in the Christmas mood...

I told you that the tree skirt Jenn made for my birthday sparked a Christmas quilt idea for me, remember?  Casey has been gone these last 8 days (we expect him back in the next hour or so, yay!) and so I spent my days sewing whenever I had a spare moment.  My sewing machine is a pretty good remedy for loneliness, it turns out, haha.  As is my little sewing buddy:

I am so grateful for kids who get along very well together and it really makes me glad they are all so close together--the girls pretty much entertain themselves all the time together now.  Kelby plays with them sometimes, but he generally likes to be in the big middle of whatever I am doing, which is okay by me :)  For this reason, I recently parked my sewing machine on the dining room table, which is working out pretty well.  There will come a season when my upstairs sewing room actually gets used, right?

Anyway, for my tree skirt,  Jenn used the red version of a fabric that I had bought three years ago now in white. It's one of those that I love so much, I was hesitant to cut into it.  Last year, I started adding some other Christmas fabrics to my stash, with every intention of someday making a Christmas quilt.  This week, I decided that if I keep waiting for some un-busy November in the future to make said quilt, it will never get done.  So I dug in :) By today, I had this...

This is one of the easier patterns in Material Obsession, called Retro Starburst.  It goes together quickly and I love, love, love how it turned out.  In case you're wondering, I will not be hand quilting this one--I do want it done this year, after all ;)

But, speaking of hand quilting, I cannot believe I am actually putting the binding on this beauty:

I will finish the hand sewing tonight and it will be d-o-n-e. Finally! I love it all the more though for all the time I've spent with it--we're emotionally connected now, ha!

At the risk of sounding like I have tons of free time and all I do is sew (please know this is not the case--I do have 3 little kids after all--we just stay home a lot and Casey being gone gives me more extra time, somehow ;),  I also made this little dress for myself last week:

It was not my intention to cut my head off, but it's hard getting a picture of yourself like this--I took a bazillion, and this is as good as it's gonna get.  This is one of the fabrics the blessed older lady at church gave me--I think it's from the 60's maybe? It had a tag on it from K-Mart for 58 cents.  58 CENTS! I like the pattern of this dress a lot, I will probably make it again.  I don't feel like going upstairs to see which number it is, but it's a Simplicity.  If you really want to know, tell me in the comments and I'll check for you :)

In other news, it's snowing here today for the first time!! We usually get snow long before now, but this has been a wonderfully-long Fall.  Here's a pic of our backyard--I will never tire of this view from my kitchen window:

And, signing off...

So sweet :)