Christmas Block

This is the block I'm using in the quilt block frame I bought from Angela. I wanted a Christmas block with a biblical name but couldn't find a Christmas one so I used this one called Cain and Abel. I got it at Quilter's Cache. It looks even better than I hoped it would.

Not much going on here today. It's Grey Cup Sunday so hubby is hunkered down waiting for the game to begin. I'm not a big sports fan aside from Curling and Skating. Although.. I just realized it might be a good day to go shopping. Wish I'd thought of it earlier.

Have a great Sunday.

Christmas Candlemat

I've been busy making gifts for everyone else but am finally at a point that I can get back to making a few things for myself. I've wanted to make this candlemat since last year.. actually I've had the pattern that long too! It's for 4 seasonal mats and I want to make the other three as well. The pattern is from Country Quilts. She has such cute patterns!

Next I want to make a quilt block for my quilt frame I bought from Angela's site. I found one I like that I think will look great done in Christmas fabrics. And then I want to do a small wallhanging for my kitchen. The block I may be able to do today. The embroidery wallhanging will take longer, of course.

Not much else going on. I've been spending way too much time on Ancestry.ca filling in my family tree. The number of connections in my dad's line are crazy. The family stayed in Cornwall, England. None of the Cornish ever left home until one of my ancestors dared to cross into Devon and then his son and family came to Canada. And I wonder why I get nervous travelling.. maybe it's a genetic fingerprint or something that makes me happy to just stay in my own area.

Happy Thanksgiving to my US Friends

Great Christmas Book and other stuff.

If you're looking for a great book to read for Christmas this is one of the ones I'd sure recommend. I've seen books by Debbie Macomber before but had never bought one. With the grocery store lineups so long these days it was sitting right at eye level and if there's one thing I can't resist it's a cozy book. Add angels to the mix and I gotta have it. After reading this one now I have to order all of her angel books from past Christmases. I just enjoyed it so much! I'll try the library and second hand book store first, of course. The Angels are Shirley (the smart one *LOL*) Goodness and Mercy. They get themselves into trouble a lot but Gabriel keeps letting them come to earth to help get prayers answered.

Went for my seasonal flu shot yesterday at a clinic they had here. They were doing H1N1 as well but I had mine already a few weeks ago. Since I have health issues and I'm almost 60 she recommended I get the pneumonia one too. So today my arm is really sore - glad I'd already had the other shot or I'd have two sore arms. My husband came with me and bitched the whole time. I told him if he didn't want the shot to just go home and I'd take a bus. The bus would have taken a whole 10 mins. Why do husbands complain about doing things they have a choice about and then do it anyway?

Today to add just a tich more misery I'm going to the dentist.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of crafty stuff. I'm embroidering a candle mat that I think is really pretty. Hopefully I'll have it read to show by Friday or so.

I'm trying to work on my family tree so I can share it with my family. It's really hard throwing out a lot of the paper stuff I had that is related to my family but in a distant way. I love that stuff but it would appear my family only wants to know about names and dates - how boring. On the other hand it's freeing up a whole lot of space in my file cabinet so that's a good thing.

Okay, off to the dentist. Have a great day everyone.

Fireside Coffee

First of all thanks for sharing your pant hemming stories with me yesterday. It made me feel better. I'm going through a rough patch on the road of life, as we all do at times, and it's so nice to have such supportive friends here. What also made me feel better is that my daughter called me on the way home from work and said she'd worn the pants and they were fine. I thought she wanted to tell me something else as well but she said no she just wanted to let me know the pants were fine. She's such a nice kid sometimes - yes, when you get up here where I am 33 is a kid.

Anyway. Today I wanted to share a recipie with you that you can make for an easy gift. Actually you could make a lot of gifts with just one batch. I used to make it all the time but now everyone has the recipie so it's not really a good gift any more *LOL*

FIRESIDE COFFEE

2 cups instant hot chocolate
2 cups dry non-dairy creamer (like Coffee Mate)
1 cup instant coffee
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 - 1 1/2 cups sugar

Blend all but the sugar thoroughly in a blender or food processor.
Add sugar and blend again.
Use 1 heaping Tbsp in 1 mug of hot water.

You could even use some of this in those little bags instead of that cake in a cup. I usually got those little tins at the dollar store to put it in.

Hemming Pants

Oh I loved Auntie Em's analogy. Asking a quilter to hem pants is like asking Picasso to paint a house. The first pair went okay. I don't have a serger but I did find a stitch to use on seams. And then I hand sewed the hem cause the "invisible hem" on my machine certainly isn't invisible... well, it could be with the right thread but there would still be little vertical stitches every few inches which I don't like the look of. These pants were a stretchy type fabric.

My daughter liked them. That gave me confidence. So I asked her to bring me a pair that I'd tacked up for her months ago just until she could get to a seamstress with them. She'd washed them a number of times so they needed to be lengthened maybe 1/2" or so to look right with heels. So we undid the tacking and I re-pinned them to a good length.

Yesterday I was oh so careful. I even used a ruler and chalk to mark the cutting line. I had to take off a full 3". She's only 5'1". I guess the problem was I didn't take out the tacking on the second leg and after I did I didn't make sure I'd gotten the hem flattened all the way down. When I was cutting I felt a strange feeling. I should know by now to listen to my intuition. So instead of taking 3" off the second leg I ended up cutting off 5"!! I felt sick, I just wanted to sit down and cry. But I realized if I left them hemmed at the length they had been I'd still have enough for a 1" seam on that leg. Then if she wears them with flats they'll be almost too long.

