Season is quickly flying by

 Hope your Thanksgiving was blessed with family and friends, food and good health!  We had a wonderful gathering this year and all went very smoothly.  Thanksgiving was quickly followed with the yearly Black Friday draining of my pocketbook.  My daughter and I had a great day of shopping from 7:30 am to 7:30 pm.  We did spend a couple hours at the library.  I had to pick up some books to prepare me for the  diet change my doctor suggests I ring in the New Year with.  It will be here before you know it and I need to get my cholesterol in check next year. Oh, yeah...

I got the last of my December Quilt Blocks done and out in the mail:

I finished up my Quilt U Be Mine Block rounds on Julianne's Block.

I can't show it to you but let me just say it has been a labor of love

this last month.  I hope she will love it when she finally gets to see 

it in February.  For now it is off to England to get some more love added.

Next up on the weekend agenda was a little R and R with the grand-daughters.  We picked them up and took them to see a model train exposition in Portland that my husband adores each November.  It was the first time we had taken the youngest one out ( she is very attached to mommy ) and she was a perfect little angel.  She didn't cry one peep and enjoyed the trains, McDonald's lunch and especially her Hot Fudge Sundae that topped off her day with us.  Kiara, her older sister is the apple of papa's eyes and my DH insists she is what he was born for. 

Kiara was very glad to have Bear join us for the day and wanted to make sure he got his picture taken, too.

Kiara got to drive the green train and loved it.

Now papa has to find room to set up our model trains somewhere so she can share a new passion with him.

Then the mailman has been kind to me lately and has delivered some yummy fabrics for me to dream up some Zany Zettis with.  When I didn't get any bites for face fabrics with an earlier post and really couldn't find what I was looking for at Fabric Depot, I turned to Ebay where I bombed out but Etsy had just what I needed.
Look at what I found :

I LOVE how Alice from Fresh Modern Fabric sent 4 sample fabrics with my order.  They are just little scraps but I actually think I can incorporate these into my Zani Zettis. So thank you Alice, that was very nice of you and I love the added kindness.  I will definitely keep her in mind in the future when I have fabric needs.

Look at those fun faces.  This was a half yard cut and this is half of the loveliness...the other side is just as yummy---

    then I found these Loralie Design Ladies that are already zany but I am gonna make them even zanier!!!

I found these from Maddy's Fabric Stash on etsy:

And they had another set of divas, too. I loved them both and they have such personality and that is something I am especially want to build on with this future project so they just charmed me to pieces!!!

Hope you also are finding time to spend time with family and something you love to do !!!

Thanksgiving Prep Time

 

I made these cute burlap bags to cover some vases to hold flowers on the dinner table in I swear less than ten minutes tonight.  I think they turned out adorable. 

I just cut a piece of burlap about two inches longer than the height of my vase doubled and about two to three inches wider than the width of my vase doubled and sewed up the seams of the bags using wide seam allowances.  At least 1/2 inch on each side for seam allowances. No need to be accurate at all.

Than I just made some duck bills at the bottom ---again not sweating out the accuracy.  I just pinched the bottom of the bag and sewed about an inch and a half  in from the corner--creating a triangle or duck bill.

Then I just turned the bag right side out---easy peasy---and put my little vase inside

Then I just tied a burlap strip around the vase and adorned it with a fake leaf.  On one I tied the ribbon that came from the packaging that I bought a candle in tonight. The rectangle vase I thought looked great with no ribbon and I just cuffed the bag. A $10.00 bouquet of flowers from Fred Meyer's and I know I'm no Martha Stewart but these will dress up the Thanksgiving table just fine by me.

 

    Skater Sue

I finished my Skater Sue mini wall hanging for the swap that Michele from the Quilting Gallery organized and that Jennifer from Sewhooked  provided the pattern for.  I am very happy with the finished results.  I had never done so much fill in free motion quilting on a project.  I usually stick to stitch in the ditch and do the mininum amount of quilting because I am so interested in getting the project done.  I must say it was nice working on a mini quilt when doing the extra fill in!!!  It finished out at 21" x 21".  Bonus is I got it completed with a week to spare on the mailing deadline...go me!

I hope my swap partner likes it.  I had a lot of fun putting it together for her.

Zany Zettis

I am in the process of designing some new quilt blocks and I could use some help from you.

