November Goal... Squeaking By!

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving! 

...but now, it's on to the next Holiday...

Merry Early Christmas 

(Advent starts tomorrow!)

 My November goal was to get this pieced - it's the beginnings of a Christmas tree skirt for a wedding gift. The wedding is July 5th!

 I keep experimenting with the old-faithful pattern that my mom has used for tree skirts since the 80s. This time I went down from a 7" block to a 6.5" and added a few 4-patches to spice it up. I also went with a planned-scrappy layout, instead of diagonal lines. I've had the Believe fabric for years, waiting for this friend to get married. The others are all leftovers from past tree skirts, both ones that I made and ones that Mom made.

 I brought it up to my parents' house on Thanksgiving, so Mom can bring it to the lady who always does Mom's long-arm machine quilting. This will also be a new change. In the past, this project would have been tied with yarn. Then we upgraded to embroidery floss. The last skirt I finished, I quilted it along the seams with my home machine. Now, it's time to have someone else do some FMQ on it! (Mom, thanks for having the nativity set up already to help set the mood for these pictures, ha!).

 I also need this tree skirt quilted. I've had this top done for over a year, just waiting for the right wedding announcement. I have another friend's wedding on May 31st! (Evelyn thought she needed to be a part of the photo shoot!)

 You can see the old-way layout of diagonal lines. Four of these fabrics were from Connecting Threads while two are from JoAnns.

While we're on the topic of Christmas projects. Mom's making one of these for all her girls (my two sister-in-laws and me). I found her the pattern in a thrift store - it matched a wreath wall-hanging also made out of log cabin blocks that she made years ago.

October Goal. Done

I posted my October goal here... this is a part of Melissa and Shanna's A Lovely Year of Finishes.

 I wanted to create something to highlight a piece of Hardanger embroidery that Dan's grandma made... and a pillow is what I decided on! The finished product will probably end up in Evelyn's future bedroom :)

 I used some fat-eighths that I found at a rummage sale back in Montana to create a log cabin block with the embroidery in the middle. I pieced the block onto a piece of scrap fleece, so it was quilted as I added each 2-1/2" strip. The back is just a simple envelope closure, and the binding was attached to the front and hand-stitched to the back.

It's beautiful embroidery, but I knew that I would never take the time to learn such intricate handwork in order to finish this piece. It was best to put it to good use as it is, so it can still be loved while on display. There is a sad kind of beauty in unfinished work, and now it is brightened up with some pinks and blues.

Now I need to decide on a November goal!

Linking up to my favorite parties... the buttons are on the side bar - go check a few out!