MERRY CHRISTMAS ! Give THANKS in ALL THINGS !

 Just a bit different Christmas Day this year.........first and foremost, it fell on a Sunday, and our church had a wonderful service, coming together to worship our LORD and Savoir, Jesus Christ.  Oh, the tears that came to my eyes as a young man, who is battling addiction with the help of our LORD, sang "OH HOLY NIGHT".

Breathtaking !  Glory to God !

 And I want to take this opportunity to blog about our cold blast we've had to welcome in Winter 2022/2023.  I witnessed my front porch thermometer showing 10 below zero on Thursday night, and a bit colder Friday morning.  We had probably 2 inches of snow mixed with sleet.  I was blessed to not lose running water, as I left a stream going at the kitchen and bathroom sinks, and at the bathtub faucet.  

The state did what they called "running blackouts" on Saturday, Christmas Eve, to try to alleviate the heavy toll on the electrical power system.  Many people were without power even before that, but I was blessed to only have mine down for the 35 minutes that they cut it off.

Waterwise, many people found that they were without running water yesterday and today, or that they had very low water pressure.  I had low, but sufficient pressure today and was able to share. 

The city announced that there is a problem with our water supply now, and we are all instructed to boil any water that we are going to consume (drink/ brush our teeth/ wash dishes).  So I've boiled some today for drinking and for washing dishes, plus, I threw out all the ice that my freezer had made........ But tonight, while taking trash to my outside can, I heard water splashing against the inside of my mobile home's underpinning.  It seemed to be coming from the area where my fridge with icemaker is connected.  My neighbor came right down and turned my water line off until he can have a look tomorrow to see what exactly is wrong.  

Thankfully, I got my dishes done earlier, and built up a supply of water to hold me over for awhile.

I thank the LORD for the good neighbors I have that help me and constantly check to make sure that I am okay since I live alone. 

Hopefully, I will update this blog as things progress.   God is good, God is faithful........HE'S NEVER FAILED ME YET !

  

FINISH--Twin bed quilt--Twinkling Lights (Triangle Quilt)

 This may or may not be my final finish for 2022, but it is a happy finish indeed.  

This has been my hand-quilting project for the last few months, done with a pretty big stitch and 30 wt. quilting thread from Walmart.  Not sure when I started the quilting, but it wasn't more than a few months, if that.  

All machine-pieced a bit at a time, it stayed on my design wall for quite a while.  To back it, I pieced together a grey print that I had yardage of for YEARS, and a magenta print that I obtained recently.  I don't 'do' collections or name brands generally so I can't tell you who these fabrics were by.   I just look through my stash and am thrilled if I have enough of something to cover the back of a quilt.  But I must say that the grey is the most wonderful feeling fabric that I have worked with in years.  I know that I got a fantastic buy on it from Fabric.com years ago, and it has been a difficult one to match to a quilt.  But this one being for me, I was fine with it, and it goes with the grey in the top, right???????

 Batting is 80/20 cotton/poly, probably Fairfield brand from Walmart, but not sure.  Finished measurements of the quilt are approximately 60 inches by 88 inches.  There are, including one half-square block on back for the label, 662 triangles in the quilt.  

So......Merry Christmas to ME, ...........and a very merry and joyous Christmas to you all, most especially those who live alone.  I hope you have wonderful friends and/or family in your life to show you the love of our savior, Christ Jesus, whom we celebrate at this time !  

Love from Dolly.

Looking at Christmas gifts from 2009

I wanted to share a couple of my favorite gifts..........we were so blessed this year with time spent with friends and family, in person and on the phone...and my husband having been baptized earlier this year, sharing with me the truest gift of Christmas.......that, of course, will be remembered as the biggest treasure from this Christmas.


But on the material side of things, I just had to share a few photos.
Voted most humorous was this gift from my sweet friend, Mary, back in our quilting group in Oklahoma. She took the time to machine-embroider me a set of tea towels and a framed picture with the word "Outlaws", to remind me of our little renegade group of quilters. (I hand-embroidered the maw and paw potholders over 30 years ago, for my daughter's hope chest, but she's too city-fied for them, now.)