So she has one leg turned up 1" and the other turned up 2.5" I think my stiching is invisible enough though.. again I hemmed by hand.

What's happened to me? I started sewing my own clothes when I was 14 years old cause if I didn't spend my allowance on fabric then I'd be stuck wearing my sister's hand me downs. And she's 11 years older than me so I was very fasionable - not.

I've been thinking how things have changed. I could swear when I was first sewing that we used to put a ribbon type tape on the hem and sew it that way... is that possible? Does anyone else remember? My mind is a sieve these days. Then it went to just pinking and turning under 1/4" and then turning up to the right length. Now that was easy. Seams in home made clothes were just pinked to keep them from ravelling and they looked pretty good. Of course gabardine fabric always looked good... in the 70's. Now everything is serged. I don't have a serger and don't want a serger... they intimidate me. Plus I seldom sew anything that would need a serger. I sewed a lot of my daughter's clothes when she was little and then the kids hallowe'en outfits.. which didn't need so much attention. And now? Oh my goodness. I'm fine with jeans and sweats but I can't fix dress pants to save my life.

I hope my daughter finds a new seamstress. I gave her the name of a friend who sews clothing for people but she never got around to calling her. Maybe next time she gets new pants she will.

I have 2 more pairs of pants that need hemming that aren't dress pants. One is mine the other my husband's. Get back on the horse I guess.

Cake in a Mug

I did this post and then I removed it but I've had people ask me where it was so I'm posting it again. I got the post from here:

Molten Mugs

I tried out the cake and it was awesome! So I decided to post the link here. It's I got it from one of the website links in my sidebar "Freebies for Crafters". She has some amazing things on there. Check it out. She's redone her site with an index listed along the side so you can go down the list to see if there's something you'd like to check out.

Now to the reason I deleted the post. I didn't realize it would still show up on other people's pages as a post after I removed it. I made the cake, as I said, and when my husband came home I gave him a taste of what little was left. When he said it was delicious I told him what was in it. He said "A whole egg and 2 Tbsp of butter in that little cup?" Then it hit me.... whoa... this thing is like a heart attack or stroke in a cup. There's also 1/4c chocolate chips. So I decided maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. I mean it's nice for a treat if about 4 people share it but for one person to eat the whole thing at one sitting? Yes, I admit it, it did eat almost the whole thing.

I love the look of it and the little bag is really neat. I suppose you could put candy or something in the bag rather than the cake mix. Or maybe you're more creative than I am and can come up with a cake that isn't quite so rich.

I've been quiet on here cause I've been doing other stuff. I'm trying to put my genealogy together so people can read it. What a lot of work! I've got 7 years of research! And all my family is really interested in is our direct line so I've been going through everything and tossing things that were interesting to me at the time but offshooting way off from the family.

My daughter also gave me a pair of pants to hem. I haven't sewn on anything aside from cotton for so long that I was a bit nervous but I think I did an okay job. It took some practise with stitches though to work on a stetchy type fabric. Once I did that successfully I've been going through the pile of pants I've been putting off hemming so I have a full days work ahead of me.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

This isn't looking great great but I was so excited that it worked I wanted to share it. This is a tutorial from Whip It.

What I'm showing you is about 4" x 7.5" and looks like a wallet right? Wrong. It's an 18" x 14" shopping bag.

You fold it up and put it into what looks like a pocket on the front of the bag and it fits in your purse.. or whatever you carry... so if a shopping spree hits you... like you see a quilt shop.. you're all set to bring your stuff home and be environmentally friendly at the same time.

I made some changes. Her pocket was single layer and so was the bag. I can't see one layer being strong enough and I wanted the pocket to be heavier. So I can see I need to make the pocket a tich longer so the bulk of the bag will fit better. And I did my handles my way... okay, I admit it, I got lost in the directions half way through and made the rest up. I even had to make my own continuous bias binding.. which actually took me longer than all the rest of it put together. I think I'd like the binding a different colour from the pocket too. And I need practice putting it on better. Maybe I'll use commercial binding.

Thanks for looking. I'm going to make a few for Christmas gifts. I'll keep this one and use it myself cause I don't care what it looks like.

Four Tenors singing Amazing Grace

Four Tenors singing Amazing Grace inside the Colseum in Rome.

This gave me goosebumps and is too beautiful not to share.

Quilt Block Holder from Country Scraps!

Here's my post I was telling you about. I just wanted to have a picture to show before I posted. A number of weeks ago I decided I wanted to get one of the Quilt Block holders that Jim, Angela's husband, makes over at Country Scrap Quilts. I LOVE it! Guess you'll have to click on the picture to get a good look at it. I haven't decided what to hang from the pegs yet cause I just got it but never fear, it won't take me long to decide.

I'm just so excited to actually get it up and mounted. I needed my husband to help me find a way to secure the block in a way that I can switch them out.. hopefully every month.

The embroidery itself I got free from an online site but I didn't mark down which one it was. Sorry everyone.

To make up for that I'm going to share with you a link to a website for the Cross Country Christmas Designer Quilt Blog Shop Hop. Popular designers will be posting designs from now until Christmas that are Christmas themed for gift giving and quick and easy to make.

Okay, off to make my annual Marmalade for my father-in-law. Scots love their marmalade and he swears mine is better than any you can buy.. even the expensive ones. When should I tell him I use the recipe from the Certo box? *LOL* Oh well, it's a Christmas tradition and it makes an easy gift so what the heck. It takes longer to make than most jams cause you have to cut up all the oranges, grapefruit and lemon but I think I can manage that once a year.

Have a great day.