Finishes for 2024 and looking forward to 2025

It is time for the annual roundup of craft finishes that occured in 2024!

January 

I finally finished stitching October Morning for the first finish of 2024, but then had to deal with bleeding floss when I washed it. This is how it looked before washing.

It looks much better now, but it is still waiting to be framed.

February

I finally finished a UFO this month that had been hanging around for 4 years. It had been a birthday gift. This wooden box used a whole lot of floss as the perforated stitching area was about 1/4" thick. Thankfully I had a whole lot of random inherited floss that was perfect for it.

March

March saw yet another UFO finish. This cross-stitched/embroidered apron is now ready to be a hostess gift someday.

June

There were two finishes in June. The first was a gift for the newborn grandson of a friend. I think this little lamb is adorable. I plan to make another one of these for my 2nd granddaughter who is due in March.

I also finished the cross-stitching on Pumpkin House. 

July

Overall Sam was completed! This quilt was started by my mother years ago. Before she became bedridden, I took the blocks out of the drawer where they were stored and worked with her to decide on the fabrics needed to make a few more Sams. When I visited her I would applique the rest of the Sam parts to the background fabric and then decided with her the embellishments for the hats and the buttons on the overalls. I finally finished this quilt one year after her passing.

 I will enjoy it for a while and then give it to my son eventually just like my daughter now has the matching Sunbonnet Sue.

August

 I finished the first Christmas ornament this month. This felt gingerbread man with be for my granddaughter. I gave it to her at Thanksgiving. 

I also finished stitching the first of two Prairie Schooler Santas. 

The second Christmas ornament that was finished this month is for my grandson, though I never posted the completed ornament. This is it before it was stuffed.

 

I gave also gave this to my grandson at Thanksgiving when we had a big celebration. 

September

I finally finished the flimsy of my daughter's quilt! That was a super big accomplishment. 

The Pumpkin House that I finished stitching in June was made into a pillow.

 A Crow's Pick was stitched and finished into another pillow this month. Here it is on display with Pumpkin House. I love how they both turned out!

November

I had decided to try my hand at hand-quilting a whole cloth pillow top. I finished the quilting in November, but it has still not been made into a pillow. 

I will probably get around to assembling the pillow in the new year.

Another Prairie Schooler Santa was stitched.

 Neither has been made into a pillow yet. That seems to be a trend. I am hoping to do so before I put away my Christmas decor. They will be ready for display next year.

It seems I was busy in November. I also completed the quilting and binding my grandson's I-Spy quilt. 

I gave it to him when my son and his family visited for Thanksgiving.

December

Most of my time in December was spent binding quilts. First I finished my daughter's Log Cabin Star quilt. (Judy Martin's Timberline pattern).

We will be visiting with her and her family soon and I will give this to her and her husband. 

I  finished my granddaughter's I-Spy quilt the day after Christmas.

She will be getting this soon also when her parents get their quilt. 

All in all there were 17 needlework items finished this year with 4 of them still needing final finishing touches....framing or making into pillows. I am most impressed with myself for finishing the Log Cabin Star quilt as that was a multi-year project that took a whole lot of patience to assemble. 

Now to look forward to 2025. First off, I plan on steadily working on the Woodland Babies birth announcement.

 I added a few stitches since last week, but Christmas and binding the I-Spy quilt took most of my time. Baby girl is due in March so I have some time. Once she is here I will start making her a Christmas stocking of her own. I have a couple of ideas that I have passed by my son and daughter-in-law. The final decision is theirs.

Once again I will make each grandchild a Christmas ornament. There will be three to make next year. I have already decided on them.

I will continue to work on Three Boats. 

I am currently on the 7th of 24 pages. I predict that this will be a WIP for many more years. 

Now the following project is a long term UFO. I recently picked it up again to work on during a car ride. It is a Creative Circle Kit that is probably from the 1980s. Maybe earlier. 

