Sugar Plum Princess stocking for Bella.....2008

Bella with her stocking!

Finished! I started this a week ago.....sudden whim to get creative....and finished it today. Now to mail it in time for Christmas.....I hope! (click on any photo to enlarge) I call it the Sugar Plum Princess Stocking and it is for my great-niece, Bella. I love making crazy quilt type stuff and had so much fun doing this!
This is the back......more machine and less hand work.

Detail of the only handwork on the back


Front....top

Front....middle

Front...toe!

Inside is just pink cotton and I thought I was getting my name and date a little lower than it ended up.

My quilting room is an absolute mess at the moment with all the stuff I used! But it is all very colorful!

Laces......

....embroidery thread....

......beads......

....heavier threads
What fun this was! However, next time I will start in July and enjoy the process a little more!

The worst part is that I have to mail it and won't get to show it to my quilting buddies!

Quilty Christmas decorating....

I actually don't have a lot of quilt stuff for Christmas other then a quilt and pillow shams that I've shown before. This is my tree skirt....very simple. I made it soon after we built this house in 1980. We had a 10 foot tree and needed a large tree skirt! As usual, I had Mike draft me a pattern for the wedges and then just picked out fabrics and tied it when it was done.
The Christmas table runner on the buffet gets rather buried under the little village scene until after Christmas. I used to have a board with a small train set that ran around this village, but with Hallmark still adding houses each year, it outgrew the board and now I just sort of line them up in an oval on the runner.

I made the kid's stockings during my cross-stitch phase. Emily's has koalas....her favorite thing for at least 10 years! When she got married I added this blue and silver sock for Brandon. I think that Emly would prefer his stocking now days :-)

Mike's sock is much smaller with a race car....of course!

Steven got pandas

I bought this little quilt angel at the Tucson Quilt show and really love it. I planned to try to make some, but never did. It looks simple....just 2 pieces cut from patchwork and backed with a felt type batting and blanket stitched on the edges.

My sister, Margaret bought me this on one of our Seattle vacations. We were staying in a rental house for a week in the Sequim area west of Seattle and saw this in a museum in that area. I think it is a Native American craft....a little folded box.

This is a tree skirt that I made for my sister Dorothy a few years ago. I'm really sort of embarrassed to show it! It is "folk art" at best....or worst. I didn't have applique patterns and just created my own little characters. The wise men are particularly poor.....the camels look like miniature horses with humps on their backs....so I will not show them closely! The idea came from a photo I saw and it could have been nice, if I had found some decent patterns for the people instead of making up my own.

the shepherds and angels

This is a stocking that I'm working on for my great-niece. I call it the "Sugar Plum Princess" stocking :-) The other side will be more traditional crazy quilting. I love working on stuff like this even if it isn't perfect when done :-)

Cake....

This is a CAKE!!!! Isn't that amazing??? I got this in an email saying it was in a Russian Cake contest. That is all I know about the origin of the photo, but it is pretty amazing.

Guild Christmas Gift exchange!....

Tonight was the Christmas meeting for my quilt guild. We always have a pitch-in meal and a lot of fun!This is the quilt that we've been selling raffle tickets for this past year and the drawing was last night. This quilt is just gorgeous and I would love to have won it!.....but didn't. It went to a lady in Nashville, TN who probably bought a ticket at one of the quilt shows where we were selling tickets.
We had a gift exchage that was a lot of fun. We were given a "fat quarter" of this red Christmas fabric several months ago and told to make a gift. I did a basket with several small items....a tea cup coaster, a stack of 6 small coasters, a tea wallet, and a paperback book with a fabric cover and bookmark.

Everyone was very creative and I would have been happy to win any of the gifts that were brought in! Here are photos of some of them.

I won the large Christmas stocking that you see here and it was made by my best "quilting buddy" which makes it more special for me.

Aren't they all lovely??

Christmas Quilt....2004

This is the only Christmas quilt that I've ever made and it is tied not quilted. I wish now that it was quilted, but I guess that just means that I will have to make myself a new Christmas quilt! I saw this pattern somewhere and didn't know how to make it so I just came up with my own way to do it. I now see a smarter way to strip piece the blocks, now that I know more about quilting.
A nice pattern using only 4 fabrics.

I put a green flannel on the back since it is a lap quilt and I like them to be warm and cozy.

My very early quilts....1986?

I'm rather embarrassed to post these at all, but if this is an archieve of my quits, I have to include the earliest ones, too. After making Steven a bluejean quilt and my daughter a rainbow quilt, the next one was a lap quilt for me!

All green fabrics....of course ......and notice that it has birds on it! I haven't changed much over the years. All of my first quilts were cut using a piece of cardboard for a pattern and using scissors. The backs are always a flannel sheet with the edges turned to the front. They are tied and it is a wonder that any of them still survive.....I never washed them much....I'm afraid to because the batting would all ball up inside.
When I made myself a newer bigger one, it was once again green and has dark green flannel on the back. It is still my favorite quilt to snuggle under while reading. I tried to do some machine quilting across a few diagonals....after the binding was done.....and without a walking foot. Groan! Looks saggy and baggy and terrible....but it's cozy!

That first Christmas after I learned to make these lap quilts I made every woman in the family one. I had a lot of leftover pieces that went into this strip quilt and I made the back with half pink flannel and half white flannel left-over pieces! I guess this is what you call "pioneer quilting".....use what you have! Most of these old quilts are now "cat quilts" that protect the furniture from cat hair.
One of my older quilts has a story of sorts.
The TD quilt.

Mike built an MG-TD repli-car. It was an open 2 seater and a lot of fun to drive around in.

Emily liked to ride in the area behind the seats, so we put a seatbelt back there and I made the pillow and quilt that you see for her to keep warm.

We drove around out in the country listening to golden oldies from the 50's and 60's while we explored all the back roads. I wish that I had a photo of Emily in the back with the quilt.
We later traded the car in to get Emily her first real car......a more practical one.

I now use these as my "hammock" quilt and pillow and the cats use the quilt sometimes, also, as shown in one of the sidebar photos.