Homemade Potholders and A Birthday

I was putting my Christmas decorations away the other night and I realized that I do not have any homemade Christmas potholders and if I don't have any, that means my daughter does not have any.  That made me sad.  That's a situation I had to fix.  Pulling out my stack of cute Christmas fabric, some cotton batting scraps, and insul-brite I started making potholders.

I made these with just a solid piece of fabric on the front (one of them is scrappy) and the back to show off the cute fabric.  To made a decent potholder I add three layers in between the fabric.  I use one layer of cotton batting, then  a layer of insul-brite and then another layer of cotton batting.  That makes a pretty thick sturdy potholder.  I do a simple cross hatch quilting through all layers to get it ready to bind.

This weekend I'll be piecing Christmas tree mug rugs to make more potholders.  Of course, I am sharing all of these with dear daughter.  

Here is a link to the youtube video on how I bind my potholders:  Youtube video on how to bind potholders.  

I had a birthday yesterday.  Another year older.  I made myself a rum cake to celebrate.  Dear daughter came to the house after work to have cake with me and give me fun gifts.  She did a good job with gifts this year.  So clever.  

I splurged and bought myself a quilting gift.  I bought  "Vintage Christmas Book" by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet for It's Sew Emma.  This past fall this book was very popular because everyone was making the quilt Bringing Home the Christmas Tree (a car/SUV with a tree on the roof) that is in the book.  I fell in love with that pattern after seeing it all over.  I won't be making a full size quilt from the pattern just yet.  Right now I just want to make a car block and the standing tree blocks for a wallhanging/table runner.  It's too cute.  

The End of 2020 And My Favorite Project

 My life felt a little out of control this year.  I have to say I was one of the lucky folks.  I kept my job and was very lucky to be able to work from home during the beginning of the pandemic.  My daughter also works at home so I could see her every week and socialize.  I spent time counting my blessing and keeping up with the latest information on how to stay alive.  I also tuned into some of the political talk so I could stay informed on that front.  This year was not easy and it was not fun.  I'm looking forward to better year in 2021.   

At the end of each year I like to pick out my favorite project that I finished during the year and this year my favorite project will be the one quilt I finished.  The quilt was my hand stitched grandmother's flower garden quilt in orange and pink.  The first flower block was finished on June 13, 2017 and it took me a little over three years to hand stitch the other 34 flowers, put a border on it, hand quilt it, and bind it.  I officially finished it on  July 17, 2020.  Not too bad for a girl who works full time and has a bunch of other crafts and sewing she likes to do.  

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

I Finished My Last Christmas Craft For 2020

I made my garland with the music sheets today.  It was the last Christmas craft that I had on my list to make this year.  I didn't take a picture because I haven't hung it up.  I have to find a place to hang it and I'll do that next year.  For now I'm just going to pack up the garland.  

I finished the last two tinsel trees turning them into drop cloth trees the other night.  Here are the three I made all together.

One more thing I made today was clothesline bowls.  I had this clothesline for a few years.  I had tried to make one of these bowls with part of this clothesline but I didn't like it.  I covered the entire clothesline with fabric it was too much color.   I recently saw the clothesline bowls with just blips of fabric to color the bowl and I liked that much better.  I used the open toe foot on my machine and that makes it easier to see what you are doing.  

Here are the two bowls I made today.  I made these with red and green fabric for Christmas.  I will give these to dear daughter tomorrow.  I'm planning on getting another clothesline to make some more for me.

I'm Still Making Christmas Crafts

I have had the materials to make this craft for a year.  I kept putting off making this one.  I thought it would be so time consuming but it wasn't.  This one is pretty easy and it only took about 2 hours to make from looking for all the materials, including the trees, the drop cloth, the twine, the glue, the glue gun and the wooden star to gluing the star to the top.

This tree

started out like this

I took the tinsel off, and added extra rings with the twine.

I clipped the drop cloth and ripped strips about 2" wide.  The ripping of the fabric gives it a nice ragged edge, I glued the material to each twine ring and each green plastic ring with hot glue putting pleats in the fabric every couple of inches.  I started adding the strips of material at the bottom on the twine ring, making sure to keep the material straight enough so it covers the bottom green ring that is the stand of the tree.  I added six strips to the tree.  It was a pretty quick make once everything was ready to glue together.  It took about 25 minutes to glue.  I did use quite a few glue sticks doing this one.  I think I used about 6 or 7 regular size glue sticks.

I have another tree this size, which is 10.5 inches tall, and an 18" tall tree to make like this.  I do need more glue sticks before I start them, but this turned out really cute.  This tree is going to dear daughter.  I will keep the other two I make.

P.S.  I found this craft on a Christmas craft video by Heidi Sonboul on youtube.  I don't have a link because I don't have it handy but this craft was embedded in a video with lots of other crafts.

Christmas Baking

 I made my second batch of gingerbread men this holiday season.  I made the first batch a couple of weeks ago.  Those 14 cookies were gone in a week.  I took a picture of the six prettiest men that came out of the oven today.

  

More Christmas Trees

      I had these little tins sitting empty on my display cabinet.  They needed some homemade fabric trees.

I LOVE Christmas Trees

             This is the first Christmas decoration I made using my quilting and applique skills.  I believe I made this back in 2012 when I first started quilting.  I drew the tree myself, appliqued it to the background, then I put beads on each tree for decoration.   After I added the beads, I sandwiched the top with a pieced back and stipple quilted it.   I originally put star buttons on the top of each tree, but I didn't like them so the next year I embroidered some easy lines to make small stars at the top of each tree.   I still love this and put it up every year.  I never put a hanging sleeve on it (I originally just sewed some loops on the back for hanging), so I put the hanging sleeve on it tonight and I'm getting it ready to hang.

          This is the up close picture of the beading.

              I went through all my decorations tonight and counted the number of different projects that I have made with fabric to decorate my home for Christmas.  I counted more than 7 different projects that I have created to celebrate Christmas.  I have another Christmas tree applique hanging decoration, a lap quilt, a table runner, small wreath and trees made with scraps, snowmen I made with wool and embroidery, pillow covers, and hanging dish towels, pleated trees to frame, and stuffed trees.