Catching up ...

Hello there Christmas, I am ready for you! The only gifts I have left to bring into the house are anything being given to Camo - and that's only because I'm not entirely certain he might not look for them ... (or stumble across them, as I'm not very good at hiding things ...)

Before I get into the bits and pieces that I'd like to share with you, please allow me to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas. And if Christmas isn't your particular thing, know that I'm sending good wishes from my home to yours, and hoping we'll all have a wonderful New Year!

I have a few things to share, first up, Shay and I decorated cookies for the season on Sunday - I knew I wouldn't have time to put together a gingerbread house this year, so I made a 3D gingerbread cookie tree:

This was fun to put together - and it was nice to have Shay's company while I started working on it. Hopefully Shay was able to take home enough information for her to ice cookies for upcoming celebrations. 

And I can't even tell you how fun it was to see that Mark Lipinski snagged the picture from my Facebook page to share on his own. It was like a little brush with fame!

One of the reasons that I don't have a lot of time to put a gingerbread house together is because I'm really trying to spend as much time as I possibly can working on my hand quilting ... I took the Caswell quilt out of the hoop recently so I snapped a quick pic ...

This is only a little of the work that I've done, but you can see where I'm heading. There are some areas to fill that may not have fitted in the hoop when I was working on that area, and I'll get back to them as I can.

I also had a number of people asking about my hoop setup, so I took a picture of the floor stand to share with you:

My goodness I was blessed that this hoop came into my life. Literally the same day that I heard from Lizzy that she'd finished basting my quilt, I received an email from Lyn, a lovely lady that I used to work with. She had this stand, and wondered if I'd like it as she was de-cluttering her sewing room. Of course it was the perfect thing I needed, at the perfect time - and bless her, Lyn delivered it to me at work the next day. I don't know much about it, but I believe it was hand made by the husband of a quilter that Lyn knows.

Now that I've been quilting on the floor stand, I don't know how I persevered with hoops for so long! It's just so nice not to have to worry about balancing the weight of the quilt. However the only down-side is that my quilt is not portable at all - I can't quilt anywhere but home. But if I'm honest, the quilt is really too big to drag around easily, so it's not a problem at all!

I also had some questions regarding what kind of marking tool I was using to get the blue lines on my quilt. I'm always happy to help with info, and a sweet reader Janet shared that she hadn't seen the blue marker I'm using, so I took a pic:

I use a number of the Sewline products (no affiliation, just a happy customer) - for marking I use this blue marker on lighter fabrics, and on darker fabrics either their white or pink ceramic mechanical pencil. When I finish a quilt, I'm not happy to just spritz the marking lines away, I actually put the quilt through a gentle cycle in my washing machine and then dry the quilt flat on towels. It makes me happy to know that the quilt has been completely immersed in water and then there is no chance that any of the markings will remain or return.

Last of all, readers will know that I recently learned a new applique technique from Teresa's blog - and I in turn passed this technique on to a sweet lady named Pam who comes to my classes. She has fallen in love with applique and is running with it - this is her first project:

Her next job was to place the applique in the borders - and by the last class this year, she had completed all the applique and had moved on to the quilting. She selected big stitch quilting with perle cotton. It's just lovely!

Well, that's it from me for now - I have a feeling I had other things to share, but I can't remember what they were right now. If I remember and I get a chance, I'll pop back in and share, but if not, I'll see you on the other side of Christmas ... chatter soon! xoxox