Long Time No Talk To

What have I been up to for the last month?

Well, I had a birthday - I turned fifty mumble.  My lovely daughter, who has been experimenting with cake decorating, made me a quilty birthday cake.

Those are pretty accurate sawtooth stars for a non-quilter!

November and December are always really stressful times at work.  I work in the family law area, and, unfortunately, many separated families are not able to work things out well around the holiday season.  Makes me come home and give Mr. CQT an extra squeeze.  I'm so thankful for our happy, peaceful family!

To add to the stress, we've been doing some renovations.  First, Mr. CQT cut a bunch of holes in the ceiling and walls.

The middle picture is in my sewing room.   Boo hoo!  We had some plumbing and electrical work done.  Then, we called in the drywallers.

For an entire week, the whole house was plastic covered, while they fixed the holes, scraped off the popcorn stipple from the ceiling and replaced it with gorgeous "knockdown" stipple.  (I was going to take a picture of the new ceiling, but it turned out that was a really boring photo!  It's much more exciting in real life.  Well, to us it is.)

The plastic is gone, so it's sort of back to normal.  But, right after New Years, we are having the fireplace replaced and the master bathroom re-done.  Then, the carpets will be replaced throughout the house.  So, it will be February before we're really back to normal - new normal!  We've been in this house 22 years, and this is the first work we've done other than painting, so it needed it!

I have managed to get a small bit of sewing done, even in the mess.  I joined up with Sandy at Quilting for the Rest of Us to do the Scrapitude Mystery Quilt.  My scrap bin is overflowing, and we did an exchange of 2.5 inch squares at the Guild last fall, so I really needed a great scrap project.  Amazingly enough, after I cut all the pieces, my scrap bin didn't seem to have gone down all that much!

I'm doing it completely scrappy.  I figured that was best for a Mystery Quilt - that way, I don't have to think at all about where the various pieces might end up.

First, a bunch of 4 patches - coloured and white:

Then 4 patches, dark and medium prints:

Those mediums are not as light as some of them look in the photo.

Now, a half - quarter square triangles, white and coloured:

Now, I have to sew a larger coloured half square triangle to the ones above, and I'm all caught up!

I'm linking to the last Scrapitude progress report linkup.

We had a very nice Christmas - it's much quieter after your children move out, that's for sure.  But they both came over and we opened gifts, then had Christmas Dinner with some friends.

Today, I'm doing a little sewing for the Boxing Day Sew In.

If you're on Twitter, use #BDSI to join in!

Tree Skirts and Stockings and Whiskers on Kittens

OK, there are no pictures of whiskers on kittens. I admit it - I am a quilter without a cat.

I'm linking up with Heather at Books and Quilts to show you my Christmas Tree skirt.  When I was a child, my mom had a roll of "cottin battin" that we used for a tree skirt.  That's how we pronounced it - cottin battin.  I had no idea that it had any use other than looking like snow under the tree.  We had a little cardboard village, with sparkly walls and waxed paper windows that we set out on the cottin battin each year.  My sister had, when she was about three, poked out all the windows.  So, for ever after that, the houses had no windows.  We also collected various plastic farm animals - of various sizes, so the chicken was as big as the cow, and spread them around the village.  There was also a plastic moose, as I recall.  What a Hallmark scene we created!

It wasn't until I made my first quilt, and opened up the package of batting, that I thought, "This looks an awful lot like the cottin battin that we used to... Doh!"

My tree skirt today is slightly more professional.  Here is the flat view:

And here it is around the tree:

I'm also linking up with Quilting Lines to show you my Christmas Stockings.  There isn't anything special about these - they were one of those panels you buy at Fabricland that has the stocking printed right on.  I just cut them out and sewed the two halved together, then finished the top and added a loop to hang them.  But, Mr. CQT loves them because they are pretty big.

And finally, one more little crafty item - well, six of them:

These little guys are each about 2.5 inches tall.  They are ceramic, and I painted them - back in the pre-bifocal days when I could actually see to do this kind of thing.  Sorry the picture is a little washed out.

To all that celebrate Christmas, have a Merry Christmas!