Christmas Cookies and A Christmas Decoration Fail

    I made gingerbread men today.  I used the Ree Drummond (Pioneer Woman) recipe I found on line.

    This is the first time I have ever made gingerbread cookies and it will probably be the last.  It was tough mixing all that flour into the liquid mixture because I did it manually.  The recipe calls for a stand mixer, but I don't have a stand mixer and I didn't want to borrow my daughter's mixer just for these cookies, because I wanted them to be a surprise.

     These took a long time for me to make, between mixing the dough and letting it rest for two hours or more, then rolling it and cutting it out, I spent a good 3 hours hands on making these cookies and I didn't really enjoy it. 

      I didn't decorate my men.  I'm not supposed to eat a lot of sugar and these will be sweet enough without any extra icing or candies on them.

     In the future, I'll stick with sugar cookies or butter cookies put in a cookie press..

 

    I don't have a picture of my Christmas Tree decoration fail, but I will describe it for you.  I drew a Christmas tree shape and I cut out two pieces of fabric.  The idea being that I would sew the two pieces together and stuff them lightly with some polyfil, put a dowel stick in the bottom and put it in a small tin pail with some floral foam to keep it up right.  My pattern for my Christmas tree was not right and the finished tree looked awful.  I scrapped this project.  I'm looking for other Christmas decorations to sew.

    Here's a picture of some of my Christmas decorations.

2015 - My Crafting Year In Review

 I'm counting down to the New Year. Tomorrow is my birthday, then we have New Year's Eve, then we celebrate New Year's Day.  This week is always just as special to me as the week of Christmas.

   Short Review of 2015

       It's been quite a crafting year for me.  I made a lot of projects this year.  I painted, knitted, crocheted and sewed.  I made yard art, built a quilt ladder, fashioned jewelry and I have more pincushions than I will ever need.  I learned a lot this year about what I'm good at, what I like to do, and what I should not try a second time.  I made some lovely projects and others just didn't turn out like I expected.

     I did a lot of organizing this year to make sure I could find my crafting items more easily.  I replaced some of my old tools with new ones.  I added three sewing machines to my collection and re-homed two machines I wasn't using.  

  I made a lot of projects this year with my sewing machine that I love, but my favorite project would have to be the hanging dishtowels with the button closure.  They are so freaking cute and so easy to make it's hard not to love, love, love them.  This post from November has the link to the tutorial I used and some information on how I made my first, but definitely not my last, hanging dishtowels.

   My biggest fail had to be the bathmat I tried to make in January.  The three posts about that fail started here on January 12th, with another on January 13th, and my complete resignation on January 15th.  I ended up buying a bathmat.  I don't know if I will ever try this one again.

   My favorite quilt would have to be the disappearing hourglass in black and white.  I started it on June 3rd and finished it on July 29th.  It's a nice size quilt and I love the pattern the blocks make.  This is a link to pictures of the finish.

   There were so many projects and I had fun with all of them.  I'm working on my updated crafting to do list for next year and I'm looking forward to lots of  projects in 2016.

Time To Buy A Bathmat

     I'm going to buy a bathmat from Walmart today.  I will not be finishing the crochet bathmat I planned to make with the the 1" strips of fabric I sewed together to make fabric yarn.  I did a test crochet last night with the ball of yarn I made the other night and I hate it.  I just wanted to let you know that I will not be working on this project anymore and you won't see a picture of the little bit I crocheted last night.  It is completely U G L Y.   I wasted about a week on this sewing/crochet fail and I'm moving on to the items listed below.


1.  Recover the cardinal pillow I made last year with red plaid fabric I bought a couple of weeks ago.

2.  Cut the squares for my Civil War Buckshot pincushion  and order the emery sand.

3.  Make the 4 pillow cases with the yardage of Tanya Whelan fabric I purchased last year.

4.  Iron the muslin and trace the pattern for the hand embroidery, Never Underestimate A Woman
     With A Sewing Machine.   Then pick the colors of floss for the embroidery.

5.  Organize the box holding more projects, fabrics and supplies.

6.  Start the pink fluffy granny square afghan for my bedroom.


 
 

Happy New Year!

    Here's to a happy and healthy New Year to you all.

    I spent New Year's Eve with my pets and my projects.  I set up the embroidery machine, which runs great right out of the box.  My testing would have been complete if I had stabilizer for my test.  The doubled cotton fabric did not work.  My upper thread broke twice and I think that was the machine's way of telling me it was not happy.  I turned it off and I'm waiting for stabilizer supplies before I test her again.  She needs a name and a home.  I can work out those two questions while I am waiting for supplies to use her and finishing quilting the Pretty in Pink quilt.

   The Pretty In Pink quilt is pin basted and ready to be quilted.  Here is a sample sandwich I did with the Bernina 1530 and her new walking foot.  These are pictures of the both sides, but for the life of me the stitching is so sweet, I can't tell the top from the bottom.  I should have used different fabric or thread for one or the other.  Oh, well.  All in all, I'm very happy with that Bernina walking foot purchase.

 

   I'm off to finish cleaning my oven (I sprayed cleaner in it two hours ago and it's time to wipe it all out) and then I can start quilting.  See you soon.