Hubby and I laughed and laughed at the 'double meaning' (friends and family who know what I'm talking about, forgive us our 'off' sense of humor) and we promptly put them on display in our kitchen and living room. It'll be interesting to see if people comment, or just ponder. I can just be so inappropriate sometimes........but if you don't laugh, you're liable to cry, right?

Then, for a heart tugger, little Christopher called me Christmas morning wanting to know if I was coming over to PappPaw's for dinner. I said, "yes, I'll be there", and he said, "good, I got you something". His Mimi got on the phone and said that he had insisted that she help him buy something for me.......no one else, just me.

This is it.........this is what he got me !

He stole my heart..........AGAIN !

I took him home with me after dinner for a couple of hours of play at my place, and, as we left his PappPaw's, he said from the backseat, "Aunt Dolly, I love you"........(he's 7). I said, "You do? Well, that works out real good, 'cause I just happen to love you too !"

It's been a most wonderful Christmas that I won't soon forget !

But, the sewing bug calls, and taking a look at the sorry, stained shape that my potholders were in (why do we not notice this sooner?), I decided to take a couple of hours last night to whip up some new ones. Poking around in the 5-cent teacups at the second-hand store this week, I picked up this little sunflower beauty. I've never collected cups, but at 5 cents, I couldn't resist their fragile beauty ( I got another one with Violets).

Having a few sunflowers about my kitchen already, I decided that the new potholders should match.

Now, I thought that I had all kinds of yellow sunflowers in my stash, but the prettiest fabric I could find last night was this one with white flowers, which I guess might officially be called daisies. Anyway, they jumped out at me, and I'm tickled with the finished pieces (wish I'd bound the mitt in the same black polka-dot -- I made it first).

Oh, well.........'til next time.........

Under the wire......

I managed to squeeze in one more little family gift.........

I started out tonight to make a couple of potholders for my sister-in-law, Judy,

because she's invited us for Christmas dinner tomorrow. In my stash,

I found a panel for making a vest (by Debbie Mumm),

and was going to use the angels from the vest fronts, and just log-cabin piece

around them until they were the size I wanted for potholders.

Then, I noticed that down in a corner of the background fabric was a quote from the Bible.

It was wider than I wanted the potholder center to be,

but I cut it out and started playing around with it, figuring that if it came out too big,

I'd just turn it into a big center-of-the-table hotpad.

After adding a couple of pieces around it, I realized that it would make a much nicer mini-quilt to hang on the wall at eye-level, for encouragement and inspiration.

Looking through my batting scraps, I found a piece wide enough, and then began

my search for a back. The quilt is only 10 inches or so wide by about 8 inches long, so I could have just used a plain piece of color-coordinating fabric. But this is a Christmas gift, and the reason I like to MAKE THEM is so that I can give my heart in the gift. It's not to save money (and yes, we are having to watch the cash flow this Christmas, just like everyone I know), but I've always PREFERRED to give homemade gifts.........I wonder if people secretly hate that ! ? I hope not !

Anyway, I came across another Debbie Mumm piece, a pillow panel this time, with a garden angel on IT. I cut it out to be centered just the way I wanted it, and then was able to use the second pillow square to cut a sleeve for hanging. This way, the print matches up and is uninterrupted. I think that a person could even turn it around for Spring and Summer, and hang it to show the angel side !

I handquilted the little quilt with a big needle and big stitches and, yes, red thread, and then found (in the cabinet under the sink, blessedly) just the right size little curtain rod for hanging.

So, there.........one more little gift, just under the Christmas Eve wire.

(Much thanks to my girl, JodieAnn, who always tosses her scraps my way.........including extra panels of all kinds of things I wouldn't think to buy !)

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.........

AND TO ALL, A GOOD NIGHT !

Christmas treasures

Yesterday, while I was out, the UPS man left me a very heavy box on my back porch.

