Third night of Chanukah or Christmas Eve~

We are lighting the third candle tonight on our menorah!  There are 8 nights and the menorah glows when all the candles are lit.  We are having 3 of our grandkids coming this week to our cabin up in Oregon, along with another family.  Every child gets their own menorah so it's quite the scene!


I did some sewing recently.  My happiest achievement is to have given my Moda Blockheads 2 over to my long arm quilter for her magic!  I really obsessed over how it looked, feeling like it was too busy.  I consulted my friend Claire and we ultimately decided that adding a couple of borders would fix the chaotic look, and I am quite pleased with the results!  First I added a skinny gold border; then I added a 6" bright blue (from stash!), although I had wanted navy but didn't have enough of one kind.  I wasn't going to buy anything more for this border.


I am ultimately quite pleased with the finished product.  I think the solid borders calmed it down.  I am now actually getting ready for Blockheads 3, which starts mid-January.  Scouts honor:  it's the only block of the month I'm going to do in 2020.  

I have been busy working on Barb's 40 star swap;  I brought the remaining blocks with me to the cabin to finish up but you know the saying about seams being different on different machines?  Well my Juki here at the cabin needs to be serviced because I realized the needle is a fraction off center so 5-6 blocks are 1/8" too small.  UGH.  Need to redo those;  I think I'll put the smaller ones into a small wallhanging.  Chopping off points won't matter in that project.


I also recently put bindings on two kid quilts for the small quilt group I belong to that makes quilts for needy kids.  The first quilt was my own;  the second one I offered to bind.




I am all caught up on my Cheddarback quilt (I started this in 2019 so it's okay to continue with THIS BOM, right??!)






I love the fall colors and even though I live in California, I do have deciduous trees which put on a beautiful fall display.  I have many Japanese maple trees and always love the fall colors!  This is right in front of my front door/porch.  The second picture is in the front of our yard.  Amazing how different the colors are, don't you think?!




Then the contrast to Oregon is remarkable.  I went snow shoeing this past week, even though there's not a huge amount of snow.  It was fantastic!  You can tell that there isn't much new snow since the trees are bare but we still had fun.


I wish you all a wonderful Christmas or Chanukah.  Hope you get to spend it with loved ones or loving friends!  

Much love to you all in blogland!

Progress, at last

Hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving!  Can't believe we are in December already!  And that it's been a month since I've posted--  EGAD... 

I have done some sewing, I'm happy to say.

I'll call this my November mini!  It's the baby quilt I decided to make for our newest grandson, Aiden.  This was a panel I found over the summer;  I sashed each block, although you'll probably note that one of the blocks doesn't match.  I RAN OUT of the panel blocks... so I scrounged around.  Can you find it?


And I found this great boy fabric for the backing!  Kids love to play with cars and now he'll have a track!


I went to my small quilt group last week and worked on a quick quilt I saw at my LQS so I bought some cute dalmation fireman fabric and whipped this up for a small boy.


I've also been plugging away at Barb's star swap (funwithbarb) and am half-way done!


My tuffett has been getting lots of use from the grandkids.  They sit on it, lie on it;  Eli even turned it over and sat on the bottom!




I had promised to post pictures of inspiration I found in beautiful paintings in Paris.  There was a fabulous Dégas exhibit at one of my favorite museums, the D'Orsay, which was a former train station in an earlier life.  This is the entry hallway!  There are spectacular statutes up and down that are truly breathtaking.  Even look at the ceiling!



The colors that Dégas interspersed amongst his dancers was fabulous, in my opinion.








Quilt patterns everywhere:








I'm still struggling with my Moda Blockheads II, not feeling happy with the "finished" product... hope to get to that this week...and will definitely post more this month!