The Christmas season

Hello Everyone,

I hope everything is going smoothly for your Christmas season. We will be getting our tree in the next few days. But the decorations are up, the yummy treats have been being made, gifts are being boughten or made, and the lovely old traditional songs are playing on the radio.

Most of the world knows about our tragic fires that have been devastating California this year. We are on the edges of two of the very worst. The Carr fire in Redding, and the Camp fire in the Paradise area.

It's tragedies likes these, that show us the true meaning of Christmas. The beautiful towns of Paradise and Magalia have been wiped out. As well as many small communities in both of these areas. There are some buildings, some houses, still standing, but most are now gone. All those people.. many, many who lost their lives..many who lost their homes and businesses..they lost everything they had... and yet,  you should see the outpouring of help and giving and love that is coming from it. It's amazing!

The homeschooling communties are giving books, paper, pencils, games..whatever they can to help the homeschoolers who lost everything.

The quilting community are giving not only quilts to those in need, but fabrics, scissors, needle and thread to the many quilters who have lost everything.

The thrift stores and used clothing stores are giving clothing, boots, shoes and coats. Whatever in their store that is needed. To those who lost everything.

I'm sure there are many others too, giving what they can.  Many I haven't read about. 

There are stories all over the internet and tv about the First responders, fire men and women, friends and neighbors, giving rides, helping those on foot. Drs, nurses, orderlies.. driving their own private vehicles full of patients from the hospital.. the stories are heartbreaking. So very scary and sad.... And yet, thru it all, the people have been giving all they can, to those who lost everything.

It does my heart good, to see so much giving. It drives back all the bad in the world and shows me how wonderful people are, and can be. All it takes is love. And that's what Christmas is all about.

Thank you, everyone... all of you who have given...those who gave their life, those who gave their time to help others, those who are giving: money, food, clothing, shelter.... 

To all of you, and all of those who lost your homes and worldly possessions... May God Bless you and keep you safe, may He give you his strength and His love.



Merry Christmas Everyone.

Dorian

Big Brown..... Big Brown Bear....

Hello Everyone,

Yah, California has gotten some rain!! and some fires put out!! WOOHOO.. and now in my little part of CA, we had frost on the ground this morning and the tail end of the storm yesterday left us a  sprinkling of SNOW :) I love snow :)

But, you are here to see my Big Brown Bear... (anyone read that book to their kids? After 4 kids, I can read it with my eyes shut tight ;) teeheehehe )

The bear paw blocks I made in  a swap with some of my online quilting buddies. The bear is a pattern from Lorna. I tweaked it just a little to fit my blocks...

I love that bear paw print border... but boy was it tedious!

Anyone getting some Christmas sewing done? I've done just a little, haven't been able to think of quilty gifts to give this year.

Have a great night!


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Virtual cookie exchange

Hello Everyone,

And welcome to the Virtual Cookie Exchange, hosted by our good friend Carol at Just Let Me Quilt. Thank you Carol, this blog hop is always fun :)

I have 4 kids, and even though 2 of them are young adults now, we all still enjoy the same Christmas cookies and candies at this time of year that we have since they were little. The most favorite of all is Chocolate Gingerbread, a recipe I found in this book,  many years ago. Here is the recipe:

• 2 cups (12-ounce package) chocolate chips, divided
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup water
• Frosting of your choice.
• MICROWAVE 1 1/2 cups morsels in medium, uncovered, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH (100%) power for 1 minute; STIR. The morsels may retain some of their original shape. If necessary, microwave at additional 10- to 15-second intervals, stirring just until melted. Cool to room temperature. Or melt them over the stove top on low, stirring all the while.
  
  COMBINE flour, baking soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon in medium bowl. Beat butter and sugar in small mixer bowl until creamy; beat in molasses and melted chocolate. Gradually add flour mixture alternately with water, beating until smooth. Cover; refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.
  
  PREHEAT oven to 350° F.
  
  ROLL half of dough to ¼-inch thickness on floured surface with floured rolling pin. Cut dough into shapes using cookie cutters or a stencil. Place on ungreased baking sheets. Repeat with remaining dough.
  
  BAKE for 5 to 6 minutes or until edges are set but centers are still slightly soft. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.
• Frost and decorate as desired.
• They are awfully sweet, so a cup of hot coffee (or tea) with them is perfect.

Ginger snaps are my personal favorite :) But I only  make them at this time of year.

Our favorite Christmas tradition also involves goodies :) The kids look forward to fresh, hot cinnamon rolls when they are done opening gifts. I make the dough and form the rolls the night before, then stick them in the freezer for the night. In the morning, before the kids get up, I take them out of the freezer and pop them into the oven about a half an hour before they get up. Then after opening gifts, we have cinnamon rolls while sitting around enjoying gifts and each other.

I've been busy in the sewing room, making  a few fun table mats. I fussy cut the snowmen and then used scraps to make up the mat. These make great gifts, with a big mug and some cocoa mix :)

Have a blessed Christmas, and thanks for stopping by.

