Although I did not make it an "official" New Year's resolution, I think I am going to be trying harder to finish up a few more projects this year than in previous years. So I guess my first "finish" would count as one of these, even though I only started it on Dec. 27. A bit of background - our Christmas was protracted this past year since I was sick on Christmas Eve evening and Christmas Day and the next day was just beginning to get better. By that night DH was sick and he ws just beginning to get better by Sunday. During this time we missed the Christmas Day gathering at his mom's house, that we had only missed 2 times until this year in the 33 years we've been married, and we had to postpone the gathering with our kids until New Year's Day. His brother offered us 2 tickets to the Falcons game that Sunday but we had to pass on that too - DH barely felt like watching it from the couch. We were at the home of one of our daughters and her husband - They are newly pregnant and we were all so afraid she would get the stomach bug we both had, but thankfully she didn't. On Saturday I was ready for some retail therapy so I went to A Scarlet Thread, a great quilt shop in McDonough, GA where we were staying. Along with a "few" fat quarters, a Rowenta iron, and 2 pillowcase kits (see the previous post for one of the Spiderman pillowcases) I also got a cutting mat and rotary ruler to leave at their house. That way, when I am there from now on I won't have to worry about bringing a mat from home and have it warp - ask me how I know that happens - and I can work on a greater variety of projects. With the mat and rotary ruler I was able to cut out all the 6" squares for a rag quilt for this daughter and her husband, plus enough to get started on one for us. On my previous post I have pictures of the first 5 rows of it, but now it is finished and UPS will deliver it to them tomorrow. Here it is on our couch 
and here is a close-up - 
I did try it out for a few minutes and it is very comfy - hopefully it will help keep them warm in this cold weather that even GA is feeling. I think DH is glad to be rid of all the little "sprigs," as he calls them, that are a necessary by-product of a rag quilt, but I do plan sometime to make one for us too - and next time I will try to clip as I go so i don't have 15 rows to clip at one time! Washing it at a laudromat the first time was a good idea, but I was able to do it a second time in my washer. It is about 60" x 75" and has a square of white flannel in each square so is pretty heavy.
I also made a pillowcase for me last week to demo it to the Senior Center quilting group that I lead - 
Not actually quilting, but since I used some of my quilting fabric I'm considering it a project finished. This pattern is really easy to do. I had not made pillowcases until these, so don't know if the way described in this pattern is typical or not. It has you sewing the border, the body of the pillowcase, a folded strip of accent fabric, and the other edge of the border all at one time (with the body of the pillowcase rolled up so that you can reach the other edge of the border). This makes a tube sort of thing that you turn inside out, then make French seams across the bottom and up the side and Voila!! - done!! You could also serge the seams but since I don't have a serger I'll stick with the French seams.
My next project will be to try to finish Lillian's quilt - 10 blocks to go with the hand quilting, and the rest of the boders. I will be trying to do 2 more this afternoon/evening. If I could do 2/day all next week I might be finished by the end of the weekend, but I'm not sure my wrists and thumbs will hold up to that much quilting.
While in the midst of writing this post I have had a couple of welcome interruptions - youngest DD who is also a quilter has emailed me for advice about where to get some wide backing for a large quilt she is making as a commissioned work for a niece of her employers in the Hudson Valley of NY, and while I was replying to her email my oldest daughter called while on her way to a quilt shop in Marietta, GA. So now oldest daughter is looking for wide backing fabrics for youngest daughter and I've had a nice conversation with both of them! Oldest daughter has recently gotten back into sewing a bit. She made some neat gift bags for Christmas, and is now working on a dress for her middle daughter, and we even discussed how to use some of her scraps to make a kind of crazy quilt looking bibs for her baby. As a mother of 3 under the age of five and a practicing attorney, she is doing well to even find her sewing machine!!
I just posted the text below on Quiltville Chat but decided after doing it that it deserved a wider readership - so here it is. After reading recently the laments of Bonnie Hunter and others about the lack of help from hubbies during the holidays I just had to write to speak up for the other side. Yesterday my DH took off 1/2 day from work, which he rarely does, so that we could go to the tree farm we've gone to most of the last 20 years and cut our tree. Since the farm is out of town, we combined it with a trip to get one of cars its 120,000 mile check-up. The car part of the trip did not turn out as planned - something about gaskets - and may end up costing us as much at $1500 and they are keeping the car over the weekend. They gave us a loaner though and we decided to proceed with the other part of the trip. We got the tree, 
didn't mess up the loaner getting it home, put it up and decorated it last night. He cut the tree, put it in the stand, carried up the boxes of decorations from the basement, unfurled the lights while I placed them on the tree, put as many ornaments on the tree as I did while we both hummed sang along to some of our Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums, and swept up afterwards. We put up a tree every year even though our 4 kids are all grown and gone from home - and we go to GA where most of them are every year for a week or so at Christmas. Soon he will help me select a photo for our Christmas cards and help write the Christmas letter.Then together we will sign the cards and put the labels and stamps on them.To make this a quilty post, I will also say that he takes great interest in what I am quiting on, and will help with fabric selections for the ones I make specifically for us. Oh, and he also helps with the dishes every night, vacuums every weekend and will even squirt cleaning stuff in the bathroom bowls without my asking. I think I made a terrific choice almost 34 years ago when we met and married - and I think I'll keep him around!!