I have worked on it intermittently in the ensuing years. I am not a big fan of this kind of overall embroidery. I would like to finish it sooner rather than later and have it framed. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am hoping to start work on this quilt.

This coming week or the next, I am plan to print all of the pattern pages and sort through the fabric that I have purchased. I am not sure whether or not I have enough different colors of fabric. This is EPP pieced so I also have to watch some videos on the process and make sure I have the correct materials. 

That is all that I currently have planned for 2025, but you know that I will find more crafts to keep me busy. 

I did get a new treat for Christmas. My son and his family gave me a rotating cutting mat. 

This will definitely come in handy for future quilts. I could have used it with those I-Spy quilts for sure. 

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2025!

Thank you all for stopping by!

 

Merry Christmas

Wishing all of my readers a very Merry Christmas!

 

Ready to be gifted

My Log Cabin Star (Judy Martin’s Timberline) quilt is all ready to be given to my daughter and son-in-law. I finished sewing the binding on Thursday.

This was the one big item that I wanted to finish in 2024. I never thought it would take me right up to the end of the year to do so. 

I’m almost finished with my granddaughter’s I-Spy quilt. I finished the quilting and sewed the binding to the front. Yesterday, I embroidered the label. Today my slow stitching will be hand sewing the label and the binding to the quilt back . 

Our tree is all lit and decorated. 

Each year I like to try out a new cookie recipes from the hundreds that I have clipped over the years or are in my cookbooks. This year I made Confetti Logs from a 1991 clipping. Yes, you read that year correctly.

 They are tasty, but nothing special so the clipping will be trashed. What a shame to save something for so many years that wasn't worth it. I have to get around to trying more of my clipped recipes.

I added some stitches to the Woodland Babies birth announcement. The tree trunk is getting bigger and now has its heart. 

We had a little bit of snow on the grass yesterday. The weather is supposed to be bitterly cold the next few days so it may last until Christmas, but I won’t hold my breath.

I love when there is snow on the ground for Christmas. 

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Kwanza! All these celebrations are this coming week. 

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. 

Thanks for stopping by! 

Too fast

 The last three weeks have gone by way too quickly and I have been busy with many pursuits other than Three Boats. This is where it was at our last update. 

As I predicted in my last post, there was absolutely no crafting of any type completed the week of Thanksgiving. The subsequent weeks have been busy with getting the house back in order and getting ready for Christmas…..decorating, gift shopping and baking. I can assure you that less than 100 stitches were added since the last update as I only just returned to stitching on it yesterday. This is how it looks now. 

If you can discern the changes then well done. 

This Stitch Along is hosted every three weeks by Avis at Sewing Beside the Sea who kindly sends us the needed posting reminders. 

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and take some time to visit the other bloggers below who are part of this stitch-along. There is a wide variety of stitching projects. These talented stitchers are from all over the world, so please allow for the time differences and check back for each post. 

Avis, Claire, Gun, Christina, Kathy, Margaret,

 Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, 

Cathie, Linda, MaryMargaret, Cindy, Helen

Thanks for stopping by!

Getting into the Christmas spirit

Oh my have I been busy. Eventually Hubby and I got in gear and took down some of the Christmas boxes from the elevated storage shelf in our garage. I should say that Hubby took them down and I stacked them along the garage walls. We did not bring all of the boxes down. The first box that we usually work from is the outdoor lights. Hubby did not want to "hang from the gutters" this year so our lights are just on our bushes and around the front porch railing.

A couple of the storage boxes weren't well labeled and are not see-through like most. These were my mother's Christmas boxes. I have moved some of my items into these boxes, but there is at least one box that is her nativities and Putz houses from when I was a kid. I hadn't planned on putting up my own Department 56 ceramic houses this year as they are a lot of work, but Hubby brought down my mother's box by mistake. I had never searched through it and when I did, I decided to put out the majority of the houses. 