I recently attended the graduation ceremony of a family member and we are all so PROUD of Becka's accomplishments.  She graduated with a Doctorate of Counseling Psychology.  WOWZZA!!!   She is amazing...sticking out all those years of schooling and a dissertation and I believe two years of an internship and now setting up her own office.  When she graduated she threw all of us an amazing dinner party at Anthony's on the waterfront in Seattle and said the celebration was for us not her.  She said she wouldn't have made it through to reach her goals without standing on the shoulders of giants (something Isaac Newton once said enabled him to see and achieve so much .  I love her to pieces for referring to us as her giants but someone should let her know she was standing on the shoulders of freaks and geeks.  Have you heard this song by Henry Phillips???  I think it is cute.  I will warn you I have a weird sense of humor, though. If it is not to your liking I apologize. 

I am going to honor her achievement by designing a quilt for her and hope to have it done for her by August of 2013.  We get together for a big cousin's weekend up at the cabins each year and have set that as my goal to have the quilt done by Cousin's Weekend 2013.  Since she is a Doctor of Psychology, I though it would be very appropriate to design people with personalities shining through for the subjects on the quilt.

I first thought of making these type of people for the quilt. I found this over at EfemeraInk .  She has a lot of different Zettis on her site. This one just looked like Becka.

No Becka doesn't literally look like this but I think it looks like her style.  I think she likes a Tim Burton reality....  figuring out what makes one express themselves in ways that seem unusual to the mainstream but feels normal to others.  But then when I started searching out Zettis...look at these wonderful, inspiring beauties from Zettiology.com 

I think it would be great to capture some of these oddities...ODDITIES that lie in each of us and create a quilt for Becka's office out of these charming eccentrics.  Do you see what I see???  ... These would look great in quilt blocks wouldn't they???

HERE in lies where I could use some help!!!  I have quite a fabric stash but what I am lacking in is FACES.
DO you have a fabric scrap...say 5x5 inches that you would be willing to send my way that would make a great Zetti face?  Maybe a print that has words on it ??? They don't have to look like the figures above, I will be changing them up with hair, hats, masks, whatever to make them into unique beings.  I will be hunting these out for the next few months but the process could be so much faster for me if I could find a few friends who could send a couple 5x5 inch scraps my way.  For anyone so inclined to help me out, I will send you a pattern to one of my Zetti blocks that I will be sharing on the blog as I create them.


Just leave a comment on this posting if you can lend me a hand and would be interested in receiving one of the patterns after I create them and I will reply to your post with my snail mail address so you can send me a little scrap of JOY. I am hoping to hit this project hard in January so any help I can get between now and then would have me doing a little happy dance!!!

Thanks XXOO

 Swap City

November threatens to speed by quickly while I try to get my swap obligations under control.

I may have over booked myself but I feel like I might be catching my stride now.  I have the following going on this month:

• I am participating in the Quilt U Be Mine swap from Michele's Quilts From My Crayon Box.  I can't share the block that I am working on for my partner because it is a surprise but here is the block I sent on the way to the first person in my group.  I won't see it until it is returned to me in February.  In the meantime it will travel around getting borders added to it each month till it finds it's way back to me.

• I am also participating in the Quilting Gallery/SewHooked  'Sweet Skating Sue' mini quilt swap  here is my mini quilt so far.  I just need to quilt it now. It is going to finish at about 22 inches square.
• I am also making 12 Christmas blocks for the Christmas Block swap hosted by Aunt Pitty Pat   .  I am making a block featuring two xmas presents. So far I have two done and two half done.  Here is what they will be looking like. I send 12 of these and get a variety of 12 different blocks back. I can't wait to see what the ladies send me.

   

   Are you a No Reply Blogger???

 I had a few people from the Wicked blog hop that showed up as No reply Bloggers. If you have never had replies when you leave a comment on a posting this could be why. I would hate for anyone to not be able to claim their goodies because we have no way of contacting you.  I took a chance and Pat contacted me after she won her giveaway winnings but it is much easier for all involved to make sure the correct person gets the loot when you are set up as a reply blogger.  For those who want to change their status but are not sure how you can follow these steps:

These people are No reply Bloggers and may want to correct it by doing the following, also

lefuntz

aiah23

Nellie Duclos

rutigt

Judy B

Sharon

Debbie

Pat Converse

 

Hope this helps. I wouldn't want anyone to lose out on the wonderful fuzzy feelings we get when we win something special.  Hope you having a great evening. I have to get back to my sewing studio. Your goodies will be in the mail soon Pat.
Keep Stitchin'