Please don't forget to go and look for more goodies over at these wonderful blogs:

MooseStashQuilting

Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life

Kathleen McMusing

DesertSky Quilting

Life in the Scrapatch

Ridge Top Quilt (you are here)

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Bejeweled Quilts by Barb

Pumpkin Patch Patterns & Quilting

Operation Domestic Goddess

Just Let Me Quilt

Thank you Carol, for another fun blog hop!!

Under my needle

Hello Everyone,

I've been busy in the sewing room. First making bear paw blocks, then swapping them out with an online group of fun Ladies. Here is the ten I received back.

I am going to make a quilt out of them and this bear, that I got from Lorna's Bear Paw pattern. I had to change it up just slightly, as I didn't want the sashing and cornerstones in it.

I'm working on the border pieces right now. And there are LOTS of them!!

Each of the bear paw prints are 4.5" unfinished, which means these are tiny pieces! The white is cut at 1" and the brown is cut at .75"! But you cut the strips and sew them together, then subcut them, so it isn't too tedious.

I also got a few table runners finished. My sweet Big Sis sent me these, you can cut all four apart and make place mats with them, but I like to use table runners, so I sewed two together, with some matching fabrics.

I put one facing one way, and one another because there is six of us at the table and we sit on each side of it.

The colors did not come out very good. They are gray and a light aqua color.

And I've started my Christmas gifts! I need to get going, Christmas is going to be here before we know it :)

The weather is beautiful. Cool at night, warm in the afternoon. Crisp and Fall like, with the leaves all turning colors....now we just need some rain!

Hope you are all well and enjoying some sewing time.

Spider web mug rug

Hello Everyone,

I've been busy in my sewing room lately. After putting the first border and part of the second border on Phires Compass, I set that aside to play with some Halloween fabric.

My BFF online quilty buddy, Pat at Life in the Scrapatch, made this fun spider web mat a few years ago.

She has all the instructions here for you, and there is still plenty of time to make it this year.

I have been wanting to make it, but I don't do a lot of decorating for Halloween. This year though, I thought it would make a fun mug rug for a friend. So I mini-ized it! It finishes at about 11" from point to point.

Mine is not nearly as good looking as Pat's. But I think it still turned out pretty cute.

I embroidered the little spider in the middle.

I've also been making Bear Paw blocks. Twenty of them for a swap and a few for me to keep.

These are about done, then I can get back to Phire's Compass.

I've been enjoying the lovely Fall weather we were having.  The temps have gone back up again for a bit, I  can't wait for the first rain!

Phire's Compass

Hello All,

Friday was one of those days that I just needed to grab a pattern, some pretty fabrics and start cutting. One of those times where I didn't want to think, just to cut and sew.... Unfortantley I could not do anything about it until Sat.

So on Sat I pulled out my Phires Compass pattern. That I was so thrilled to test!! It is a pattern that Jessica J.E. Smith designed for Northcott fabrics back in 2010. I looked on the Northcott site and found it in the archived patterns. I don't know if you can still buy it anywhere. This is the one I made back then.

BUT, Jess changed it a bit and made it into a mystery quilt. You CAN find that pattern, here under Phires Radiance. It has the same middle, but different borders.

SO, anyways, I pulled fabrics... I have enough of the red and green for the middle, but will have to buy similar fabics to do the border.

I love to play with pretty fabrics :) 

     You have to be very careful when you play with diamond shapes, as like triangles, they are very  stretchy and can easily be taken out of shape. You PRESS, never iron, the sawing motion will distort   them.

I'll show you more soon! I'm excited about using these fabrics in this pattern. It's such a cool pattern!

Cornerstones is finished!!

Hello Everyone,

Hope all is well with you and yours.

My Cornerstones quilt is complete! The blocks have my favorite fabric line in them, Sunkissed by Sweetwater. Also some Kona Bay fabrics. I can't remember the name of the colorful fabrics, I think it is Boundless by Crafty, but I could be wrong.

 I started this in the last half of 2015, so it's about time it was quilted and bound. LOL

You can see the quilting a bit in the picture below. Elongated orange peel in the borders and big flowers in the blocks, with swirly centers.

Here is the back, just a plain black flannel. I have never used black like this in a quilt before. But those jewel like colors needed something to set them off, and black was it.

Sorry for the poor coloring in these photo's, they don't really show off the beautiful colors very well. But it's very, very smoky right now, due mostly to the awful Redding fire. And  a few other fires contributing to the smoky air is well.

Have a great day!



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Hunters star and Cornerstones

Hello Everyone,

 I've been busy in the sewing room this past week, it sure does feel good. I get some housework done, then head to the sewing room while the boys are outside.

 So I have finished the Hunters star quilt top. It measures at 48x48. I REALLLY wish that I had more of the fabric so that I could of made it larger, because I just LOVE it!