Now, JoAnn had told me to expect it, and I wanted to wait until tomorrow to open it, but my hubby was like a child on Christmas Eve, and it didn't take much nudging to convince me to go ahead and cut the tape.

Oh, my goodness.......she loaded me up ! She knows that nothing takes my mind off of things like a good project,........and she gave me enough fabric and ideas to last a while !

She even tucked in another one of those luscious cotton battings that I loved.

But, even with all of this, my favorite gift of all was tucked into the Christmas card that was enclosed with the other gifts.

Having read about my new love for old hankies, she sent along two.........one she picked up in Branson and didn't even know why she bought it.......she never buys such things, and says that she must have had e.s.p. The other one, the one embroidered all over with ducks, was given to her by HER MOTHER when she was just a girl. She wanted me to have it as a remembrance of her. That is the dearest thing to my heart.........she has a daughter and two granddaughters that she could pick from to gift this to, but she chose me.

Thank you, Jodie, for your greatest gift to me.......your dear friendship. May GOD bless you and your family this Christmas and always.

A Christmas (past) quilt

I thought that today would be a good day to share

another quilt from the quilt guild to which I belonged for awhile.

For a few years, each Christmas we would make 6 inch

Christmas-themed blocks to bring to the annual Christmas party/meeting.

There we would put them all in a big sack, pass it around, and draw a block from

it until they were all gone (atleast that's the way I remember it). You got as many turns

as the amount of blocks you put in. I put together this wall hanging, using 12 of the blocks and some Ginny Beyer stripe for a border. I hand-quilted it myself.......now this was nearly 20 years ago,
mind you !
I'm still in touch with several of the girls, (some are my very bestest friends) and it's nice to have their work around me at this special time of year.
Merry Christmas Shawnee Spinning Spools !

Here we go.....

.....all finished, just in time !

Although,...... I wouldn't mind finding a nice big red

tassel to hang off of the point of

this little banner.

And, this is what it all comes down to, huh?

I wish you ALL the happiest memories

from this Christmas season !

Alas.........the end !

Playing with Christmas fabrics

For weeks now, I've had an underlying desire to make something Christmassy. Each year when I get out my decorations, my quilted things greet me like old friends. Even the ones that I've looked at for so many years that you'd think I'd be sick of them, warm my heart with the memories of Christmases past, friends, and days spent quilting together. Surprisingly to me, they even bring oohs and ahhs from visitors who are seeing them for the first time.

So, today, since the weather was warm, and I could enter my closed-off sewing room without fear of frostbite, I started pulling some fabrics, and seeing what I had. Sadly, I sold off my tub full of Christmas fabrics and blocks when I moved, but the truth is that those fabrics were pretty dated, (yet not dated enough to be 'collectible'). This afternoon, I put together a wall banner of sorts, and the funny thing is that it features two fabrics that I won in a dirty santa game at one of our Outlaw quilters' Christmas parties in the past. I had stuck them away and forgotten them.

I finished the edges with some scraps from one of JoAnn's backs, and even threw in a little Robin Pandolph fabric that she must have given me along the way. Scrounging for a backing fabric, I ran across a much overlooked Hoffman fabric that I had a one-yard piece of, and it had a slight gold sheen to it, just as do the featured fabrics on front.

I raw-edge appliqued the fussy-cut squares and center rectangle, straight-stitching around them about 1/8th of an inch in from the edge. Rather than have to bind the odd shape, I sewed most of the way around the entire thing, inside out, and "birthed the quilt" the way that Eleanor Burns used to do.

Tomorrow, I think I'll get out my White sewing machine, and zig-zag around each applique, as they are starting to fray quite a bit more than I like. I'll try to get a good photo of the finished banner, then.

I don't think this project has totally satisfied my desire for Christmas piecing, though, but I find that I REALLY need to fabric shop before I try again. Still, this has been a fun way to spend a quiet Monday before Christmas.

How did you spend yours?