So I've already dumped a bunch of new finishes on you (see my last post), but I decided to save these for a post of their own, since so much of my December was devoted to them.  :)

Like I mentioned, my Etsy shop exploded with big, time consuming orders around mid-November this year.  Most of these orders were for Rummy mats and stockings, which is awesome.  The hubby is proud because these are the things he convinced me to list because they are so unique. 

So, here are some more of the things I finished in December 2014:

First up, Rummy mats.  I actually made two of these (not counting the three I made before December - I can't believe people like these as much as I do!), plus sold one that was already made.  This one was ordered by a little family in Australia, which is cool.  They were nice enough to send me a photo of the mat being used on Christmas morning, along with a super nice thank you email.  SO AWESOME. 


And then there were the stockings. 

We got a new nephew in November and since their family already has tons and tons of quilts, Braden's mom requested that I make a stocking to match the rest of the family's.
So I started with a simple cross stitched cuff in the same font, with a border to match Daddy's stocking (since Connor's cuff matches Mama's).  

Then I attached it to a stocking made from flannel houndstooth, to match brother's stocking.  

Here are the two brothers together.  :)



Next, I had a lady order four stockings from me (only three are pictured) with plain cuffs because she wanted to cross stitch them herself.  It was a little tricky, but I figured it out!  The cuffs in the front are not backed completely (just along the edges), so that she would be able to reach her hand back there and work her stitches into the already finished cuff.

 She requested snowman fabrics and I added some fun custom quilting (sorry it is so hard to see).  Snowflakes for the black one,

Bubbles for the blue one,

And cross-hatching for the green one.


This next set of stockings were fun to do.  The Mom sent me a picture of her childhood stocking and asked if I could make two more to match it.  So I altered the cuffs a little and tried to copy the font on the original stocking as best I could.  I think they turned out pretty cute!



Whew!  Is it too early to start thinking about a stocking for the little one due in May?

Since Braden's stocking was on my Quarter 4 Finish Along list (#3), I get to link up here:

So.  November and December were CRAZY busy for me!  I had this big old to-do list to begin with, and then my Etsy shop sort of exploded.  Things in the shop had been pretty quiet for awhile, but once Christmas shopping season started, I had all sorts of things lined up to make for others.  Mostly stockings and Rummy mats (that's another post, I think) and one huge quiet book.  I barely managed to finish it all and now that things have slowed down I'm going to do a big old photo dump right here on the blog over the next few posts.  ;)

Oh yeah.  One more thing.  We're having a baby!  Yay!  It's another boy and he'll be here in early May.  Does anyone have any good ideas for boy names?  We are stumped, since we already used our first two ideas...
Of course, we are super excited for baby #3, but I must admit that I didn't feel too great for most of September and October, so there was a bit of a decrease in production/blogging around here for awhile.  Let me just say that the 2nd trimester has been awesome.  I LOVE not being sick all the time.  :)

Alright.  Lets get to it.  Here are all of the things I have finished since my last post in October:

First of all, my Mom had a birthday back at the end of October.  She just had back surgery and I found out that she's been taking my sister's pillow with her to church every week to sit on and decided she definitely needed her own!  She really liked the cathedral windows block I made for my Something New Sampler quilt, so I that's what I went with.
Here is the finished Cathedral Windows block:   I loved going through my scraps to choose fun warm/cool prints.

I even used some of my hoarded Simply Color Ogee print for the envelope back.  I don't have a lot of purples, but I love this one.

(This pillow was #9 on my Finish Along list)

Next up, baby Braden!  My Sister-in-Law had a baby in November and Braden's Grandma ordered a growth chart for him to match his older brother's.  They wanted to stick to the BYU theme.  These are kind of fun to make.  :)

(This was finish #2 on my Finish Along List)

We are lucky that our new baby will have a cousin his age on BOTH sides.  My sister is due with her first baby any day now, and requested a puff quilt for her baby shower.  She's going to name the little girl Avonlea, isn't that cute?  I actually made two puff quilts with the intention to list the other in the shop.  As soon as the second one is bound, I'll get some better pictures.  :)  This puff quilt was a big hit at the baby shower - it even inspired one of my aunts to make one of her own! 

