T-minus 6

Since Wednesdays seem to catch me by surprise every week or so, you can probably imagine how it happened that I woke up yesterday morning and realized that Christmas -- along with all the necessary planning of gifts, mailing cards and presents to far-away relatives, not to mention planning all the activities needed to keep young boys on school holidays out of trouble -- was only seven days away! And in the afternoon, I suddenly recalled that one of my boys' teachers was finishing her term today. I had plans of gift cards, with simple little gift card wallets for all the children's teachers. So I whipped one up - I just enough time from the moment of realization, to the moment of school pickup! Did I take a picture of it? Nope. But here are two other wallets, yet to be sewn together.

In other, more photogenic, news, I finished the tree skirt!

I did the star quilting with silver thread. It was definitely the easiest and most satisfying part of the quilting.

I added some swirls in the middle, mostly just to try them out, because they will never be seen under the tree. They were fun, and I love the look of them, but quite time-consuming. I filled in the outer edge of the skirt with loopy free motion lines.

The original pattern from Fat Quarterly included only houses and trees, but I wanted to throw in a few other whimsical little buildings -- castles and onion domes...

Chapels and Dutch roofs...

Here is my inspiration - these little papier mâché ornaments that my partner and I made for one of our first Christmases together.

I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday, so come on over and check out all the awesomeness!

Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, happy holidays to those of other persuasions, and I hope you all have a great Mayan apocalypse!

Thanks for visiting!

 

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