Cheery O's!

Wow, where did November go?  How come December is going by so quickly?  Yikes!  I think I need to get a grip or it will be Christmas before I know it.  I've already had one Christmas party last Friday and another one on Thursday of this week.  It seems like it was just Thanksgiving.

November is a busy month for us, as I have a birthday as well as my grown children's and my niece's birthdays.  And then we usually are the hosts for the family Thanksgiving.  Right around my birthday I got a sinus infection that would not go away.  Two trips to Urgent Care and two (expensive) antibiotics were required for me to be able to do Turkey Day.  I had the Molly Maids come clean my house, which I highly recommend!  They are life savers!  I had 12 people here for Thanksgiving and it was wonderful.  The whole entire family, except for one Significant Other.  It was so much fun and so great to have everyone together.  And it was over so fast!  Wait, I wanted more time to visit with people!  And now we're into the Christmas season.

I'm finally getting around to posting another of my finished quilts from the October quilt show.  I am so slow sometimes that it is embarrassing.  So, without further delay, here is "Cheery O's":

Cheery O's
60 x 74 inches

This was another of my Block Lotto winnings.  I won these "Big O" blocks in December of last year, so this is record time for me to finish a quilt!  I love the way this quilt turned out - the Big O blocks were so fun to make and to play with.  (If you want to play with some, here is the link to the pattern at Block Lotto.)

I put the extra blocks on the back of the quilt, plus the "porthole" block I made.  I love the peek-a-boo look that it creates!  And, of course, lots of dots.  *grin*  You can really see the texture on the quilt in this photo.

My quilter, Shari, did an awesome job (again).  I sent her this quilt with the only instructions being what I didn't want, and she did what I was afraid to ask her to do!  This is quilted 1/2 inch apart all over the entire quilt, including the background.  Wow!  I love the texture it gives the quilt.

I made a few extra blocks to continue the color scheme I came up with.  And I just used scraps.

And then I drafted and made two blocks at half-size to finish two of the corners.  They finish at 7 inches.  Cute!  I used the stripe fabric for the binding, and I love the zingy finish it gives the quilt.

I've been doing some other sewing here and there lately.  I taught a class to a group of friends last month on how to make these Zip It Bags.  The class went really well and everyone enjoyed it.  I made a lot of partial bags for the different steps in the creation of the bag, and then thought of finishing them to give as little gifts at Thanksgiving. 

I got them all done (barely in time!) and then realized that I had nothing to give the guys.  Since I was out of time, I only had my sister and her daughter and future DIL pick theirs, as they won't be here for Christmas.  I will give these to the rest of the girls in the family at Christmas when I have something done for the guys too. 

I love these bags,have been making them for years and use a lot of them for different things.  It's an easy pattern.  I bought a big roll of the pet screening that the bags use at the hardware store about 10 or 12 years ago, and now I've used it all up.    It's time to find some more!  I want to make some tote bags with this screening too, and possibly teach a class for the totes too.

Here's a funny photo for you:

This is what you get out of the hose during a big deep freeze.  We were so cold a couple of weeks ago, much colder than we usually are.  DH had drained the hose, but he uses it all winter for cleaning up his pottery messes.  When he turned the hose on, he got ice cubes!  I'm surprised the hose didn't break.  These look like they came from an ice maker! 

Hoping you get to do something creative this week!