Christmas Cookies and Quilts for Vets

I'm very happy to be hosting Christmas Eve dinner this year yet I'm amazed that I'm not stressing at all over it. 

Today my granddaughters and their friend frosted sugar cookies for the holiday season. It's so fun to let them do their thing. It's also a tradition that Jeff gets in there too to help. It's his favorite Christmas cookie so he's always ready to sample a few - haha!

I bought the girls goody bags for St. Nick's day and there were suckers with handles shaped like lips. They just had to try them out. 

I grabbed some quilts from my Sweet Sundays quilt group for my husband to take to Zablocki VA Hospital for veterans. His Legion Riders group goes to visit at Christmastime and he likes to take quilts along to give away. This year my group had 18 quilts for him to take.

I didn't realize until I took the photo that the quilts are sitting on my new Ikea furniture purchases. I think I will take that as a hint that I better get going on putting it together. I love assembling Ikea stuff.

Client Longarming

The Elna 792 Pro came into the shop this week. I never really cared to upgrade my current machine, as long as I can piece a quilt top, that's all I ever needed. 

Then along came this home machine with an automated stitch regulator. I could free-motion quilt small projects with ease if I had one of these. 

My friends with longarms think it's crazy. They all say the same thing, "Just load the project on the longarm!".  Sometimes I think it's too much trouble for really small projects. I can free-motion quilt on the machine I have now but I sure would love it to not have to worry about how fast or slow I have to go to keep even stitches. I am definitely getting one of these....

Someday.

I have a client who is very passionate about a PKD fundraiser that happens every year. She makes a quilt to raffle off every year and this is the one for 2023. It's always a queen-sized quilt so the event does make quite a bit of money off her beautiful donations and I am happy to help.

I also quilted a memory quilt for her. Her son passed away from cancer and she made a quilt to honor his memory. 

Besides the 2 quilts, she had a table runner to be quilted as well. I love the colors she used. These are the last client projects I plan on completing before the holidays. 

On Thanksgiving day I became one of those statistics attached to senior citizens. I slipped and fell then ended up getting 16 staples on the top of my head. It was quite a gash. On my way down, I hit the corner of the buffet in my daughter's dining room. I got right up thinking I was fine except for my head stung a little. And I didn't see any blood although it was all over the buffet. Jeff says I could't see it because it was running down my back. The next thing I knew we were headed to the hospital.

I really didn't hurt myself and frankly, I was disappointed I missed dessert after dinner. At least I got to eat before I went to the ER!

I know they are hard to see but this photo was taken right before the staples were removed. And hallelujah for that. I think the staples were worse than the wound. I am so happy that things turned out like they did. I really could have seriously hurt myself.