Early Christmas Joy

First of all my kids are just SOOO excited for Christmas and in a good way. Carolyn can't wait until she can sing at Christmas Eve Mass, Matthew was busy wrapping a pot he made at school for Joel and Joel brought home a letter he wrote to Santa Claus as well as the reply he had received. He told me, "This is Santa's writing." (a very cool font w/ holly leaves amongst the letters) "He even wrote the stripes" (the very pretty candy cane like printer paper).

Additionally, I got an email from my walking buddy who said her daughter was free to babysit for me this morning! She came for almost 4 hours and it was great. I worked for a couple hours and took an uninterrupted shower! After I heard she was coming, I thought, "I would like to make her a small quilt for her American Doll collection" and I quickly whipped it up. I almost had it finished when she arrived. (the center square was done earlier....remember these posts (http://balancingmyway.blogspot.com/2009/10/quilt-update.html)
(http://balancingmyway.blogspot.com/2009/11/beautiful-blankets-to-bundle-babies.html) where the remainder of a queen sized quilt became a baby quilt.....well now 2 doll sized quilts have joined the ranks....I also found more of the triangles so you haven't seen the last of the little squares - I just love them)

It is about 12 by 16 inches in size. The back fabric is the same as the flowered binding.

This little quilt was made for my walking buddy's other daughter, who also baby-sits for us, but still had school today. I waited to make it until this afternoon, so as not to waste the productive baby-sitting hours.

Last but not least, a package arrived in the mail from Ken's sister. She had books and book-marks for the kids and 3 blocks for Carolyn's quilt I am making (more on that later...they are gorgeous). Additionally she sent me YARDS and YARDS of fabric. When we started talking about making Carolyn's quilt, I asked if she had any fabric left over from Anna's quilt, so I could add it to Carolyn's quilt to add a bit of unity in the room. I ment SCRAPS from her quilt. Aunt D. sent yards of these fabrics plus others. I am in quilters heaven. There are so many bright, beautiful fabrics - I can't wait to dig in.

I decided to make several new blocks for Carolyn's quilt. A few weeks ago I decided to make a handful of Carolyn's blocks just a plain square of fabric (flowers or stripes). Well, with Aunt D's squares and a couple of squares with the new fabrics....the plain squares are being kicked off the quilt (perhaps to the back). (Note....they weren't actually IN the quilt yet, just laid out on the floor of the basement in the "designing stage".) More on Carolyn's (and Joel's) quilts later. (Joel's top is one seam away from being done!)

My candy-store from Aunt D.