My sister Jane wasn't feeling so well so I decided to make her a little quilt.  It was made (mostly) from the easy lap quilt directions from Bend-the-Rules Sewing by Amy Karol. I love the way it turned out. It's big enough to be cozy and small enough for me to quilt with my machine. I'm always a bit nervous quilting because things have a tendency to shift on me but I just went as slowly as I could stand and used lots of pins. I worked from the middle out - both in terms of the lines moving across the quilt and along each line of quilting - and it went really well.

It's made entirely of stash fabrics (including the batting) which was a lot of fun. It was kind of liberating to realize that I actually had enough fabric to make an entire quilt. It was also really fun to be remembering other, older projects as I went along; Jane even recognized one of the fabrics as being from our sister Claire's dress for the Jane Austen party a couple of years ago.

I really like this quilt and I'm sure I will be making it again.

Cotton muslin stretched in a plastic hoop.
Three strands of pink silk floss.
A quilt label.

I put our advent calendar up today. It should have gone up Friday night but I was a little behind on things (like finding the calendar). I made this calendar in a quilting class a few years ago. It takes advantage of a panel print to make all the little pockets. I love it every time I get it out; the colours are so bright and jewel like and in the class we used gold thread for all of the top stitching.
 
I was having trouble deciding what to put in all the pockets this year. I’ve used chocolate coins and mini candy canes before but I wanted something a little less sweet this year. I eventually came up with the idea of putting a slip of paper in each pocket. Each paper has a number at the top (which sticks out of the pocket) and directions on the bottom. The directions are all holiday or winter activities like “Drink hot cocoa” or “Watch White Christmas”. I hope it will be a fun way to count the days until Christmas.