I have been pounding away on my my keyboard for days, weeks, months… sigh. I applique at night but other than that I haven't had time to work with actual fabric. Happily I can say that I'm just about typed out and ready to make some more quilts for the color book. Yay!

With three quilts drawn, I chose colorways and have pulled fabric for them. The colors are separated into stacks and then sorted by value. 

I did something I haven't done before… I took the fabric stacks off of the table and pinned it all to my design wall. Better! When I took a photo, the colors worked together the way I hoped they would. I love it when that happens!

This fabric will be in a quilt that is about complementary colors, in this case blue and orange. Off to the right you can see the edge of the applique quilt that is waiting for a border. Below, you can see part of a black and white quilt that will be in the book. Steve is hand sewing the binding on it for me. I love that man!

The next photo shows the mostly blue fabrics that will be in a quilt that is all about clear colors vs. gray colors. 

The yellows, greens, and that purple print on the right don't exactly fit but I like them with the blues. I may use at least some of them in very small amounts.

I am making progress—oh happy day!

Lorna reminded me a couple of weeks ago that Bear needed a stocking! I couldn't help myself—his name is 'bear' after all…

Bear's actual name is Moses Beren. Lorna and Chris are not sure what version of his name should be on his stocking but honestly, does it matter? This is obviously Bear's stocking :-).

If any of you want to use the polar bear drawing, I've attached it below. Merry Christmas!

Download PolarBear-Bear copy

This is what I do when I'm snowed in…

As pies go, it's not that bad for you. Cranberries and apples are healthy. My pie has 3/4 cup of honey and the butter in the pie crust… really, not that bad. Unless you eat the whole pie :-).

The recipe is below. Click here to read my recent post on pie crusts.

Download CranberryPie

Elanor has been here for a couple of days during the worst of the ice storm. To fight off cabin fever, yesterday she decided to make an ornament for the Christmas exchange with a home school friend. This little girl likes Star Wars so we googled for ideas and found this. Simple enough! I helped Elanor with the stuff she didn't know how to do and this is her Princess Leia…

This morning I suggested that she could take the idea and make more ornaments (more cabin fever fighting). Elanor drew a Christmas tree with a star, made templates, and got to work:

Whatever your shape, cut a front and back. Make a wire form that follows the shape of the ornament, but is small enough to fit inside it. Include extra length at the top to make a hanger. I used light-weight galvanized wire…

Once the felt fronts and backs (tree and stars both) were glued together with the wire (and felt tree trunk) in between, she decorated the front with glitter and sequins…

She's having fun and making presents! Yay!

Sleet and freezing rain began falling Thursday. Freezing rain is rain that freezes on contact forming a sheet of ice. Sleet is rain that is made up of little tiny ice balls. Together they are a huge mess. This was the view out of my front door Friday morning…

It looks the same today, but with more footprints. It looks like a light snowfall, but it isn't. It's ice. Here’s a close-up of ice balls on the fern (which will be turning brown any minute now) outside our front door…

When it is driven on, the sleet balls compact to form a hard, dense ice.

 When more cars drive on it and/or it melts, it re-freezes to make a bumpy icefield…

Our niece, Rachel, and her husband are driving today from Dallas to Norman, OK. They drove through Sherman on Highway 75 an hour ago—at 20 mph. They didn’t want to get off the highway and I can’t blame them. Steve just got home from a walk to report that a semi is sideways on 75 and the southbound cars are stopped. (Update: Rachel and John got home safely.)

That's the thing about driving on ice. Even if you can do it, you have to worry about the skills (or lack therof) of other drivers. We've made a few ice-drives in our younger years but we would REALLY have to be somewhere to get us to do it now.

It is pretty…

 Also, annoying—for example, the trash cans were frozen shut…

Everything in our area has been cancelled for the weekend. Austin College cancelled classes on Friday. Our church cancelled all services this weekend—and that’s almost unheard of. The Christmas Pops concert will now be in January. Parties, classes, you name it, it’s not happening. What did happen is that on Friday we wrapped all our Christmas presents! I usually do that alone and it was very nice to have Steve helping. I made a cranberry pie (so good!) and we've cleaned house. Mom made oatmeal cookies. (What is it about being iced in that makes us want to bake?)

Steve reminded me this morning (when I thought about going on a walk with him) that I have osteoporosis. A broken hip would be exceptionally bad. I'm staying in. For days, probably, because it's not supposed to warm up enough to melt off until mid-week. This is not all bad.

I can’t tell you how often I wish for days like this. When I can stay home and work and not be interrupted by things that have to be done. So I am going to wind up this post and get to my sewing machine. The temperature outside is not going to get above freezing for any length of time until mid-week. By then I will probably be ready to go outside. Until then, I’m going to get as much done as I can!

I was not the sort of parent who saved every drawing that our boys generated. The refrigerator door was their gallery space. Most of their 'art work' ended up in the recycling bin rather than in acid-free boxes to be saved forever. I'm not sentimental about that sort of thing and luckily our boys are happy not to have to deal with boxes of paper from their past.

Children go through drawing phases. I noticed this with my own boys and now with my grandchildren. At some point, what they draw can be interesting. And by that I mean interesting to someone who is not genetically related to them.

I did save a very few of my own kids' drawings. Some I've even had framed, like this portrait that Jeff drew of Steve. Jeff was 7 at the time and he captured his father perfectly! Even though I'm his mother, I think this is pretty good…

What made me think of children's drawings today is a post found on DesignTAXI. Reddit contributor, Tatsputin, started coloring his kids' drawings! (Side Note: Isn't it amazing how inter-connected we all can be online?!)

Click here to see the post on DesignTAXI, where you can see more of this collaborative artwork.

It's making me look at Jack's current drawings a bit differently…

I'm not particularly fond of coloring, but these could easily be applique patterns! They would also make wonderful embroidery patterns. I'm not sure when I might be able to use this idea myself but if any of you take this idea and run with it, let me know :-). 

FYI: You may have gotten the newsletter I just sent featuring a present idea… mouse pads made with photo transfers. Not a new idea but I had never really noticed them before. We quilters have the tools that make it easy to make them at home (good irons, fusible web, presser sheets, and rotary tools for trimming.) I put up a page with instructions. I've got mouse pads and EQ Printable inkjet fabric sheets online if you don't already have them.

I made mouse pads with photos, but it would also be fun to scan 'artwork' to put on a mouse pad! I'm beginning to wish I needed more than one mouse…