Sometimes I Just Want to Sew!

I want to dig into my stash, pick out some beautiful fabrics in my favorite colors. I want to combine them in a quilt that doesn't require any design effort. I just want to sew!




My hair stylist, Jill, is having her first baby - a girl. It was fun and relaxing to make a pink baby quilt for her. The design is my variation of Fons & Porter's "Amish Four Patch Chain" (For the Love of Quilting, Jan/Feb 2000).

More Christmas Stockings

I've used my sewing time to make a tree skirt for my oldest daughter and stockings for two granddaughters. My original plan was to do alternate wedges in the crazy quilt method used on the stockings in a previous post. Time dictated otherwise and I went with solid fabric wedges. The visible quilting around the outer edge is done with glow-in-the-dark thread. DD's reaction to the tree skirt was "PERFECT!", which is the absolute perfect ego stroke for me! Last year, she used her quilt as a tree skirt. The back of that quilt is the darkest snowflake fabric in the tree skirt.













Zoe and Kyra will have Christmas stockings. I used just a few chile fabrics from my huge collection. Most of my family has cross-stitched stockings. I started making quilted stockings for my grandchildren.

Dear Josh, Happy Birthday! I love you! Mom

My favorite son turned 30 last month. (I don't think I'm old enough to have a child who is 30, but the calendar insists that I am.) I wanted to do something different, so every day for 30 days, I sent him a gift consisting of 30 of the same items. The idea for this came from a post on the QuiltArt list (see last paragraph).

My gifts were:
1. baseball cards
2. 6.5" fabric squares
3. pieces of Trident gum
4. smiley face pins
5. drinking straws (bendable!)
6. coasters from Chili's
7. crayons
8. marbles
9. green plastic toy soldiers
10. gel tab sponges
11. blue pom-poms
12. pipe cleaners
13. Capitol One fake credit cards
14. clear pony beads
15. round pasta (don't remember name)
16. chocolate pennies
17. mini ponytail stretchies
18. biz cards w/Happy Birthday notes
19. fortunes from cookies
20. baseball post-it notes
21. ketchup packets
22. $300 in $10 Monopoly bills
23. canceled stamps
24. Simpson cookies
25. green paint samples
26. origami cranes (folded by his youngest sister)
27. Legos
28. songs (downloaded onto cd by another sister)
29. plastic clothespins
30. pictures of himself from age 1 day to 13.

Last Paragraph: At the Chicago IQA show, I asked 30 people to write Happy Birthday on their business card as one of my gifts. Christine Adams happily did so, then told me that her sister had done "40 gifts for 40 days" for Christine's 40th b-day. Christine had posted about it on QuiltArt. I thought it was really neat that the person who inspired me to do this for Josh was actually involved in one of his gifts! Thanks Christine!