Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to one and all. I wish you all a wonderful new year of sewing and quilting ideas and opportunities. New ideas so we can express our creativity, generosity and love of the craft in new undiscovered ways. And new opportunities to use all those new ideas to provide for family, friends, those in need and for our personal pleasure.

So how or what are you looking forward to in your creating this coming year?

I am personally looking forward to decreasing my stash by blessing some of the babies in our ever growing family, by continuing my pattern making/development skills, and creating with abandon.

Looking forward to a blessed year for all....

Scrappily,

   Susan

Christmas

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

For some odd reason I love to sew the week between Christmas and New Years. It is not like I have not sewn many things for Christmas, I have, but somewhere deep down I get this new bud growing that just has to make/create at this time. Maybe it is so enjoyable because there are no deadlines. It is just for the joy and pleasure of creating. I usually finish all that I start during this time as well. An added bonus!

So what are you doing this week just for the sheer joy of it? And will it include time with your sewing machine?

Happy New Years' week,
           Susan

Where has the time gone? It is flying by so quickly which makes it hard to savor the holidays. Something I would prefer to do. So how do you keep your holidays from becoming just a rat race? I would love to hear from you.

Today I am spending some time finishing up two new Christmas stockings, one for each new grandbaby. I will also be putting binding on a jungle themed baby quilt.

Savor the day, it is a gift from God,
Scrappily,
   Susan

Giveaway

Lavender Ridge is having a GO! giveaway. There is not much time left so go there in a hurry and sign up! Wouldnt it be fun to win one?  Think of all the stash goodness you could use up with one of those. Gotta go and sign up myself,  see you there??
                                                 Susan

Scraps to Remember

As I finish up the quilt for my grandson Isaac I realized that I need to make two Christmas stockings for the new additions to our family. Thirty years ago I started making some of the Christmas things that are now treasures within our family. One thing I did not think too much about was the fabric that I was using. It is good quality cottons but once bought never to be found again. When our children started to get married and I wanted to add matching stockings for their spouses I soon realized that the Christmas stash that I had was now very important since it can't be replaced. So with each new addition I now am adding new fabric with the old to make something blended and new. I did not think ahead but thankfully bought more than I needed at the time. I encourage you to think ahead and guard that special stash that may have to last through many generations.

This also brings the question, what are some of the things you have made or want to make to become treasures that your family will enjoy for years to come at the holidays you celebrate?  Please share them, I would love to hear from you.

Scrappily,

Susan

The Winners Circle

The time has come to bring our blog giveaway to a close. It has been great fun, lots of love has been shared and new friends are being made. Thank you to all who have stopped by and a bigger THANK YOU to all who have come back as friends.

The winners with DH's help is Encourager and Corinne. You have been notified by email. The first to contact me gets first choice of two patterns. So send me your choices and snail mail addresses.

Look for a new giveaway in November.

Scrappily,    Susan

New Addition

Once again I have not had many opportunities to sew or quilt this week. Just some machine quilting on grandson #2's quilt. I will post pictures soon. But what kept me from my love of stitching was a new granddaughter. She is such a little cutie and this gramma is thrilled. The many new and wonderful things to sew and quilt for a little girl, boggles the imagination! I dont know where to start and my WIP's are once again being pushed to the corner of my mind as I get to revel in girly things, not that I haven't enjoyed the boy things. .....

Focus, focus, focus, off to my stash to pull out anything pink!  

                                                                               Susan

Monday's Musings

Mondays always catch me by surprise. I guess because the weekends just fly by in a blur. Sunday's are always wonderful, full of faith, family and friends. In the end it feels like we have packed an extra day in there somewhere.

I am so blessed by all the love that has been sent my way this weekend. So Thank You to all my new friends out there. I am trying to send a bit of love back via email. Please have patience with me as I am still new at this bloggy thing here. New friends are a wonderful hug, even via blogger land.

On the sewing/quilting front, I am sad to say that I didn't get much done this weekend.( wound a bunch of bobbins in preparation to quilt is all) I have two quilts waiting to be machine quilted. Machine quilting is new for me. I am a hand quilter. I love hand quilting, it is so relaxing to me and I prefer to have something in my hands if watching tv or a movie. So how did I start machine quilting you ask? Thank you for asking.....We have a baby boom going on in our family and my youngest daughter and DIL were planning a baby shower for my oldest daughter last spring. They asked me to make a lap quilt to be raffled off at the shower. Hand quilting is slow so it would have to be machine quilted. Not willing to pass up a chance to learn something new or a challenge, I did it and throughly enjoyed it!

So what new challenge have you taken on and why? I'd love to hear from you.....Susan

Giveaways

       Hi! I am glad to be here and to welcome you to my blog.  I have joined the "Fall into Fall" giveaway. I will be giving away two patterns each to two new friends!  So welcome, sign up to follow my blog or just say Hi! You get one entry each. Please no international entries this time.

Have fun visiting here and all the other wonderful sites.  The first winner to respond will get her choice of two of the above patterns and the last two go to the second winner. Leave me some love in the comments area and be sure to leave an email address so I can contact the winners. The Giveaway starts on October 1 and the winners will be posted on the 15th.

Blessings,   Susan

How do you tame your sewing/quilting beast? Does it tend to grow and flow out of one room and begin to take over the whole house? While attempting to tame the Beast this summer, I realized I have a shameful amount of "Works In Progress".  So much so that I couldn't even bring myself to count them, yikes! I just didn't want to know the exact number but I do want to make those WIP's shrink to just one or two, maybe even three. So what do you do to get the WIP numbers down?

It's back to those projects to try and get one more finished. I'll let you know how I do on this and show you what I complete.
Until next time....Susan

May they sing of the ways of the Lord, for the glory of the Lord is great. Psalms 138:5

Sometimes you just have to hold your breath and jump in with both feet. That is what I am doing today. I am jumping in with both feet, getting really wet in blogland. Hope I can swim through all the blogginess that is making my head hurt!  If I start to sink I hope someone out there will come to my rescue. I have so far found those in blogland to be sooo friendly and nice. I look forward to getting to know fellow quilters out there. Well that is enough blogging for today........

Scrappily,

Susan