Advent Calendar, Day 5: Mitten

It's not particularly cold out, but the mitten seemed like a nice, wintery addition to the advent calendar. And look - one row full already! Doesn't time just zip past...

Advent Calendar, Day 4: Cardinal

We don't have them here, but they still seem very Christmassy to me - all those years growing up with them in the DC winters, I guess...

Advent Calendar, Day 3: Drum

Geoff's choice today - he picked the drum because the kids have a band concert tonight, so it seemed apt. 

Beginning to fill up, but still really bare...

Advent Calendar, Day 2: Church

Alex chose this one today - not sure there was a particular reason for it, I think he just likes it. I do, too, especially the batik fabric in the windows for the "stained glass". 

ATC Friday - Bird APC Deck, Diamonds

I'm sure I've shown lots of APCs (Altered Playing Cards) which I have made for other people in various themes, and I think I showed, a while back, a set of butterfly themed cards which I've collected. Those were largely part of a specific swap series aimed at collecting a butterfly deck. This deck, which features birds, was accumulated over a longer period, through a series of individual swaps, Pick-a-theme swaps and other situations. These are the diamonds. I didn't request specific birds or a specific style, so that part is just down to the artist making the card. I did receive a few cards which featured crows or ravens or similar birds, and those I moved over to another deck I am collecting - one with exclusively crows/ravens (or other corvidae).  I'll try to show the other suits in the next few weeks!

Advent Calendar, Day 1: Wreath

Once again, it's December, and time for me to put up my quilted advent calendar. We really enjoy this advent calendar, even though it looks a little bare at the beginning of December. Today's choice of piece is the wreath. I often start off with this one, as I usually hang a wreath on the door on December 1st as well, so it's a thematic choice. Not all the choices are thematic. Sometimes, it's just whatever we feel like putting up. There are more pieces than squares on the calendar so a few always get left off.  Each piece is about 3.5 inches square - they were paper foundation pieced from a pattern by Meadow Lily Bridge. 

ATC Friday

A couple more sets of finished round robin ATCs - these are ones where I added the final touches. With these cards I simply added a large paper flower (slightly 3D, so the scan isn't brilliant).

With these, I added some autumnal leaves, as the orange colour seemed very autumnal to me.

Finished Stars!

Binding on, just in time to give to our friends who got married a while back. This isn't a bed quilt, but rather a large lap sized snuggle quilt. Hopefully it will get good use...

ATC Friday

These again are two sets of cards which I was the last player to add something to, after two others worked on them. With the music cards, I added an instrument and a bit of German foil scrap - which I am running out of. Must order some more, if only I could find a reasonably priced supplier...

This card had a really interesting background texture, so I didn't want to cover that up - that said, it was quite blank when I received it, so I felt it needed soemthing substantial added. These bugs (and a bird) are partially transparent, which helps keep the background in the foreground. So to speak.

Cotton Robin - my finished piece

Many moons ago (or a little less) I sent off a centre block to start out a quilt for the Cotton Robin round robin. One of the players had some trouble along the way, so it took a little while longer than expected for my piece to return home, but it did finally land, surprising me when it did as I'd kind of forgotten about it. It's really sweet, isn't it?  The centre block (just the bird with the pale blue background) was a block from the Block Lotto - I won a set of bird blocks a long while back. I still have quite a few. Really must do something with them...

ATC Friday

A couple of finished sets of Round Robin ATCs - these were both instances where I was the final player to add something. in both cases, I added lettering (I think that's my motto -when in doubt, add letters. I have a large collection of letters!)

ATC Friday

Three sets of round robin cards here, all three where I was the final player (third) to add something. The eskimo cards didn't need much as they were already quite full - a few snowflakes did the trick. 

These fish and chips cards just needed to be identifed as such - gotta love a bit of lettering!

And this fashionable lady really need some washi tape and a huge newspaper flower. (The lefthand card isn't really sliced off at the top - the scan is just a bit wonky....)

Cross Stitch Update

Well, I had intended to work more on this, but foolishly (accidentally) sliced the pad of my thumb open on a broken teacup, so even after it finally stopped bleeding, it's been awkward to use for the better part of a week. Especially for any task you have to use the pad of your thumb for, like pushing a needle through fabric (I hate thimbles). Maybe next week!  (The dress is the only area of progress, so it's all I've shown in detail.)

A few scrappy log cabins

Although most of my time this holiday week has been spent hanging around doing very little, I did finally take some time one day to make up a few blocks, using strips from my strip bag (and a few from the scrap basket). I've just gone with a generic light/dark block, rather than any colour theme (though there's a lot of navy and black in there). They'll do, I'm sure. There are 12 blocks (12" blocks) so it will make a small quilt top, which is all I need...

Binding on (well, partway)

So, I finally got some binding stitched on to this quilt - only took me...a bunch of weeks. Of course, now I have to stitch it down, but I don't need it for a few weeks yet, so I have time...

ATC Friday

These cards were made for a PAT (Pick-a-theme) swap. Instead of one overall swap theme, each player in a group (5 people) chooses a theme to which they'd like cards made. So instead of a few cards made to the same theme, you make one to each theme. Here, the chosen themes were cats (above), elephant(s), 

(the fox was made as a hostess gift)

horses and Game of Thrones. 

Funny enough, everyone in our group chose animals except the GoT person. My chosen theme was black birds (a common choice for me as I collect cards with black birds on them). 

ATC Friday

Another set of ATCs where the background was already made and I added all the other elements. All of these went into my gallery on the site I like to trade on, to be available for private trades.

ATC Friday

All of these ATCs are ones where I had the background already, either from gifts or from background swaps. I added all the rest of the stuff, but it's fun to work on other people's backgrounds sometimes - just maybe inspires you to work in a slightly different direction than you might normally take. 

Cross Stitch Update

Made a bit of progress on this - it doesn't look like that much, but stitching the brown of the gown actually took quite a while. Next week it might get a bit more interesting - I hope!