Feeling the Christmas Spirit yet? How about a giveaway!

Not too much Christmas spirit here yet, this is the first "Christmas-ey" thing I've even considered making this year.  On Thanksgiving, my sister Donna asked me to make a "traditional" wall hanging of a tree, so here it is.  Just have to cut some binding tonight after work and sew it on by machine.

Hope that's traditional enough!  The quilting, which I did last night, shows up better in this picture:

 Donna, if you read this, let me know if this is what you had in mind!

I've also been working on finishing up some of those UFOs before the year ends.  This poor thing has been on my design wall forever, just waiting to be trimmed and bound.  

It started as a drop cloth under some painting/dyeing I was doing in my garage.

The hand stitching turned out nicely, I think, and so did the machine stitching.

Maybe a giveaway will help get me in the Christmas Spirit!  Last September I ordered two books from Interweave, and waited and waited and waited for them to arrive.  After about 3 weeks, I contacted Interweave and they told me the books hadn't even shipped yet!  I cancelled the order with Interweave right then, ordered the books from Dharma's website (where they were cheaper), and they both arrived with in 2 days.  

So, last week, the book order that I had cancelled over a month ago FINALLY arrived at my house--when I contacted Interweave, they said I might as well keep them--so I'm giving them away to someone out there!

Making Your Mark by Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan

Paper & Metal Leaf Lamination by Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan

Please leave a comment, and I'll pick one winner randomly for each of these books next Monday, December 3rd.  If you'd prefer one book over the other, please note that in your comments and I'll try to accommodate your wishes.  Due to shipping costs, I'm going to have to restrict this to US residents only.  

FM Challenge for November

Got this challenge done over the weekend, I was making a quilt for a great-nephew and used the swirl techniques from the SewCalGal challenge on it to get both of them taken care of.

I did the larger swirls around the outside border on the sides.

 I added a striped border on the top and bottom of the quilt so it wasn't a square, then I quilted some small swirls in the white part of the stripes.  Since the quilt is for a baby boy, I didn't want to add too many swirls--would they make it look too feminine? 

I tried to make them look more like waves than swirls!

 I did take a photo of the whole finished quilt, but it wasn't in focus.

This month's challenge was easy, I've been doing swirls in my quilting for a while now and really enjoy making all kinds of them.  

One more month to go in the challenge. 

Another crazy week OVER

Lately I've been living for Fridays -- work is hectic and the days are long, and I don't feel like doing much when I get home at 5:30 p.m!  And there was so much emotion and electricity in the air this week with the presidential election (positive and negative)--it has been so wonderful not to have those awful political ads running constantly on the TV anymore.

This is something I started last Sunday (technique is from the on-line DMTV workshops that I signed up for).  I took a piece of hand dyed fabric and cut out some freezer paper templates of trees, ironed them on, and applied some deColourant to the spaces in between the trees.  Then you have to iron it, and wash it.

This is how it looked after peeling off the freezer paper trees and washing in the washing machine:  

Not crazy about it, but it might look better after quilting it heavily and adding some decorative stitching.  The back actually looks better, as there isn't the severe contrast in color.  Hmmm... This technique was pretty easy, and I would like to try it again with some deColourant that puts a color back in after taking the original color out.

I can't attend any "real" workshops due to the cost, along with not getting enough time off work, so the virtual ones will have to suffice right now.  Linda and Laura Kemshall have tons of videos on their DMTV website, and it's not that expensive to sign up, when compared to the cost of attending a "real" workshop.  You can get access for 3 months, 6 months, or a year, and they post new projects all the time.

I'm also working on a Christmas gift, a traditional little boy quilt for a great-nephew. 

And another quilt top that has been a UFO for way too long--I added a 10" wide border and have the backing fabric all ready to go.  Hope to baste it and start quilting SOON.