FYI

In case you are wondering:

He chose the check. So the circles will be for his art school freshman older sister!

Be back another day with some more current projects.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS . . .

Well, now . . . a couple decisions to make. I think it will be pretty easy for me to make the second decision, but the first I'll leave up to my grandson.

Each year for Christmas, I make the grandchildren PJs. I started out making the sets: tops and bottoms. A couple years ago, one of my daughters suggested I just make the pants and get t shirts for them to wear with them. Great idea! So that's what I've been doing.

I have most of this year's already sewn together, just waiting for measurements to finish off the hems and the waist elastic.

I found this "circle print" fabric a few moths ago and REALLY like it. I'm thinking it would be great for my almost 13 yo grandson. Like his mama, he's quite artistic AND he's TOTALLY in to skate boarding. So I'm thinking he'll like it. But to be on the safe side, I've got the small black/beige window pane print (background).

I'll let him make the decision. I sure hope he wants those circles!

,

The easy decision is whether to fix this bit of knitting, or not. It's a hooded scarf. I already took out about 20 rows and redid it as I had skipped one of the cable twists. Last night after redoing several rows, I realized that I did the twist wrong. YIKES. Decision: Back to the drawing (or knitting, as it were) board, I guess.

Oh, I'll let you know what Nicolas decides about his PJs!

P J TIME

Oh, my, it's PJ time again at my house. I've been selecting and buying fabrics for the past few months -- luckily mostly on sale. Some flannel, some cotton. I also managed to get most of the knit shirts that will go with the PJ pants when I was shopping at an outlet mall this summer with my sister. So I'm good to go -- almost.

Gotta clean up my space first. I will NOT allow myself to make any more scraps before I clean up these scraps:

Gettin' there

Ah, that's better. Small scraps:

And larger pieces

Admittedly, I have more fabric than I need--in terms of amounts, that is.

I have found that it is much easier to buy the shirts first and find fabrics to go with the shirts than to buy fabric and find shirts to go with the fabric. I still have two shirts to buy -- one for a 13 yo boy and a onesie for the 18 mo old. I REALLY like that piece close to the bottom of the pile with the black and red circles. I'd love to see it on one of the boys with a red shirt. But not sure any of the boys would be happy with it. I'll check that out next week when I visit one of my daughters.

In the meantime, a few things from my retreat work need to be put on the side burner.

This still needs to be sandwiched, quilted, and bound. (after piecing the backing fabrics.)

This baby gift needs a binding.

And this (flannel) needs to be sandwiched, quilted and bound.

This baby gift I did get completed while at my retreat. I just love the little snail fabric -- and the bonus was that I had the other fabrics in my stash to make it complete.

Hmmmmmm, now just which PJ fabric shall I cut out first?

R & R . . . & Q

Well now, shouldn't all R & R have some Q (quilting) to go with it?

It was a wonderful few days with my quilting friends (from Maine to Colorado) in the North Carolina foothills forest. Ah, so lovely.

And we did, indeed, get in a lot of R&R . . . and Q !

I had mentioned that I was going to learn to do a "coffee filter" block. Such a great way to get an easy curve on these block centers. (I played around with how I wanted to arrange them once I have enough for a quilt. I was quite happy with this, so I took a photo to remind myself just what I decided.)

I got quite a bit more done, too: a baby gift quilt completed, another baby gift done all except for the binding; a flannel baby charity quilt top pieced, and a "Christmas Angel" quilt top pieced. I'll show you those another day.

I also played around with lots of bits and pieces of fabric that I took along. Remember all those half square triangles. I came up with plans for 6 blocks using those little guys. (I just laid them out, took photographs of them and pinned them together in sets so I can redo my plan when it's time to piece them.)

Oh, and see that cute little mouse pin cushion? It was a little token gift from one of my retreat buddies.

Some of you have been wondering about the "gifties" I was knitting. I was planning to take these prayer plant cuttings (from a plant sent to me 2 years ago by one of our attendees) since I wanted to share the lovely plant with the group.

Four of the ladies flew to our retreat site, though, so I knitted these little soap bags for them.

I'll keep you posted on the finishing up of those quilts!