Over Extended

I got a little ambitious this fall. I knew that I needed to start Christmas goodies early with a toddler in the house but there were also birthdays and most importantly a new baby coming. My craft books piled up with tabs and dog ears marking far too many projects for far too little time. Eventually I had to scale things back from my over ambitious dreams.

Although I changed what I was making for the soon-to-arrive baby somehow it morphed in to more than I thought. I knew that I wanted to make a quilt and instead of making an intensive quilt top I thought that using a panel and embroidering some details on top would be easier. Oh how the craft gods laughed at my plans. Indeed the time on the sewing machine was barely existent, I just added some green fabric with poke-a-dots on the bottom and top of the panel.

Then time stood still as I started in on the hand quilting. Lesson learned, hand stitching takes time, more time than you think. As I was working away at outlining bird wings, tying french knots and satin stitching until the wee hours of the morning I started to think about if I had really chosen the right project for the baby. I worried about getting it done in time for the baby shower where I wanted to surprise my best friend with it. Then of course I started thinking of when N was little and would play on the quilts that I made her. I thought of this little baby feeling the stitches and textures of the floss, pulling out some of my sloppier french knots and eventually learning the animal sounds that go along with the quilt. And I realized that it was worth every stitch.





Then I went to crazy town.







I had extra flannel from the back of the quilt and I thought that I may as well whip something up for them with it. So I turned to the tutorial where I made N's changing pad covers and made one of those. Because really, you can't have too many changing pad covers.

I still had some other odd and end pieces of fabric that matched the panel and thought of how much N loves her buckets. I figured, hey they won't take long. I suppose, in comparison to N's, they didn't. I didn't do any hand stitching on these, just put in the contrast fabric against white and lined them in some matching Kona cotton colors.

As I was packing up the goodies to send off across the country I realized that I and unintentionally thrust an entire nursery set upon the parents-to-be. The box arrived just in time, literally the day before the shower, and by all reports back they love everything that was sent. But then again they're too nice to tell me otherwise.

Snowflakes

Hello December! It is December right? The only way to tell here is by walking in Target and being asaulted by the Christmas music and over the top glittery displays that make sure you know you should be shopping for all of your loved ones. We had a small flurry of snow at the end of November which has all melted away leaving me feeling a little homesick for Alaska and all of the snow that Decembers mean. No worries about a white Christmas there. We did put up our Christmas tree this weekend and I love watching N's face light up when she sees it, touches it and pulls the ornaments off of it.

These little beauties won't melt though, regardless of the weather outside. My mom gave these to me a year or two ago. She had unearthed them in some box in her house and didn't know what to do with them. Tatting isn't something that I can do, nor do I have a lot of interested in learning. But, I can appreciate the time and effort that went into making these. I'm not a doily fan, and if these pieces had been much bigger they probably would have been donated to the Rescue Mission. They are perfect in these little frames though, and C thought that they looked like snowflakes. Perfect addition in a December without any snow, yet.

Here's hoping you have some snow. It does make winter so much less dreary and Christmas time much more festive. There has be lots of other creating, alas much of it is for Christmas and can't be shared until then. But I do have a few other things that have been waiting to be shared until the 25th rolls around.