Time is largely mine now ...

Hello lovely friends, we're at the end of the year when my time starts to become my own for a little bit. Tennis has finished for the season, my darling quilting ladies won't be gracing my front rooms until February, almost all of our Christmas shopping is done, and family birthdays are all behind us for now. 

Mum and I will shortly be planning menus for Christmas day, but until we start food shopping, my time is largely my own. The only self imposed deadline I have is to make up some sort of lovely gingerbread creation before the big day and I can't wait to get that started!

Because the quilting Christmas party was yesterday, I can reveal that I told you a little white lie earlier this month:

These are all the little mmmCrafts heart ornaments I made, and they weren't for little Mary at all, they were to be included in the gift boxes for my sweet quilting friends. I am making some ornaments for little Mary, but these were not hers! Some of my beautiful ladies read along here, so I didn't want to give the game away, but also didn't have much to share with you all while I was working on my secret squirrel project ;-)

I had fun putting their little boxes together with a few things I'd collected over the year:

The sweet little Quilter pins came from Jodie at RicRacSews, I think she is discontinuing her pins, so if you like them, best dash over there and grab some as they're on sale.

I also made macarons for the party, I hadn't made any in ages, so I had forgotten a few of the refinements I'd made to the recipe over time. They aren't too bad, but a bit dryer than I normally like:

I really should make them more often, they're so very delicious. Marty and Camo gobbled up the leftovers which was great, as they weren't laying around for me to nibble on.

The tree skirt I shared a little while back is finished and in my Etsy store finally, it was a relief to have that finished even though I should have it done way before now:

This is the easiest one I've ever made, so hopefully it will fill a gap for people that are nervous about the inset seams or scalloped binding featured in my other tree skirts. As always, check my Etsy store if you'd like the pattern. There is actually still time to make one for Christmas if you would like to!

Also in my Etsy store are the pre-painted wooden heads for the newest pattern by mmmCrafts - the Ghost of Christmas Present:

I have been absolutely gobsmacked and overwhelmed by the response to these little heads I've been painting. I'm absolutely happy to keep it up while people are interested, so thank you for your support!

For the last picture, in stolen moments I've been putting a few more hand quilting stitches in Lily Rosenberry. But not enough to move the hoop yet:

This is definitely going to be a long term project, and one that I'll just love. Can you see the faint red shadows around some of the berries? They're much more pronounced in person - hopefully they will disappear when I do my final wash, but I'm telling myself I'm not too concerned. Let's see if I still say that if they're still there after laundering!

Today I finally cracked open the pattern for the Morell Quilt by Di Ford Hall. I have planned that I'm going to cut a few blocks out for stitching while I'm on vacation. Lovely Chris from Quilting at the Farm has been working on the same project and we've decided to work on the quilt together. I hope I can keep up, as this will be another long term project for me, but I'm excited to give it a try!

Well that's it for me for this week, I still haven't managed to get much blog catching up and messaging done, but I keep promising myself that in coming days I will do it. Apologies for those of you that I've been neglecting. Chatter soon friends!