I finally finished putting together the blocks for my Patience Corners Christmas Quilt.
Next up…………….a red inner border and a poinsettia outer border.
I want to start a new project as a reward for finishing this one so the borders will be going on soon.
I am back to working on the “reward” system. 🙂
Greeting the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train (http://www8.cpr.ca/cms/English/General+Public/Holiday+Train/default.htm) has become one of our families’ Christmas Traditions.
The CP Holiday Train travels across Canada stopping at many communities along the way to share a short Christmas program and to collect money and non perishable food items for local food banks.
This year the weather cooperated–it was a night without wind, rain, and snow.
These are some of the pictures I took of the decorated rail cars.
One of the boxcars holds the entertainers. This year’s entertainment was provided by, The Odds. http://www8.cpr.ca/cms/English/General+Public/Holiday+Train/Bios/default.htm
Even the jolly red guy made an appearance!
I have been working on a new pattern: Right Angles by Anne Wiens of Sweetgrass Creative Designs. The pattern can be purchased from quiltwoman.com at http://quiltwoman.com/Right-Angles-Quilt-Pattern.aspx
I finished the washing and pressing of the yardage and initial cutting to kit up this project for construction today. Then today after having my morning coffee, I was ready to assemble. Tonight I have a finished flimsy.
In hind sight, I should have used a darker brown to give the design more definition. However, this was the brown I had in my stash. I was determined to shop the stash and not purchase any fabric so IIWII. I have some ideas that I am exploring to extend the snow on the branches in the inner panel out to the borders. I will machine quilt this piece first and then explore the embellishment ideas further. 
After getting the flimsy done, I dug out a very old UFO. This is my Finn-inspired Christmas Patience Corners. http://finnleah.blogspot.com/2006/12/finally-something-quilty.html I started this quilt back in 2006 after seeing the Patience Corners quilt that Finn showed on her blog. I have the borders attached to my squares and this much of the top assembled. It should not take much longer to get this one finished to the flimsy stage.
This was the visitor to our backyard today – a beautiful Flicker.
I started working on a series of Halloween quilts. I have a stash of Halloween fabrics left from previous projects, so I pulled them out and started working with them.
The first project I started was Scrappy Log Cabin by Two Kwik Quilters. I was anxious to try this pattern because a couple of friends from my Monday Night Quilt Group had already made lap quilts from the pattern with great success. http://www.twokwikquilters.net/id63.html
My Scrappy Log Cabin project is finished to the inner border stage. I have an idea for the outer border that was inspired by Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran in their Collaborative Quilting book. Because the blocks for this quilt are a bit wonky, I thought I would refer to the Queens of wonky piecing, Gwen and Freddy to find a suitable border treatment. I may consider putting some Linda inspired blocks in the corners of the Gwen and Freddy inspired outer border.
While I was putting the narrow green border on the Scrappy Log Cabin, I remembered that I had some leftover blocks from the queen size All About Me Halloween quilt that I made two years ago. I thought I might be able to incorporate these blocks into the back of the Scrappy Log Cabin. I started putting the blocks up on the design wall and I realized that I had more blocks than I remembered. In fact, I had enough blocks to make another lap quilt. So before I finished the borders on the Scrappy Log Cabin, I switched gears and assembled the lap size All About Me Halloween quilt.
I love the pumpkin border fabric on this quilt. It is a Debbie Taylor-Kerman fabric from her Spooktacular line by Henry Glass Co. If you double click on the photo you might be able to see the mice peeking out from under the pumpkins.
While I was working on both the Scrappy Log Cabin project and the All About Me project, I started to think about the new pattern I bought on my recent vacation to Alberta by Joanie Morrow–Contemporized Country Squares. I still had some Halloween fabrics left in my stash so I made 6 test blocks. The blocks are large–11.5 inches, but perfect to showcase a novelty print. I love the test blocks so I will definitely be making some more blocks from this pattern. 
Our little on-line group of quilting friends has started calling this easily distracted type of quilting, “serial quilting.” I have heard some quilters refer to themselves as having some sort of attention deficit disorder which leads them to start multiple projects at once. I prefer to call this, serial quilting as I think it has a more positive tone. This is the way my quilting mind works–always thinking of the next project. After all, I started out to make one Halloween quilt and now I have three Halloween quilts on the go.
In the end it really doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you have fun….right? And I am having fun!