Holiday Preparation

Well everyone has been talking about and preparing for Christmas on Pintrest and in blog land. I usually start my shopping in mid-November, but I realized that my parents are heading to Nevada for Thanksgiving at my sister's house. If I can have all their Xmas stuff ready it will save me the time and money of having to ship stuff. Plus, December is a double whammy for my niece and nephew as they are both December birthdays, so I have to come up with 2 gifts each for them! Let's hear for gift cards, but I also want something concrete for one gift.

I decided to make some place mats for gifts. Aren't they cute? The fabric was part of my inheritance from my sister and this was supposed to be a large quilt, but I tweaked it into place mats. I whipped these out this weekend. I really love the fancy stitch I did in red on the outer edge, it looks like snowflakes. I have not used many of the fancy stitches on my sewing machine, but I really think in this case it helps to define the edge. To save on fabric, I turned the place mats instead of using binding.

I had this green fabric in my stash, so these 6 place mats were made for $0! That is exactly what I can afford. Here was the original pattern.  I have plenty of more fabric to make another set as well as a couple of sets of coasters.

I keep on hand quilting on my scarecrow quilt, but it won't be done in time to hang up this year. Although I am a teacher, we do not get Veteran's Day off. I really could have used a three day weekend to keep sewing, but we had one a couple of weeks ago and we get 3 days off for Thanksgiving. So, I should not be complaining...

Once this is more complete, I will take it outside and get some decent pictures.

I am still ahead on the Shush I'm Quilting ABC BOW, so here is my H block, my cute hammer.

What have you been working on?