Happy Thanksgiving!

though honestly, i'm already thinking Christmas!

finally some finished products to show.

i bought a layer cake of Merry & Bright (by Sandy Gervais) last year and even though i have a long list of WIPs, i felt the hankering for a quick Christmas quilt. i saw a similar block on someone's blog (shoot--i can't find where i saw the quilt) and it reminded me of packages. i didn't want to use extra fabric but stay with the 40-10" squares of the layer cake so this is what i got.

i selected 8 of the plainer blocks to be the "ribbon"--cut 2" strips to be the long ribbon part and a 2" contrasting square. each 10" square will provide four 2" strips and five 2" sqaures (one extra). then i trimmed the rest of the 32 blocks to 9"x10" and then cut into half (4.5" x 10") and sewed the "ribbon" down the middle. i'm no pattern writer obviously! but this is a quick & easy block. oh and because i'm a very inaccurate sewer, i'm also trimming the blocks down to 9.75" but if you have a perfect 1/4" seam, then you would finish at 10". i have half the blocks sewn together, and 1/4 of them trimmed. hopefully i'll get to finish this before christmas!

and because i can't bear to throw away fabric--and because there are lots of 1" strips leftover, i decided to make some christmas cards with them.

i think they turned out pretty cute (though some are a bit puckery--oh well, we'll call it "texture"). i re-used some old cards i had that weren't useful anymore. one card was to let people know you're moving--there were only 3 left of those. and the rest were free christmas cards from a charity we support--you know, the cards that aren't really attractive and i think i'll send them to people i don't really know, but then i won't do it because they really aren't attractive. (yeah, i know, i'm a crazy hoarder in the making).

a close-up :-)

oh, and very happy news. i won this magazine from the Happy Zombie! i'm a big fan of her blog and her work (she uses the most beautiful and cheerful colors!) so it was a thrill to win a prize from her blog, and a bigger thrill to see her block in the magazine--very cute!