Made It!

We all have our traditions, one of mine, apparently, is to always decide upon a last minute project or two.  I guess Christmas Eve isn’t Christmas Eve if I’m not sewing something to deadline.  This year I made a cute little purse/clutch for my sister-in-law and then forgot to take a picture before wrapping it.  Oh, well.  I liked the pattern and I’m going to make another one for me so that’s to the future. 

I also decided I needed a mini-tree skirt for our little ceramic tree.  I’m still in use it up mode so I went for some Xmas fabric I had lying around.  In fact, I think I’ve had it lying around for about twenty years or so! 

I think this project would look really cute in some of the fun Christmas fabrics currently in the store but this had the virtue of being cheap, convenient, and guilt reducing.  So, there it is. 

I used the GO! Dresden Plate die and followed the tutorial offered by Jo of Jo’s Country Junction.  The only difference is she used twenty-one blades and I used twenty (you can find my notes on sewing up the blades here: the candle mat doesn’t point the tips, obviously, but the advice on seam allowances is the same).

Here it is on my side table:

If you look out the window onto my deck, you can see that, yes, indeed, we did have a white Christmas!

I’m also continuing to practice free motion quilting.  A couple of my latest practice samples:

I still have a long, long way to go but those feathers are slowly improving.  I’ve learned that I really like the look of the little pebbles and the close together straight(ish) lines for the background fill. 

Of course, all of these are too tight for bed or lap quilts, but I’ll get there.

I hope that everyone who was celebrating yesterday had a lovely time of it.  And those who weren’t celebrating, I hope you just had a lovely time!

Meanwhile, the New Year looms.  I won’t be able to help myself: I see (bound to fail) New Year’s Resolutions in my future.  How about you?  Do you still make resolutions?  Do you actually keep the ones you make?