I added some of my very favorite line in the border, Sunkissed by Sweetwater (the orange swirly) and the gray butterfiles in another favorite, Kona Bay. I am still considering adding another border to it... I have to let it congentate ;)

So while that is brewing in the back of my head, I decided to get my Cornerstones quilt quilted up. A simple 9 patch made of flying geese and disappearing 9 patches that I came up with. I love playing with EQ and making different patterns.

The backing is a soft, black flannel I bought from Thousands of  bolts. It's wide backing, love buying from them!

 I've been trying to figure out how I wanted to quilt this quilt for quite a long time now. I started making it in the later half of 2015. This quilt is going on our bed, it will keep my sweetie warm for sure :)

Have a great Fourth of July!!

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And now for the fun part...

Hello Everyone,

I hope you've been enjoying your Summer... or Winter, depending on where you are... It's not too hot here yet, but the fire season has already started. BLAH!

So I've been playing with my hand dyed fabrics some more. I am finally at the fun part..

My little blocks are together, ironed and trimmed. So now I can start making the Hunters star pattern.

As you can see, I have this block in 3 different colors ways.

So sorry for the lousy photos, for some reason I am having a hard time photographing these particular blocks.

I have my plan all printed out, so now I can put these pretties together. I started out with 6 FQ's, so my quilt will not be too big, about 78x78 without any borders. Once I got these blocks together, I'll figure out what I want to do about any borders.

Hope you are enjoying your sewing room too!

 
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What I'm playing with

Hello Everyone,

It's a beautiful Spring day here in N. California. I am up high enough that it is still Spring and the heat of Summer has not descended upon us just yet.

In April, my dd and I went to a quilt show. I found this beautiful bundle of hand dyed fabrics from Always Unique Fabric.

I've never used hand dyes before, and if you haven't either, you may not realize that your 'solids' wont actually be a solid. They have this neat tye dye effect.

This one is the green color in the middle of the top picture, you can see the pinks and blues from the dying process. I think it adds a lot of interest to the fabrics.

 I have them all cut out. I'm going to do a Hunters Star design. I've never made one before but have always liked the design.

 This is just a FQ bundle, so unless I had some other fabrics, it will be a wall hanging or lap quilt. I haven't got it quite figured out yet :)

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Comments

Hello All,

I just want to say a thank you to everyone who commented on my last past. Blogger is not playing fair a  lot of my comments never made it to my inbox. So if you didn't receive a reply from me, that is why. Either that or you are a non-reply commenter. And that goes for any of my blog posts that you've commented on and haven't recieved a reply from me.

But thank you everyone, your comments just made my day :) Have a great Memorial day weekend.

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Wish Upon a Star blog hop, my day

Hello All, and welcome to the Wish Upon a Star blog hop!! So glad that you could drop by. Thank you Carol for another great blog hop!

I had a bunch of triangles left over from this mystery quilt. (You can read more about it here.)

I really like these colors and so at the beginning of this year I pulled them out and started thinking about how I wanted to put them together. I knew I wanted to pair the colored triangles with the background triangles (especially as they were already together from when I cut them out!) and make some half square triangle blocks.

My sweet big Sis sent me a subscription to QuiltMaker magazine for Christmas last year. In the Jan/Feb 2018 issue was a pattern with a star block similar to this one in it.

 I thought it was a great pattern and decided to use the star, alternating it just a little,  and figure out an alternative block to go with it. I played with my EQ7 and came up with this block.

I was running out of the original fabrics. They are older lines and I couldn't find the black with flowers fabric that is the center of the stars. So I used these butterflies and flowers instead, along with a similar background fabric.

Put them together, added a few borders...

And I ended up with a 60x60 nice lap sized quilt.

I love the look of chain quilts, this would be great as a larger quilt too. It would show off the chain better.

Here's the back. You can really see the quilting I did.

Big loopy flowers in each of the blocks, and some swirly vines in between.

I am keeping it for myself :) I love the roses on the backing, and the colors on the front. Nice and girly...living in a house full of boys/men, my girl and I need some girly stuff ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by! Don't forget to see the rest of the great projects for today's blog hoppers. To find a full list of blog hoppers, go see Carol.

May 22

Want To Be Quilter

Cynthia's Creating Ark

Selina Quilts

Ridge Top Quilt

Creative Blonde

Days Filled With Joy

Seams To Be Sew

Lily Patch Quilts

                                                                     Why-Knot-Kwilt

Knee control and some quilting

Hello Everyone,

Recently, I asked my oldest son if he would change my foot petal on the sewing machine, to a knee control. My feet have issues and I often need to stretch my legs out and rest the feet more. So with a knee control, I can still sew and rest my feet. It's just a bar that you attach to the foot petal on the side of your sewing table. You push on one side of the bar, and it pushes on the foot petal with the other side.

Which means I've been getting some quilting done, yah!

I'm working on my hst quilt, I'm only going to show you a sneak peak, you'll have to come back on May 22nd to see the rest.

On May 22nd is my day on the Wish upon a star blog hop, hosted by Carol over at Just let me quilt.

Have a great day!