Christmas placemats

Our quilt guild was recently asked to make placemats for an annual Christmas dinner for area seniors. One of the local service groups hosts the event, donating the food and staff. They asked if our guild would mind making / donating placemats for the seniors to use for the dinner; they would then be able to take them home to use for their own Christmas meal. When we were asked to participate, we immediately agreed to help out - it worked out that each guild member needed to make between 5-8 placemats. We were free to choose our own design; the table linens would be red or green, so we were asked to incorporate those colours as well. One of my quilting friends had recently shown some placemats on our quilt forum, and I liked the design concept - the placemat was divided into 4 sections, each one made of a different fabric. I chose to use all Christmas / winter fabrics, and quilted the placemats with traditional shapes - stars and Christmas trees. The pic is of two of the placemats - one from the front so you can see the fabrics and design, the other one is from the back, to see the quilting. I had a picture in my mind of how I wanted the quilting to look - and it ended up being pretty close! I had the backing fabric in my stash for about 7 years - it's not often that you need green cotton with a design of strings of Christmas lights, but it was the perfect finishing touch!

Superstorm Sandy

We've all seen the horrible destruction in the wake of Superstorm Sandy - and more than one person has wondered what they could do to help. Thankfully, a number of quilters have banded together and are making quilts for as many people as they can. One website offered a fairly simple block and asked us to sign up for as many as we thought we could reasonably make. Of course, there's also a time limit, so the blocks have to be received by Nov. 25th. Any time I've sent things to the U.S., it seems to take at least a week and a half (although Canada Post doesn't seem to be doing a really wonderful job either lately...!). Well, I've pulled some bright fabrics from my stash, because if you're facing what some of those folks are facing, you need a little bright, right? All of the blocks needed to be white, with one other fabric - it didn't matter if it was solid or print. I went with some fun fabrics, and some pretty fabrics, and, well, I'll just show you a picture!

There are 12 altogether - I could get enough white blocks out of 2 strips of the white fabric to make 12 blocks, and I have LOTS of stash fabric, so that's why I made 12 (I signed up for 5). They went out this morning, so I hope to hear from the quilter in about 2 weeks that they've arrived. It's such a small gesture, but it adds up! Here's a link to the original post, in case you can help out too - even one block helps! http://www.knotted-thread.com/2012/11/helpless.html

National Card-making day (belatedly...)

I know, I know, National Card-making Day was Oct. 6th... So, I'm a little late with this post, but I have a good excuse - Thanksgiving day (Mon. Oct. 8th). We had the whole family home, plus my dad. We had a wonderful time celebrating God's goodness to us through the past year*; we shed a few tears remembering that mom was with us last year, and we heard about our son's recent mission trip to Malawi, Africa. With Thanksgiving comes a lot of house cleaning, cooking fancy food and all the rest of the "prep" that goes with a feast-day. I did make a point of sneaking out on Saturday to visit my "local" stamping store - I made a cute gift tag, which I can't share here, because one of the people that reads my blog will be getting it. But, I went home and made a few cards to celebrate, and here they are, thanks to Pinterest:

For the birthday card, I took an embossed panel I had in my stash; it needed to be trimmed down a bit, and then was glued to the card front panel. I added a bit of ribbon from the dollar bin at Michael's, a punched flower with a brad to keep it attached to the card. A sentiment (again from Michael's), stamped across the bottom completed that card. The sympathy card was also a Pinterest inspiration - I embossed a panel and brayered it with Sahara Sand ink. I punched out a section, and emphasized it with a scalloped edge - I didn't use the brayer here to make it stand out a bit. Then I stamped the hummingbird (from Pretty Amazing) onto the card; I stamped the accompanying flower, cut it out and popped it up. These cards are ready to go out in the mail tomorrow. * I'm so thankful for my family, my quilting, blogging, and card-making friends, and my relationship with the greatest gift I've ever been given - Jesus!

