The Elves Have Been Busy

Yesterday my Gammill was purring all day.  I finished the quilting on two projects, and got about halfway through another.  Can't really reveal them yet, but here are some teasers.

This is a detail of a needle-felted wall quilt that I started for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge 49, use of chiaroscuro, or light and  dark. 

I obviously was not very fast, since this challenge was from around September 2010, and it is supposed to be done in one week!  I guess all together I have spent less than a week on it, but this little piece got lost in my sewing room.  Go figure!  I found it when I was working on the bookmarks for my art quilt group a couple weeks ago.

This one is a small detail of a Pamela Allen class workshop quilt that I started last May.  I am so happy with this one.

Here is a detail from a baby quilt that is still on the machine.  I actually went to a fabric store and chose coordinating fabrics for this project from a Moda line.  Usually I use stash fabrics and make scrappy quilts.  The bright yellow is the only one that I had on hand.  I used the Warm Wishes pattern.



I am about a year-and-a-half behind on making baby quilts.   In fact, I quit piecing almost entirely.  I guess it was because I was doing long-arm quilting for customers, and making small art quilts. 

You know, even when you've acquired a skill set, such as quiltmaking, you do have to use it or lose it.  First, I forgot that I had changed the tension settings on my Janome when I was using metallic threads for the bookmarks.  I made about five long strip sets for this quilt before discovering that my tension was set on "0."  The bobbin thread was one long straight line.  Then, I thought I was using my quarter-inch foot.  I was not.  My seams were about 3/8 inch.  After a bit of frogging, I started to make some progress.

All week I have been discovering what I fondly call "Lily Tracks" around my house and yard.  Lily Tracks used to be crayon, marker, chalk, and paint marks with which she decorated the walls.  Fortunately, she quit doing that.  Now she likes to rearrange things.

I noticed the deer on the roof of this house right away, because it is in our downstairs powder room.

I did not notice the continuing theme of deer on the roof until this morning.

No one has asked me why there was an empty hummingbird feeder decorating one of my garden flagpoles.

Lily had some help from Caden on this one.  They built a "Wal-Mark" by putting gravel from our driveway into the back yard.  And were supposed to get it all out of the grass before they left.  Whoops!

Tonight we are going to Cary to celebrate Christmas with son Dave and DIL Emily.  Poor things, they are going to Florida and Key West for Christmas this year with Emily's family.  We will be going out to dinner, exchanging gifts, and hopefully spending time in their hot tub.  I have been looking forward to that all week!

Speaking of Dave, he asked to borrow some of my "tacky Christmas sweaters"  for a party about three years ago.  You can see them all in this post.  Any way, I never got them back- they were destined to be Tacky Party sweaters forever.  But this year, Dave's office had an Ugly Christmas Sweater contest at their holiday party.  My beautiful Snowy Christmas Chapel sweater with beads and glitter won him $75.00 for first prize!

Okay, maybe on a guy who is six and a half feet tall, it might  does look a little tacky.  But the second place prize went to one of his co-workers, who was wearing another of my sweaters...the The Saggy Stained Sweater with Christmas Tree. I inherited that one from my mother-in-law who also worked in an elementary school.  Teachers really rock the holiday themes from head to toe.

Dave is promising to take me out to lunch some day with some of his prize money.