Holiday Decorating with Quilts

I don't usually keep many of the quilts I make but I do tend to keep those I can decorate with during the holidays. Here is the hand-applique Hawaiian quilt hanging in the dining room.


There is also the compass star piece on the dining room table.

The first thing I made that was a holiday decoration was the wool holly wreath. It was hand-sewn with blanket and running stitches using pearl cotton. The red 'berries' are buttons.

NYC during the Holidays

Survived a trip to NYC during the holiday season. Here is a picture of the tree in Rockefeller Center. It is a bit blurry because I needed to use the night setting on the camera. The crowds were incredible!

Across from the plaza is Sak's 5th Ave. There light display is also impressive. You can see all the snowflake lights on the side of their building. But what you cannot see is that every now and again they play Christmas music and the lights blink along in time with the music.

Just to assure you that this was not just a holiday trip into the city I am including a picture of myself with the poster that Holly and I presented at the ACRL/NY conference on Friday.

600 Half-Square Triangles

Its Done!!!!

This quilt started as a bunch of fat-quarters I bought the 2nd year I started quilting (2004?). I bought a variety of prints in 4 colors - black, pink, beige, and green. The fabrics sat in a box for a few years but about a year and a half ago I made the half-square triangles using the Thangles method and ended up with a box of 600 of them. I had the top pieced together by May 2009, but I just machine quilted it in Nov. 2009 and put the binding on.

The front of the quilt actually has only 576 (24 x 24) of the HSTs but I plan on using the last 24 on the back as part of the hanging sleeve and the label.

Quilting and Decorating

Last weekend's construction project is really paying off this week. I went to the home renovation store and purchased Styrofoam insulation boards to level my quilting tables up to the height of my sewing machine. This makes it much easier to machine quilt quilts. Especially if you are doing free-motion quilting. I have been quilting a little bit for the the past couple of days and I only have a little bit more to finish the quilt you see. I have been using a basic wandering stipple style of quilting.

Now that the cooking and cleaning is done for Thanksgiving (except for a few more dishes) I have switched gears and started my holiday decorating. I remembered yesterday that last year I was having problems with a couple of the strands of tree lights so the decision for this year was - by all new lights or get a new pre-light tree. New pre-lit tree won out. Found a 7 foot pre-lit for $129. Considering that led lights were running about $16 for 100 lights and I needed 600 I thought the $33 dollar difference was worth not having to string lights for the next several years.

You may also notice if you had seen our previous Christmas trees that this one is considerably bigger. So while our past tree was stuffed with all our ornaments this one has plenty of room for expansion.

A Head Start on the Cooking

The Thanksgiving holiday cooking has been underway. Yesterday I baked these Chocolate-pumpkin brownies. Follow the link to the recipe. I will taste-test them today to be sure the are good enough for our guest, but if the batters are anything to go by they should be fabulous. I think this was the first time I have made brownies from scratch (the box mixes are so convenient). One change to the recipe I would recommend is not to use a double-boiler to melt the chocolate and butter - just microwave it - easier, quicker and fewer dishes. It says to bake for 30 to 40 minutes, but mine were done right at 30 minutes.



Damon was also busy cooking - or in this case making candy. The picture is of some of the torrone candy cut up for serving. He found a new recipe and it turned out really well. We also discovered that parchment paper works really well to keep the candy from sticking to itself and everything else. Damon made two flavors vanilla and lemon, both with almonds. It is a good thing we have friends coming over - don't want this amount of goodies around the house to ourselves.

Quilt Guild Tree Decorating

For the past 3 years the Champlain Valley Quilters' Guild of New York has participated in a fund raising event where local groups and businesses decorate Christmas trees and they are raffled off.

This is a picture of the group of us that decorated the tree on Sunday. Mary Lou, Kitty, Sandy (aka Sarge), Deborah, and me.

The tree theme this year was the 'Warmth of Winter'. Handmade decorations included mini-quilts, felt hot coco mugs, and mittens.

Retreat Report

Its been over a week since the annual fall Wadhams quilting retreat but between unpacking and going strait back to work (lots going on due to budget cuts to the college) I haven't had the time to take photos or post any info.

The first thing I worked on was a WIP (Work In Progress). About 2 years ago I was learning to do curved piecing and made all the blocks in the middle of this quilt. At the retreat I added the thin inner border and did the top diamond border and the bottom off-set flying geese border. I ran out of the black background fabric so once I pick up more if it I will finish it with 2 side borders. This quilt does not follow any pattern I am just making it up as I go along.

I also packed up a bunch of my fall themed batik fabrics and found a pattern called "Down Memory Lane" in the book Successful Scrap Quilts: From Simple Rectangles by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolfe. All the patterns in the book use 2 inch x 3 1/2 inch rectangle pieces of fabrics to make the blocks. So it is a lot of little pieces.

I did all the cutting and piecing while at the retreat so it is pretty impressive I got all the blocks done and started joining them into 4-block mega blocks - what you see here are the 12 mega blocks laid out. I still need to add a small border to the edges and then I will bind it with some of the leftover scraps.

By Monday I was a bit burned out on working on the bigger projects so I switched back to my old stand-by the New York Beauty blocks. I am using the blocks from Karen Stone's pattern and using my fabric scraps to make the blocks. Here are 4 of the latest.