(This is finish #4 on my Finish Along List)

Of course, I snuck in a few bee blocks during all this madness.  Vickey asked for Churn Dash blocks for November.  The first few I made turned out pretty washed out because of the one really busy print I used, so I made her a few extras to make up for it.  I love the pinwheel one.  :)


Amazingly, someone ordered one of my ABC quiet books, which was awesome.  All 28 pages.  The whole thing took me 22 hours to make!  I actually went and bumped up the price for this book after making the second one because WHEW!  That was a lot of work!  I also updated some of the pages with bigger and better images, which I was happy to have a chance to do.

I even got to make a couple customized name books.  These short names were a breeze to work with and I updated the cover to add a few extra details.


I made a new M page, since Emily's book already came with a mailbox for M.  Luckily, my boys were able to tell it was a monkey and not a bear...

And lastly, I whipped up this tablecloth in those final days before Christmas.  This was a gift to my mother-in-law from all the siblings.  Our family is getting bigger and we no longer fit around a normal table, so she usually sets us up at the ping pong table.  :)  Unfortunately, she can never find a tablecloth big enough to fit the ping pong table so she always has to layer two or three tablecloths on top of each other.  Now she has one that is custom made to fit (which is totally DOES - I am SO relieved)!  AND it's double sided.  The first side is for when her friends (who don't spill) come over and is made with regular quilting cotton.


And the second side is for when we (the spillers) come over and is made from vinyl. 

(This is #8 on my Finish Along List)

And I lets not forget the quilts I made for my twins' birthday at the beginning of December.  They are waiting for a proper photo shoot so they can have their own post.  But in the meantime, here is proof that I finished them!

(These are finishes #6 and #7 on my Finish Along List)

Most of these projects were part of my Quarter 4 Finish Along list (YAY!), so I will be linking up here:

Welcome, visitors from the Blogger's Quilt Festival!  And of course, welcome to all my regular readers!  You all are the best.  :)

It's finally time to share my finished "Deck the Halls" quilt!  Yay!  I had the top finished almost in time for Christmas last year, and now the whole thing is finished with plenty of time to be used all season long this year.  ;)  You all know how these things go, right?

So here is the story of this quilt.  Way back in November of last year, I won a gift card giveaway - one of the best kinds!  I decided it was high time to make something wholly for ME.  I had Christmas on the brain, so I ordered myself these adorable Christmas fabrics!  Everybody needs a Christmas quilt, right?  I thought so too.  I'd also had my eye on the Fat Quarter Shop's free "Deckade the Halls" quilt-along and on a whim decided to jump on board (check out the Flickr group HERE).  It was so much fun and I love how my quilt turned out!

Fabrics from left to right:  1-4 Kate Spain's "In from the Cold," 5-7 Josephine Kimberling's "Hip Holiday", 8-9 Nancy Halverson's "Ho Ho Ho."

And then something awesome happened.  My husband got assigned to go to a two day weekend workshop in Las Vegas and his boss agreed to let me come with him!  I don't know about you, but sometimes a break from real life (and kids, mostly kids - even though I love them to death) is JUST what we need.  So while the hubby spent his daytime hours at his workshop, I holed up in the hotel room with the laptop and the iPad and SEWED.  It was so awesome!  I got tons of stuff done.  :)

Anyway.  I managed to finish the entire quilt top by New Year's Eve.  And then I decided it was okay to table this quilt for awhile.  Well, a few weeks ago I pulled it out, made a back and quilted it.

