A Happy New Year to All!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your year is blessed with good things!

My friend and fellow DFW Gang member, Sally made this quilt top and I quilted and bound it today. I called it Sally's Mickey Mouse. This brought my total for the year to 92 quilts for Project Linus! Yippee Skippee!!!

And I just had to show you a picture of the quilt top by designer Billie Lauder, "There's a dog on my quilt." It was quite a challenge to put together, but I was able to do it. I like this one! Now to figure out how to quilt it!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

A Merry Christmas!

What a fun Christmas it was for our family here in Texas! The grandboys declared that whatever gift they were opening was "just what I always wanted!" and just loved it! What fun to see the wrapping paper flying and the squeals of delight!

Nathan was a Wise Man in a robe that his mother had gotten him when she was in Sweden in September for a conference. He looked just great in it! Their church has a wonderful Children's Christmas Eve service where the kids get to participate as shepherds, wise men, angels, and bell ringers. They then, help tell the story of Christmas. It is just a great time for all!

After eating a delicious brunch prepared by our daughter, Anne, we played games and spent a pleasant afternoon together. A great Christmas Day. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, too.

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Sit and Sew Christmas Party

It was a fun day of games and laughter and eating lunch and goodies and did I say laughter----we all need laughter in our lives! We did do a little handwork, but this day was more about fun! What a great group of women! These 14 ladies are the core group of this Sit and Sew group and have seen each other through sad times and rejoiced with each other through happy times! There were many gratitude prayers said during our prayer time before lunch---what a special time! Truly I feel blessed to be in a group of ladies like these!

We did a gift exchange where you can steal from one another and that proved to be a highlight of the afternoon also---------I came home with a wonderful baptist fan quilting stencil that Linda's husband, Dennis had made and what a good job he did, she had included some other goodies, too. A fine gift!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Trip To See Grandgirls!

We just returned home after trip to see our dear Grandgirls! They are Isabel, age 8 and Ilena age 4. What a great time we had! We put up the Christmas tree, went shopping, played in the snow, played games, read stories, played Barbies, and Littliest Pet Shop and had just lots of good fun! We even had a Snow Day and stayed in all day---that was fun for us Texas folks!

Got the fabric for a new wall hanging for Christmas from my daughter while there. We visited two quilt shops (fun, fun!). The wall hanging is Churn Dash done in Civil War reproductions. It is so pretty.

We are having the nicest weather here---temps in the high 60's and may reach 70 today--go figure!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

Colorful Baskets Project Linus Quilt

Here is "Colorful Baskets" quilt for Project Linus---nice and bright! Hope some little or big girl will like it! It was part of my challenge that I gave myself to do all the quilts in the book by Karen Snyder called "Bundles of Fun." I think that is the last one from the book and challenge! I made it by the end of the year!!!! YEAH!!!!!

The weather has turned a little bit colder here, but the sun is shining most days and so if you bundle up some or layer the clothing, it's still good to go walking. I try to walk a half hour every day--------my little poodle, Buster sure likes to go walking--he's 16 years old, but still walks like a trooper!!!

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan

DFW Gang Christmas Party

There were only 5 of us, but we had a great time at our annual DFW Gang Christmas Party last Saturday. Lots of time to sew, and talk and laugh and exchange gifties (how wonderful those were) and play games and eat! Not necessarily in that order! We always have such a good time together and to think we all met online at the Quilting Passion forum (now at the Quilting Bee forum.) Shown in the picture from left to right are: Debi, Brenda, Sally, me, and Marje.

The second picture shows a tote I just finished that is made with the selvage edges from different fabrics. It was fun to make---several of us in my Sit N Sew group have saved them, so we have quite a stock pile to choose from and two of us have made the bags. You have to leave about 1/4 - 1/2" fabric with the selvage edge in order to have enough fabric to make them pretty when you sew them down, some of mine just show the color dots and printing, which is fine too. You can really do whatever you want with these! That's part of the fun! The pattern came from a recent McCall's magazine.

Let quilting help you make someone smile!

Jan