Raintree Quilter's Guild Christmas gift exchange photos....

Last night was our annual guild Christmas party and we always have a gift exchange as part of the fun.  Several months ago we were all given a fat quarter of Christmas fabric to use in making a gift.  I am always amazed at the beauty and creative and variety that the ladies (and one male) come up with each year.  Here are some photos of the gifts. 

 I'm sure that looking at the photos you can guess which fabric they gave us to work with.

 Anyone who made a gift gets a number and they randomly give away the gifts in that method.  Nobody  gets to choose what they win, but that makes it that much more fun and fair to everyone.

 You can use as much or as little of the fabric in your gift and whatever other fabrics you choose.  I saw one gift that put the fabric on the back.  Not everyone likes the same fabrics, of course, and that is highly permissible to use the fabric that way....I did the same thing one year.  I happen to really like this fabric because I like black in quilts and the red and green were very "Christmas-y".

 I won that round table topper at the top with the poinsettias on it.  Very nice!  I have a little table that it is perfect for.

 Our husband and wife team made the two Christmas tree hangings.

 A nice Indiana Cardinal in the middle of that star!

 I made the big fat runner on the right.  I was using the Lover's Knot pattern, but turned the middle knot into a square motif instead.  I thought it looked better that way for some reason.

 It's a great place to get some new idea for making something, as well as the fun of receiving a gift that is hand made by someone else.  We quilters tend to make so many things for others, that we don't get a lot of quilt gifts ourselves......since people assume we know how to make our own stuff.

 Cute snowmen runner!

 I love anything Log Cabin.  I'm getting ready to make a small log cabin lap quilt with a really cute Chickadee fabric that came out this year.

 Nice redwork

 There were some gifts in bags and baskets that I didn't get good photos of, but I think I got most of the larger hanging items.

 Towels and potholders, I think.....several nice kitchen gifts

 Aren't those little pine cone ornaments cute?  They look like a lot of work!

A basket with a puzzle and some other things.

Singer sewing machines....

At a recent meeting of the Raintree Quilter's Guild, one of our members put together a display of Singer sewing machines....both full size and toy models....and a very nice program about Isaac Singer and his company.  I took a lot of photos of the machines and will post some here for all you Singer lovers.

 I don't know the details of each of these, but we seem to have a lot of collectors in our guild :-)

My first sewing machine was a Singer and I still have it, but it is much newer then any of these!  My mother used a Singer and I imagine my Grandmother's treadle machine was a Singer.  Many ladies in our guild still sew on these old Featherweight machines.

Recent quilt stuff I have been working on......

Well.....I haven't accomplished a lot lately, but I did finally finish a few little projects.

These two tops are to donate to our quilt guild for service projects....wherever they want to donate them.  Someone else will sandwich them and quilt them, and other volunteers with bind the edges.   

The blue one still needs a border, but I didn't have anything in my stash that looked good.  Someone else is going to add a border to it.  I have been making the 4-patches from a stack of 6" squares that I cut up out of my stash and scraps to make scrappy quilts of one type or another.  I like doing scrappy projects.  I have enough of these 4-patches to either make two more small quilts or one large one. 

 I finally finished my little wall hanging that I call "My Happy Hexie Scrap Garden".  I was trying to take a photo of it outside without much real success.  The light was all wrong.   Just nowhere good to pose it at the moment.  Those orange lilies are about all I have blooming and I was having trouble getting my "assistant" to understand how I wanted it posed :-)

 Close-ups of some of the hexie flowers.  I had a lot of fun with this.....using scraps from other quilts I have made and doing a bit of hand sewing and embellishment on some of them.  I like handwork of this sort and making the hexies (English paper-piecing method) is relaxing while I watch baseball on TV or anything else that doesn't require my complete concentration.

Occasionally I tried to fussy cut a center hexie....bear, butterflies, rabbit, Mad Hatter's hat, etc. 

This is NOT where this will end up hanging, but I was having trouble finding somewhere to photograph it, so I stuck it on two of the nails that hold our Christmas stockings! 

 It will hang in our bedroom where I can see the colorful flowers when I wake up and smile at them.  I like colorful quilts as you can tell from most of my work. 

 I just love looking at all the beautiful fabrics that are available to make stuff from, and projects like this lets me indulge my desire to see a lot of favorite fabrics in one quilted piece.

A new quilt for a new year.....

My plans for this year are to use up some of the fabrics in my stash and also to finish a few more UFO's.  My first stash quilt is just about done.  I cut a lot of my blue and white fabrics into 6" squares.  Then I put light and dark ones together and made half square triangles.  

 This is the result.  I still need to put sashing around the outer edge and some sort of border.

 I have no idea why I decided at some point to make these little 3-D triangles, but they were a pain to do.  Probably every time someone sits on the bed, they will catch something on the 3-D squares...what was I thinking??   I should have showed a section where my corners met a little more perfectly....oh, well.  I really struggled with the bulky seams!  

Below is another blue project.  I have a lot of blue fabrics to use up!  

This year's challenge in our guild is to make a quilt based on a song title.  I didn't intend to do it because I have no inspiration telling me what song to do.  But I just happened to pull this unfinished piece out to work on, and realized that it has a song title in it!  Maybe you see it, maybe you don't.  Take a guess.  Look at the close up while thinking about it.

 I plan to put a scalloped border on it.  Have never done one before.....seeking advice from friends who have.  I had a hard time finding a fabric to use for the border , but think I will like this piece that it is laying on in the photo.

Have you thought of a song title yet?  

I am going to embroider a small red rose in the lady's hand.  Maybe that will help you?  

Think 60's easy listening.....maybe Bobby Vinton or Dean Martin?