Since they are quite old, I didn't add lights to them. I don't want to set my house on fire.  A couple of houses were really faded and looked quite forlorn so they stayed in the storage box. My mother always told me that my father painted the really tiny people. I assume they were designed for a railroad set. I have fond memories of these houses and people being under the tree when I was a little girl.

Yesterday I finally got around to decorating and baking the Christmas butter cookie dough that I made at the beginning of the week. Hubby helped! He's decorating the top tray.

YUM!!

Now on to the crafting! I have added just a few stitches to the Woodland Babies birth announcement. It will get more attention soon.

I have had other stitching that needs to get completed. I machine stitched the binding to the front of my daughter's quilt. 

Now I am hand stitching the binding to the back. I have completed 2 sides and 3 corners. 

I found a spot just to the left of the bottom clip that isn't quilted. The long arm quilter must have missed it. I have to decide how to fix that. It is about the size of a postcard. Any ideas? 

I also sandwiched and basted the second I-Spy quilt. Now I have to machine quilt it. 

 

That will take a few days to do.

Friday night Hubby and I went to the Milleridge Inn, a local restaurant and catering establishment to walk through the shops. Hubby and I had our wedding reception in the Milleridge Cottage almost 40 years ago. There is a little village of shops on site that is decorated for the holiday season. There is a Christmas Shoppe, a general store, a candy store, an ice-cream/lunch shop and a bakery.

Below is the view of the restaurant from the shops.

It was very festive and we bought a loaf of their cinnamon bread from the bakery. Years ago, when you ate at the restaurant there was always a loaf of cinnamon bread served with your meal. Hubby and I haven't eaten there in years since it has changed ownership.

I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Make yourself a cup of tea, coffee or cocoa and pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are up to. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Back to crafting

 After having a house filled with our family for almost a week, it has taken just about as long to get back to our daily routine. We used all of the food that I had made ahead of time and didn’t really have a whole lot of leftovers. We enjoyed playing the back yard. It was cold though.

We also used the wagon we have had since our children were little to take the grandchildren to a local park. 

There are several in my neighborhood.

Now that over 10 loads of laundry are completed and the dusting, vacuuming and putting away toys are done, we feel like the house is mostly back to normal. Of course, Hubby caught whatever germs visited and has been dealing with a cough and cold since last Saturday...when everyone left. 

I am well on the way to finishing the second I-Spy quilt. I had cut the colorful little cornerstone squares and sew them to the sashing strips. 

Then I laid everything out for assembly. 

Yesterday I added the border strips and I now have a flimsy. Photo was taken before the borders were added.

 Next I need to layer the backing, batting and flimsy and baste them together for machine quilting.

  My daughter's quilt is back from the long arm quilter. I cut the strips for the binding. I decided not to make the binding scrappy. 

One, I had enough of this fabric to bind the quilt. Second, I felt that the piano key border was busy enough that a more plain binding would show it off best. Hubby doesn't like this fabric. He calls it "frumpy", but it is one of the fabrics in the quilt itself and understated enough not to clash with all of the other fabrics. The binding pieces are sewn together and pressed. 

I think I will start attaching it to the quilt today or tomorrow. 

I've been thinking about my next quilt project once these two are finished. I think I might attempt to make this. I've been wanting to make it for quite some time. I took the instructions out to read them over. I think I have all or almost all the fabric bought already. I may need the white.

I have made great progress on the Woodland Babies birth announcement. The leaves are all stitched and I am busy stitching the tree trunk now.

I also decided on the fabric I will use for the Prairie Schooler Santas pillows.

Hubby and I put up lights for Christmas yesterday. 

We decided not to have the icicle lights hang from the gutters this year. The height has been getting to Hubby more and more and he isn't really feeling great. Also, it will just be Hubby, me and my mother in law for Christmas this year as everyone came for Thanksgiving so the decorating is going to be pared down some. 

 I am joining Kathy for some Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to her site to see what other bloggers are up to.

Thanks for stopping by!