Prepping for the Bakeoff

Believe it or not, the calendar has rolled around to Christmas baking season again and we're all set for our 26th annual Christmas Cookie Bakeoff at Betty's this weekend. We've got a light snow coming down today so with any luck at all, the ground will be white. My apron is ironed and at the ready...

rounds of wax paper are cut for the tins...

and I finally found the second bag of my cookie cutters that had gone AWOL (they weren't actually AWOL, I just have vision problems 😉).

We've already set out our list of what we'll be baking so today I will begin mixing up batches of dough that can be refrigerated for a couple of days to help move the process along. Despite having our list nailed down I couldn't resist the holiday cookies issue of Bake From Scratch - love this mag. I always make a few more cookies after the bakeoff so maybe there will be one or two new recipes to try this year....M

What's Under the Tree?

Its still a little early to be checking for prezzies under the Christmas tree but Jane is busy working on a birthday gift for one of her nieces - a beautiful tree skirt. Her birthday is in early December so the timing works out perfectly to be able to use it right away.

I helped her cut it out a few weeks ago and she's been busy getting all of the panels together.

There are two series of strip sets nine strips wide, burgundy/green and cream creating chevrons that will frame the base of the tree.

The fabrics are rich and will make a lovely heirloom for her niece to pull out each year; I particularly like these two.

It will be quilted very simply with straight lines along the seams that radiate out from the centre and the points will be finished off with tassels. Lovely.

Its got me thinking that this would be a nice item to make for next year's Holly Bazaar, maybe for the Silent Auction. This pile of fabrics that I had pulled for other projects is making me wonder if a skirt in all greens would work. Or maybe all reds? There's time to figure that out but I'm almost tempted to decide now and at least sew the strip sets so that I've got a jump on next year. Obviously there's more thinking to do....M

Christmas Geese

Inevitably each year there seem to be a few projects that get started for the Holly Bazaar but not finished and this year was no exception (its the quilting equivalent of my eyes are bigger than my stomach!).

One of those projects was a set of four Christmas placemats. I thought that I'd had my fill of Flying Geese after finishing two Rhubarb Crisp runners (can you say a bazillion Flying Geese???) but obviously not. I had bought a few small pieces of fabric from Jane when she was clearing out her stash and landed on geese as the perfect way to combine them.

There will be four in total, two green and two red and, given all those tumbling snowmen, I'm thinking that they would appeal to a young family. What the heck - the more I work on them the more they appeal to me!

They are ready to be quilted now and I think I'll go with vertical lines of quilting, maybe randomly placed, maybe evenly placed. We'll see what happens when they get to the machine....M

Waiting

The nice thing about a design wall is that, regardless of how many other tangents that you can head off in, what you have up on the wall waits patiently for you to return when you are ready. My sewing is gradually getting back to more of my projects now after the bazaar and a few squirrel projects (a.k.a. pumpkins) and that means my attention has returned to the walls.

I decided that it would be easier to start with the small one, Country Cousin. It has seemed to be a slow project to get going and I think part of the issue was that I was building blocks specifically as I was laying out the pieces. The other issue is that I felt it was just a little on the dark side.

So I pulled out a few more light prints and a couple of additional blues to help mix things up a bit.

It is a scrappy quilt so I finally landed on the fact that I could just sit down and sew and do the block placement later. That was game changer. I now have an additional 45 blocks together with just a few hours of work and it feels as though I might have some traction on this one.

There could have been more sewing done but I was still putting the finishing touches on my gingerbread houses. Here are three of the four to give you a sense of scale - the large one was the last to the finish line.

I like how it ended up, and even included a little cinnamon stick woodpile 😄. Actually, I really like them all - the simplicity of the white and brown appeals to me and feels very Scandinavian - and can see making this a holiday tradition, especially the little ones.....M