Waiting for Santa!

Santa will be here before we know it and in the wink of an eye it will be 2017!  

Happy to see these stockings hanging that I made last year for our son Josh and his family!

Christmas really snuck up on me this year.  Actually, winter snuck up on me to be more accurate.  Wasn't it just October?  Where in the world did Autumn go?  All I know is my husband put up our tree after we got back home from our Thanksgiving trip to see the kids and grands in NC, and when he asked where the tree skirt was I realized I STILL had not quilted the one I made!!!

It's been sitting on the To Be Quilted shelf for much longer than I am willing to admit to here on the blog for God and all of you to hear LOL!!!   Well, when I was telling a friend about it she said, "Just put it down anyway".... so I did!!!

It looks really nice even as a top, so I know we are going to love it when it is quilted.  If I ever manage to get it quilted that is :*)

Which brings me to the point of my post today.  I actually did an inventory to see how many Christmas projects I have in some stage of being constructed... and if I count the projects that could be considered "winter" rather than just Christmas, there are more than a dozen!  Some of them long-time UFO's that are just crying out to be finished!

 As you know if you are a regular reader of my blog, my Music City Quilt Guild hosts a UFO Challenge each year, which has been tremendously helpful in getting some of my UFO's off the shelf and decorating our lives as FO's.  The next two photos are Christmas projects that I finished this year because of that UFO challenge....

So I've decided to make my own secondary Christmas UFO challenge where I will also work on one Christmas UFO each month, hopefully to completion.

For January, I plan to get an entire top pieced from start to finish, so I decided to get a head start and began several days ago!  It starts with the blocks from this panel....

It is from a fabric line called I Believe in Santa designed by Nancy Halvorsen somewhere circa 2012-ish.  The local quilt shops in our area offered a Shop Hop where each store offered a kit with instructions and fabric strips to make one sampler block for $6, and most of them had the accompanying panel and fabrics available for purchase as well.  If you visited each store on the Hop, you would end up with 12 blocks, enough to make your own sampler quilt.  Each store displayed their sampler quilt finished a different way and you could purchase their finishing kit if you liked, or just buy enough fabric to do it your own way.  Or, you could just keep the cute little kits in a bag together forever and ever and never do anything with them - which is apparently what I decided to do LOL!!!

Miraculously, I still have the panel and all twelve of the kits, and a good deal of the additional fabrics as well, although a few have been used in other projects over the years - those stockings in the first picture for example!

In order to take this from nothing to completed in a month, I will have to be pretty aggressive in how I attack it!  I've decided that I need to do one sampler block every day that I don't have anything scheduled outside the house.  If I'm at home, I make a block - period - no exceptions!  These are now done ....

Block #1 -- Finished!!!

Block #2 -- Finished!!!

Block #3 -- Finished!!!

These are not terribly difficult blocks.  One of the reasons they've sat undone for so long is that they were kitted up to use Thangles for the half-square triangles - and I HATE Thangles!!!  Yes, I know "hate" is a strong word - my grandson calls it a dirty word - but it's the only word that fits!

I can still remember the day at Guild that my friend Lavana shared with me that I could use the Easy Angle ruler to cut those half-square triangles and bypass the Thangles altogether - WIN!!!  I've used this ruler ever since and have loved it.  

Our Scrap Swap Bee group at Guild has been using these Star Singles to ensure that all their swapped blocks by different quilters are all the right size, and they swear by them.  So I decided to pick up some at a good price during one of the Black Friday sales and I hope to try them out soon.  It's always fun to be reminded that this old dog can learn new tricks LOL!!!  I'll let you know how they work out for me.

It has been easier than I thought it would be to get these 3 blocks done, and another one is sitting on my sewing table now, cut and ready to stitch up.  Even though tomorrow is Christmas, I'm holding to my commitment and will stitch it up before the day is done.  It feels good to have a plan and feel comfortable that it can be worked without too much difficulty.  In the past, whenever I found myself not accomplishing much, it was usually because I didn't have a plan in place or goals set.  I have no doubt that there will be a month or two when I don't meet that goal.  I mean, life happens to us all, right?  But I will still end up with more finishes than I would have without a goal at all.  And of course I'm counting on all of you to be here, encouraging me along!  If anyone would like to join me in my Challenge, drop me a note to let me know and I might consider doing a linky party :*)

Rocky has been a great help, but I'm a little worried that he won't be as available to Snoopervise this year.  He heard that Rudolph is retiring next year, so he has been very busy training for his audition with Santa to become Chief Sleigh Guide starting next year...

there's just no limit to this cat's talents!!!

Merry Christmas, my friends!!!

I value each and every one of you and

look forward to making beautiful quilts together in 2017!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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