Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Chocolates!

my friend MYB came down for a visit yesterday and despite my pleas to the contrary, she brought a lovely gift of chocolates! aren't these pretty?! i had to hurry up and blog about them so i can eat 'em!


so cute! chances are very strong that i'll keep the box (emptied of chocs) just because of the cuteness factor. (definitely crazy hoarder lady in training!)


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!