For the back, I originally planned to use a flannel sheet I had picked up at a yard sale, but in the end I didn't love it enough to force myself to use it.  So I decided to piece together all of my leftovers from the quilt top (plus a larger cut I picked up after the top was finished).  With the help of some of my IG friends, I ended up arranging the randomly pieced blocks to looks like presents.  


 For the quilting, I first stitched in the ditch around every. single. block using a clear thread.  I wanted my blocks to pop and intended to do some tight free motion quilting in the background.  But when I asked the hubby for advice, I found out that he pretty much hates pebbles, swirls, stippling - anything that is not straight lines.  He insisted that I should quilt diagonal lines.  And even though it was WAY more work than simple FMQ would have been, I did.  I like that the crosshatching is nice and subtle, which is kind of what I was going for.

Here are a few close ups:




It felt a little weird photographing a Christmas quilt on the fall leaves, but you've got to admit that they make a gorgeous background, don't you?

The binding was also pieced together using two of the leftover fabrics.  Machine attached, hand finished.


I am entering this quilt into the Large Quilts category of Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Go check out the rest of the quilts here:

Also, this was goal #1 on my Quarter 4 Finish Along list.  So, come January I'll be linking up here:

It's time for the final Finish-Along Quarter of the year!  Yikes!

In the past, I have listed pretty much every possible project I have going in the hopes that at least a few of them will get finished.  This quarter is going to be different.  I have been turning down opportunities for extra projects for a while now because I have a whole bunch of projects with very specific deadlines already.  You know how it is with Christmas and all.  Plus, we are getting two new babies in the family this year, so I've got plenty to do!  This quarter I WILL finish everything on this list or BUST! 

Here we go:

1.  Deck the Halls Quilt
This one is actually essentially finished.  I put the last binding stitch on it yesterday while watching LDS General Conference.  Now I just need to give it a quick bath to wash away the marking lines I put on it, and take it out for a photo shoot!  Stay tuned for more on this one!

2.  Braden's Growth Chart
We're getting a new nephew in November!  We're so excited.  His Grandma ordered another Growth Chart from my Etsy shop and the Mom and Dad requested another BYU one to match his brother's.  It's about half way through quilting now.

3.  Braden's Stocking
I wanted to make the new baby something, but I know that he already has about a million quilts.  So, after consulting with the Mom-to-be, I decided to make him a Christmas stocking.  I found some red flannel houndstooth that matches his older brother's green flannel stocking perfectly. 

4 and 5.  Avonlea's Puff Quilt
Yay!  Not only are we getting a new nephew on one side of the family, but we're getting a new niece on the other!  We're really excited about all the new babies coming in the next few months.  This time mom requested a Puff quilt made from this Giggles fabric.  I think I might make another one while I'm at it to sell in the shop.  Because I love these things so much.  :)

6.  Jaxson's Cruiser Blvd Broken Herringbone Quilt
The boys will be turning 3 at the very beginning of December and we are planning on putting them in big boy beds then.  Wahoo!  We already have beds and mattresses (thanks to the help of their AWESOME grandparents).  The only thing left is new quilts for their new beds.  I've had these in progress (sort of) for quite awhile now (YIKES - I got this fabric LAST CHRISTMAS!), but finally made some headway on the first one.  Jaxson has claimed this one because it's green.  Luckily, Bronx loves blue so he'll get the other one.  :)  I just need to add borders to this one to make it bigger.  Broken Herringbone block tutorial found HERE.

7.  Bronx's Cruiser Blvd Jungle Path Quilt
Bronx's quilt is actually a big pile of cut strips right now, waiting to be pieced.  I'll be using THIS tutorial.

8.  Secret project for special family member

9.  More secret projects for a special family member

10.  Do. Good Stitches October Quilt
October is my month to receive Do.Good Stitches blocks from my group.  I'm asking for flying geese blocks in these colors.  I'm excited to try my hand at piecing together blocks of different sizes.  Hopefully I will have all of my blocks by November and can have my quilt completely finished before the quarter is over!

WHEW!  I better go get busy!
Linking up here: