When I was cleaning up the cuttings on the flor of my studio after the making of my Christmas projects, I cut up the scrap pieces into nickels ans strips. I used the leftover bits that were not suitable for either of these two categories to make Christmas crumb blocks. When I was looking for a setting for these blocks I came across a piture of Jeanne’s quilt that was pasted into my inspiration notebook. My crumb blocks were 8″ square–the perfect size for the center of the blocks in Jeanne’s gratitute quilt. So, the second project I started was inspired by Jeanne’s quilt. This quilt was later featured on Judy L.’s blog as her gift to us in the November Hour-A-Day Quilt project. This is the progress that I have made on my Gratitude quilt so far.


I attended a sale at our local quilt shop during Boxing week. There were so many fabulous Christmas quilting fabrics on half price. I exercised discipline and did not purchase any–not even a single fat quarter! When I came home and took a look at the Christmas fabrics in my stash, I decided I was no longer going to save them. I am going to use them up so that next year when the new Christmas fabrics come out, I will be able to purchase them with a clear conscience knowing that I don’t have any Christmas fabric in my stash! In order to totally bust my Christmas fabric stash, I am going to be piecing the backs for the two quilts shown above out of 10 1/2″ squares of stash Christmas fabric.

Although 2006 has been a year of adding more UFO’s to my every growing list of projects to complete, it has also been a year of new friendships. The friends I have made in the world of quilt blogging have been both inspirational and supportive to me and demonstrate just how small a world we really live in!

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~Oprah Winfrey

I see by the posts made by other members in the blogging world that quilters are adding up their finished projects for the year. Measuring your progress for the past year seems like a good idea before setting goals for the new year, so here goes…..

I keep track of my UFOs, flimsies, completed projects, on a spreadsheet. When I went back and added things up, I see that I finished 26 projects in 2006.

10 small gifts (1 Christmas stocking and 9 pin cushions)

3 bed size quilts (green crumb quilt, rail fence around the world, fall snowball and nine patch)

1 charity quilt

1 pillow (summer paint chip challenge)

6 table toppers (1 table runner, 5 hexagon / octagon table toppers)

5 wall hangings (quilt show challenge, Christmas scrap/black nine patch, 3 JOY’s)

I am pretty pleased with this progress given that 20 of these projects were given away as gifts.

These are pictures of this year’s CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) Holiday Train. We live in a very small community, but each year CPR makes our community one of its stops for its Holiday Train. (CPR may be making up for the fact that we must tolerate the trains as they whistle right through the middle of town several times a day!) This year, the Holiday Train passed through our community on December 19.

Thank you CPR!

The tree is up and surrounded by presents, the house is decorated, the breakfast has been made (I make a make-ahead breakfast called Christmas AM Wife Saver), and the baking has been taken care of (Thanks Mom! ). There is nothing to do now but wait for morning.

We went to the Christmas Eve service at our church and true to tradition, after we got back home, while everyone is still wearing their good clothes, we took our traditional Christmas pictures. We usually take the pictures in front of the Christmas tree–however, everyone has grown up now and we all dwarf the tree when we stand in front of it. So the next best backdrop is one of my Christmas quilts in the dining room.