A Card, Finally!

The name of my blog is Quilting and Cardmaking, but there haven't been a lot of cards posted lately - mostly because I just haven't had a lot of time to make cards in quite a while. What's that? You think that it only takes a few minutes to make a card? Right... That's what I used to think too! Anyway, I've made you wait long enough - here's a card for you:

I know that this was a CASE from someone's blog - but I can't find the blog post right now, so maybe I'll just thank every card-maker that's willing to share her talents! The Designer Paper is from Stampin' Up from at least a year or two ago; the sentiment is from Stampin' Up (Trust God) and the leaves and flowers are cut using Spellbinders dies (Mega Carnation Creations and Shape Foliage). Thanks for stopping by!

It's official! Friday Night Sew-In results too!

It's official - fall is here! I'm not a huge fan of the cold, rainy weather that seems to characterize fall, but a day like today is just fine with me! It's also Fall Fair season - otherwise known as "finishing up six projects in time to enter them in the fair" season. Well, I managed to finish a few of those things - and the project that didn't get done became my project for last night's Friday Night Sew-In. I'm not a big fan of decorating my house for every season, but I do like some seasonal items - and Christmas is one of the times when I do spend a bit of time decorating. The fact that I can create items that can be entered into the "fall fair" and possibly win prize money for, just sweetens the pot - and that's the story of my Christmas table runner. I managed to start it last year, but it didn't get even close to being completed, so I stuck it in a box and forgot about it. I found it back 3 days ago while I was looking for the quilt top I wanted to enter in the fair. I caught a glimpse of the red fabrics, and I remembered starting it - but the question then became "Is it close enough to being finished so I can enter it on Friday?" (this was on Wednesday...) No way! Sigh.... But, there's one more fair next week - I can try for that! So, the quilting is finally done, the binding is attached, and I even managed to get about half of the binding sewn down - and I have a few days left before Friday's entry date!

I still have an hour or so to work on it - that should be enough to finish it up. I need to cook supper first though - and later I'll check in to see what others have done.

I'm still here!

Why is it, that you get up in the morning, and you think of all the spare time you have in the day; and suddenly, it's supper time, and all of your grand and glorious plans have come to nothing?! Welcome to my world! I have been getting things accomplished - just not the sorts of things that you want to read about... But wait, I did make a card! I think that I might even have a picture of it - and this just might be it:

An older couple at our church is going through a really tough time right now, and I wanted them to know that we care about them and we're praying for them. I know that I saw a card on someone's blog that ended up being the inspiration for this card, but right now, I have no idea who it was (I'm going to have to start paying more attention to that - and for now, I'll accept my punishment of 20 lashes with a wet noodle). I'm not a huge fan of the colour orange, but it just seemed right for this card. I used my Beautiful Wings Embosslits from Stampin' Up - I made some of the butterflies with the orange cardstock, and a few with cardstock-weight vellum. The horizontal strip is a darker cardstock, and I used the scalloped trim border punch along the long edges. A big circle cut from coordinating designer paper finishes it off. The card has been delivered, and hopefully, it's encouraging the recipients.

A finish!

I don't often get a quilt done as quickly as Ava's quilt, but I didn't have a lot of time! We attended her baptismal service yesterday morning, and the completed quilt came with us. Having a sewing machine that can easily handle the quilting on a quilt up to at least a queen sized quilt makes the job much easier! So, here it is:

This quilt is meant to be played with, dragged around and probably spilled on too, so I stitched the binding on and then machine stitched it down on the back just to give it a little more strength. Each block is different, and I included a note with ideas of how to use it - younger children can simply find any specific block (zebras or cars, etc.); as they grow older, the search can be for a concept - for example, something that reminds you of summer (sea shells). I hope that Ava will someday have a brother or sister to share this quilt with, but for now, it's her's alone - and there's a block with different letters of the alphabet on it, including the letters A, v and a!