Now I am a Christmas lover. I love decorations and lights and anticipation and that Pagan feeling that mid winter approaches. Having said that I have to confess that some years I find this early Dec run up to Christmas a bit of an endurance race. Two of my 3 children have their birthdays in December and so that Christmas anticipation gets a bit muddled in the multiple celebratory jumble!
I finally get a bit 'Bing Crosby' about now. Birthdays safely delivered successfully for another precious year, little people getting steadily bigger (gulp), must try and cherish it all in amongst the jumble. I embroidered a little decoration while I was ill last week, I like to make at least one or two new bits each year to mark the years, my boy made one with me...we had a lovely sick week together in amongst the illness. Check out
this post from last year to see more of our makes over the years.
Now it's time to really start to look forward to the holidays, and embrace this temporary lull before the busyness.
School is drawing to a close, I can't wait to have my people home, my family around me, warm, fires and chilly dog walks, bowls of soup and baking in the kitchen all afternoon, Christmas tree lights twinkling all day, a little bit of sneaky sewing here and there. Life as a warm hug.
I think I like the neatness of Christmas coinciding with the end of the year. I like neat endings and closure. I like to take stock of a year, end on a high, look forward to what is to come.
With this in mind I am on a mission to get some sewing loose ends tied up. I have taken a few long unfinished quilts to the longarm quilters with the joyous feeling that this is totally justified as they can't sit in that trunk for ANOTHER year! I'm looking forward to having them in use at last. These are some of the last quilts I made before PlainStitch and my sewing time got just a little bit more precious and hard to squeeze in. Since then I've been very much more efficient and everything I start i finish. Can't get behind!
Plus a confession...I finally bound and finished my first 'proper' quilt, where I originally taught myself to quilt from a book. I made this sampler quilt from the book Quilts!Quilts!!Quilts!!! which is now on its umteenth reprint and definitely a classic. I don't know why this quilt has taken 12 years to finish. It had a horrible overpowering dark green border which I just chopped off last week in a fit of finish-itis. When that border was gone I loved it again ( ish....so many things i'd do differently now!!)
My PlainStitch students have also been pushing for some fabulous finishes. I'll do my next post in some of the amazing makes I have been filling my camera with over the last few weeks. It's astounding just how productive that little Workroom is - you're doing me proud ladies! May your Christmas be stitchy and bright xx
