Moda Cuteness

I've been a part of the online sewing group Do. Good Stitches for about 6 year now.  Every month we make blocks and rotate who's in charge to piece together the quilt for Project Linus.  I've always enjoyed this group and the women who are a part of it.  I had never actually met any of the women until just last month.  We're from all over the United States, but one of my group members lives in Oklahoma about an hour south of me.   This past December she invited me to her favorite fabric shop in OKC for their once a year End-of-Bolt sale.  I've been trying to be good and not buy fabric for a while now, but I was excited to finally meet her and see some designer fabric.  We had a blast and I'm sad we hadn't met earlier.  In the process I did buy fabric - although I did control myself better than what I thought.  We decided perhaps next time it would be cheaper to go out to lunch rather than meet at the fabric shop, because we were both enablers.  "You should totally get that fabric!"  "That's adorable!"  "You're husband won't mind."  "You need that fabric!" 

Yesterday I put some of that fabric to good use.  I used a combination of my Moda fabric with fabric I had in my stash to piece this baby girl quilt top.  I saw this pattern online and modified it to what I wanted.  Every once in a while math really does come in handy!  Don't tell any of my math teathers though, because I think I was rather vocal about never going to need it in real life...

January Charm Pack Blocks

This month Steph asked for 2 Charm Pack quilt blocks using all bright solids for the middle strip and solid tan, cream, and grays for the background.  I liked this block a lot.  I may have to put this on my list of blocks for future quilts.

School Recognition

Little Lady was pretty excited about something coming in the mail for her.  It's a big deal to the kids that their teacher reads their "Loyal Timberwolves" Recognition to the class and then mails it to their parents. 

Stashbusters

October was my month for do.Good Stitches.  I had the ladies make Stashbuster Block #2.  It's made up of many 1.5" squares.  A couple of them also made the Stashbuster Block #1 to accompany it.  I pieced together one of each to round out the quilt top.

 Here's the quilt top:

Front Page

It's not every day you see your husband on the cover of a magazine, but that's what happened this month.  OU Medicine featured an article on Joel's Survivorship Clinic at OU Children's Hospital.

 If you know Joel you know it's absolutely no surprise that he became a Pediatrician.  He prefers kids to adults any day of the week.  My kids have no idea just how lucky they are to have him as their father. 

Gift Deadlines

There's nothing quite like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing.  In my case, Christmas was looming ever closer, and I still had one more quilt to make.  It also needed to be mailed, so that made it even more pressing.

 It's been a while since I whipped out a quilt in under 24 hours, but it happened this past week.  I started the quilt top after the kiddos went to bed, and got the blocks pieced before bed.  I got the kiddos off to school and then pieced the quilt top together.  Luckily, Little Guy was happy to read books next to me while I sewed. 

I layered and quilted it while he took his nap, and then we watched a couple of episodes of The Voice while I hand-stitched the binding.  Wahoo!

This quilt is actually for my nephew who will be making his debut in February.  My sister is having her second child.  It got delivered on Saturday, so it made it there with a couple of days to spare before Christmas.  Phew!

Christmas Stories

For our last Sunday together with the Young Women this year, all of the leaders shared a Christmas story or poem.  I shared "The Legend of the Candy Cane." 

 At the end, each girl was given a personalized journal to use in class.  It has this upcoming year's theme on each of them: If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15)

Cookie Exchange

I think I'm up to 9 years of doing a holiday cookie exchange, but I've kind of lost track.  It's always fun to get together to eat cookies and then leave with more cookies.  This year I decided to do two cookies that are classics but with a twist. 

1- Pumpkin Snickerdoodles:

 2- Butterscotch Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies:

 I never get pictures during the party, but this year I got one!