December projects

Confession: I work best when I have a deadline. I have tried, without success, to trick my mind into thinking that I have the power and authority to create my own deadlines. Sadly, the best deadlines are those imposed by other people and holidays.

Now that I have that off of my chest, I want to show you the awesome things that I accomplished this month for Christmas!

I finally finished our family quilt for my mom. I won't tell you how long it has been sitting in my craft room with everything finished except the pictures. My talented neighbor did the decorative stitching for me and I finished binding it before my mom left on the 27th. Only 2 days after Christmas (doh).

I am still a novice at quilting, and would someday like to figure out how to quilt designs other than square, but the beautiful stitching made a big difference in my simple quilt. I loved the design that my neighbor used, and I was happy with everything except the fact that my iron was too hot on some of the iron-on's and they didn't work out as well as they could have.

I started my next project this summer when our nieces, Emily and Valerie came to visit for a day. I wanted to show them how fun our woodworking equipment is to use, so I decided that we would spend the day making shelves. I used some left-over MDF for my shelves and the thought of sanding down the edges was enough to make me decide to put it aside for...a few months. Finally I decided that I wanted them out of the way so that I could work on my Christmas projects. It didn't take much time at all to come up with an alternate plan to sanding. I just spray painted the insides and "wrapped" the edges with fabric. They turned out really cute.

My last project for this month, almost killed my sewing machine and my washing machine, but it was worth it. It turned out so much cuter than I expected. I made a picnic quilt for my sister's family. I had never tried a rag quilt before, let alone a jean rag quilt. It is quite the process, especially if most of your jean material comes from size 4T (that's toddler) jeans and smaller. Luckily I had some friends who were happy to give me some nice adult sized jeans that had seen better days. I was grateful for that.

This is the flannel backing of the quilt.

and this is the top.

This is the humongous wad of lint that I pulled out of my dryer when I put it through the washer and dryer after clipping the edges. Our washer rebelled for a week after I washed this quilt, eventually it coughed up the lint so that the water could drain.

Lucy and Maddie were my constant helpers through this whole ordeal, I couldn't have done it without them.