the center, start in a corner? I just keep trying different combinations but none have spoken to me yet. And, since there are soooo many squares and rectangles to fill, I want to find just the right one and use it consistently.

That ugly fabric I'm using for my practice piece? That's something I picked up when I was making Linus quilts. What was I thinking? Poker and chips for a teenage boy? That wasn't going to make me very popular. So, I asked Sydney to look in her stash for something ugly for me to play with. This is what she gave me. We agreed it was the ugliest one either of us owned.

Take care and have a great day today. Send my Mom some well wishes if you get a chance. She's going to have a little routine maintenance work done on Thursday. I'm not exactly sure what that means and I've learned not to ask women to explain things they word so delicately. It's just best not to know. Talk to you soon on the blog. Lane

Sydney's quilt

Remember about a week ago, I decided to make a quilt for Sydney. What I was thinking I do not know. But, I was at least smart enough to pick something simple since I was on such a short deadline. This is the top before I put about 300 safety pins in it. It's about 85"x85"; plenty big enough for a bedspread on a queen sized bed. It took one Moda Layer Cake and the dark from a set of Charm Squares plus 4 blocks from my stash. The border and back fabric is my first time to try the 110" wide backing fabric. I like it! No seams up the back!

I'll mix the light charm squares with some darks from my stash and some leftover border fabric for pillow shams and I have some eyelet that I got from someone for a dust ruffle. A new set of curtains and her room will have a full face lift. I'll probably use more of the backing for that. It is very price conservative as I'll only need to buy the width of the window, not the length.

Last night I started teaching myself to make free motion, free-hand feathers. I made a muslin with 20 squares on it. I attempted feathers 20 times and still was not liking it. I switched thread colors and started putting new feathers in over the first set and by about number 24 I was pretty happy with the shape of them. Now, I'll have to start working on how to make them fill the space. Oh, well. Always something new to learn. That's one thing I love about quilting.

And, I finished my cmas shopping. We all went together and we shopped until I could hardly move. By the end of Saturday, I was one store short of being done and we went there before the grocery yesterday. Now, I have all that wrapping and shipping, but at least the shopping is done. The weather was so cold and nasty that we hardly waited in line anywhere and when the weather got pretty and the lines started to form, we were ready to go home. And, I can rest knowing that Mastercard will have a very nice holiday!

Y'all have a great Monday. Stay warm (or cool!) and I'll be keeping up with you in blogland. Lane

Black really does show off all colors.

Rob's been sick most of the week and for some reason, he adopted my cuddle/lap quilt. He left it on the bed and our huge black cat adopted it. Now, I don't know when I'll get it back...



This little quilt was made from one of those perfect combinations of fat quarters that I sometimes end up with and want to use together. I buy them over a period of time and stack them next to the serger to get them ready for laundering and at some point, I realize that they're perfect for a quilt. This one came from me trying simple patterns for Project Linus quilts last year. I stacked the 8 FQ's and cut them all at the same time into 8 pieces. Then I numbered the stacks of pieces 1-8. On stack one, I moved the top fabric to the bottom of the pile. Stack two, I moved the top two fabrics to the bottom of the pile and so on so that I had every pile in a different order. Then, I sewed the top layer all back together and then the second layer and on until I had 8 blocks, each with 8 colors. No fabric is repeated in the same spot on any block. The quilting is simple geometric shapes in each section that are repeated in the border. The border is one of my favorite batiks. Love my little cuddle quilt. It's perfect for a long winter's nap.

Take care and have a great Friday. I'm going to try to finish my cmas shopping this weekend and get very far along on Sydney's bedspread/quilt. All 25 blocks are assembled and the first row of 5 is together. Thank goodness I don't have to have it finished in time to mail. See ya' round the net. Lane

Vintage Thingies Thursday, my ornament collection

Vintage Thingies Thursday is sponsored by my friend Suzanne. She's also featuring vintage Christmas today.

Okay, so this post is about some things near and dear to my heart. This is my ornament collection. My Mom started it for me when I was but a wee bairn. When I bought my first house, she sent it to me for my first cmas tree there. This year, I did not hang it on the tree, but instead hung it on a swag over the dining room windows. (note it took two photos. it's not a corner window with badly hung curtains). As she added to the collection, my Mom dated the ornaments so I know the year she gave them to me for most of them.



These are some of the oldest ornaments in the collection. They came from my grandparents or from the boxes of ornaments my parents bought for their first tree.


This angel is the oldest one purchased for me. It is dated 1966 (stop doing math...it won't tell you how old I am because this was not my first cmas).


This is the ornament from the year I graduated high school (I mean it, stop doing the math.)


These are some ornaments we added. The pickle we got after Sydney came to us. Traditionally, the person that found the pickle got to hand out the gifts, but we play a meaner version of the game because we only have the one kid. She can't hand out the gifts or start opening until she finds the pickle...mwhahahaaaa!

And, these are the dated ornaments that Rob and I have added since we've been together. They're LiBien ornaments from Pier 1. They're advertised as hand painted from the inside. They're so perfect that I wonder. We buy one of the large ornaments and one of the very small angels every year.

Okay, that's my ornament collection. You can see lots of other things in the background. It's enough ornaments to cover our rather large tree and this year, we didn't get to display it all. There are duplicates of some of the ornaments and because we had limited space this year, I had to leave the dups in the boxes.

Take care and check out everyone else's vintage posts. Lane

Pink is the new green.

At least around our house it is. Yes, Becky, we do have the pink tree again. This is the tree in Sydney's bathroom. We found the pink tree at a garage sale and since pink was her favorite color, we had to have it. And, since it has pink lights, we had to have pink ornaments and a pink topper and pink garland. Now, I don't have a problem using pink as a cmas color. I love a nice dark rosy pink with an eggplant purple and gold for cmas (you'll see things in those colors in future posts), but I have to say that this level of pink is a little surprising when I walk past her bathroom at night when the lights are on.

So, that's more of how we celebrate the holidays. There's lots more to show you tho. Wait until tomorrow when I show off my vintage ornaments for Vintage Thingies Thursday. Have a great Weds and we'll see ya round the net. Lane

Oh, Christmas Tree...

So, I promised y'all pictures of our cmas. I got this one taken this morning. I found that if I got you the whole tree, it got to small to see anything on it. This is our red ornament collection. We collected all these and used to hang a swag all the way across the living room ceiling and just fill it with red ornaments. But, that meant up and down the ladder to hang all the ornaments on the swag. I was really organized about it, but last year, I decided I wasn't doing it again if we didn't figure out a way to decorate it nearer the floor and then raise it to the ceiling. And, we didn't figure that out. So, that made all these red ornaments available for the tree. The tree has just a few white lights that backlight the ornaments. We really scaled back this year.

And, I'm still sewing on little buttons and beads and bells on the cmas quilt. Who'da thought it would take me as much time as it has just for those little finishing touches. I guess, working on one block at a time, I lost track of how many had little embellishments that I was skipping until after it was quilted.

Y'all take care and have a great Tuesday. Lane