Isn't this just the most wonderful fabric!! It's from The Alice in Wonderland collection manufactured by Quilting Treasures. I'm such a fan of Alice in Wonderland and the whole fabric collection has my mind spinning with ideas.

If you've been following my blog, you know what this stripe fabric is destined to become.......a 60 degree table runner! As soon as I saw the fabric, I just had to get some for a runner or two.




This will be the backside of the runner. It will look almost as nice on this side as the striped side. The illustrations are so special.




Both fabrics, side by side, for scale......

Here's the selvage edge. I cut off all of my selvages and keep them for some unknown project in the future. Isn't this the best selvage?! The fabric is copyrighted from The British Library Board. This is their way of saying that it's for personal USE only. When I saw this selvage, I fell in love with the fabric that much more!

I laugh every time!

January's BOM is finished! Although I have many more projects to work on, I enjoy actually completing something, no matter how small. I'm one of those people that tackles the simple things before attacking the more complicated projects. "They" say you should do the hardest things first, but I need a sense of completion that inspires me to move on to the harder projects.

Next on the list of harder things is to get my Quilts For Kids quilt basted, quilted, bound, and shipped off. Hopefully, it will be finished by next week since I've moved it to the top of my list.

Lots of baggies filled with pieces of cut fabric, destined to become 12" blocks! I worked on making the blocks that I'll be keeping, then I sorted the rest of the pieces into individual baggies to be sent to Kathleen, the hostess. I wanted to make sure that the blocks would turn out OK and that I had all of the pieces cut correctly.



Here's "Noon and Light." I will say that this block was a little bit tedious and I hope that it won't discourage any beginning quilters. Take your time and press as you go!



Here's "Album." This one was fast and simple and should be easy enough for any beginners.

I'll get these into the mail soon. I'm way ahead of schedule, so I may not get to the Post Office for a few days. Unless my swap partners get their pieces cut early, I won't expect to get their baggies of pieces until the middle of February. I'm in no hurry.......there are tons of other projects waiting to be started, finished, or in the middle of construction!

I joined the Pink/Green/White No Sew Swap and cut out all of the pieces today and yesterday. Phew! There are 513 pieces in these stacks! I joined two P/G/W swaps so that I would end up with 18 blocks to sew and work with, instead of just 9 blocks. I thought this might give me some better design and usage possibilities. I'll make and post the two blocks that I'll be keeping, hopefully tomorrow. This will give my swap partners a block to refer to in addition to the actual block instructions. I'll sort all of these pieces into separate block baggies to be mailed to Kathleen for distribution. I'm ahead of schedule, so I don't need to knock myself out to get this swap out on time. A nice change of pace for me!




And this is a nice assortment of sewing and quilting goodies that I received for Christmas. Some of you will recognize these gifts and I thank you from the bottom of my heart! Sewing Sisters are the best!

Piles of......stacks of........Christmas coasters! Most of these have been given away so I'm finally going to post some pictures. I showed you how to make these in an earlier post. I found that I can make about 8 of them in 1 hour...... cutting to sewing to ironing. I gave them out in sets of four, so that's a pretty quick, small gift. I did find that they "ate" up quite a bit of fabric because of all of the layers, and are not particularly cheap to make. This is the time to buy the Christmas fabric that's on sale now and use it for next year's gifts.




One set of eight;




Another set of eight;

And here is the December BOM, just completed this afternoon. I had to put this on the very bottom of the list of to do's. I'm hoping to pick up January's block tomorrow, provided we don't get all of the snow that they are predicting.

I just joined a "no sew" block exchange that will be fairly quick and easy to complete. After all of the holiday crafting, I was hesitant to jump back into obligations, especially since I still have unfulfilled ones waiting on completion. In this exchange, you will only be cutting out the block pieces, not sewing the blocks. Click on the swap picture below for complete details. Kathleen, the hostess, has opened the sign ups until January 1o.

NOTE! The swap is now closed. There was a lot of interest and Kathleen wants to keep it manageable. I think she plans to host another one in the near future so keep checking back.

Here are a couple of the 60 degree table runners that I love to make. The first one was made with a very small stripe and the overall effect is not as dramatic as the wider striped fabrics. I seem to always have my eyes focused on finding nice striped fabrics when I'm at the fabric stores, always looking for fabric that will make an unusual runner.




This one shows what I mean about the dramatic effect. Both are very pleasing. You just have to imagine how your finished runner will turn out, pending the different stripe variations. You really can't go wrong and the way the stripes line up so perfectly makes all of the runners look like they take a lot of precision and hard work. You can't just randomly cut your fabric, but once the fabric is cut correctly, they sew together without a hitch.




After my check writing comment yesterday, I'm feeling quite superior today after seeing this cartoon in this morning's newspaper! Nooooo....wait....what am I saying?.....that I'm only smarter than a dog?! Oh well, I'll take whatever I can get! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR......2010 HAS ARRIVED!

I hope you had a safe New Year's Eve and are now ready to start a fresh, new year. Just as I thought, I was asleep at midnight until the neighborhood celebration began. It was loud and rowdy for about 20 minutes, then back to silence and more sleep. I've already written some checks this morning and have had to remind myself to change the year. I'll get the hang of it by the time the next year rolls around!

I took my Christmas decorations down yesterday. I'm always a little sad to see the tree and lights put away for another year. Apparently, Oliver felt the same way and had to protect the decorations from being exiled into the attic. Or.....maybe.....and most likely.....the tree skirt just made a soft napping spot.




This is a full sized quilt that I made a couple of years ago and have had it folded up and tucked away since completing it. Sorry about the not-so-great picture. It seems like most things that I make are either given away or stored away and I've decided that I need to use these things. What good are they if I never put them to use? It felt good to put this quilt on my bed and another quilt on my guest bed. Although pretty, they are utilitarian and deserve to be enjoyed, wrinkled, and anointed with cat hair!




And from Dr. Charles Stanley's In Touch, here are a few words of wisdom to start the year:

"Every new year--and, in reality, every new day--is an opportunity to start over and do things in a manner pleasing to God".