December Monthly Mini

Wasn't sure I could pull it off this month, but just this week I got this put together. The stars finish at 6", so it isn't as "mini" as many I make, but I enjoyed putting this together. It finishes at 18". I am linking up with Wendy at The Constant Quilter blog for the monthly mini parade. Check them out. Is this the fourth year we have been doing the monthly minis?

This may look awfully familiar because the color scheme is almost the same as last month's mini. I just added green this month in honor of the holiday season.I had toyed with the idea of a red binding, but when I tested reds against the finished top, they seemed to take away from the gold stars.

You can see the quilting, which was a mix of diagonal lines and stitch-in-the-ditch, in the photo below.

Friend Kathy knows that I don't enjoy switching threads (which she loves). But I do it sometimes because I think it will be the best look for the quilt. So as I was auditioning thread colors, I thought of Kathy and the photos she takes of  her pretty bunch of spools laying on the quilt. I took the photo below in honor of Kathy. :)

This was taken post-quilting, but pre-binding. I had just cut the binding strips and laid them around the edges. The reds in this photo are brighter than in real life, but the other colors are truer than in the first photo.

It may be a stretch, but this quilt is for my "baggie challenge". These fabrics weren't in a baggie--they have been sitting in a project box for years. I was taking a class from Marsha McClosky and I had the reds/greens/golds (along with a few neutrals) in my project box for the class. When I got to class I learned that we had the option of making the blocks in miniature, which, of course, I chose to do. So I had a LOT of fabric leftover, and it has been marinating in the box for years.

The challenge allowed for the addition of two fabrics--a neutral and a color. Black was my neutral in this quilt, so I added the black in the center column. The color I added was the red in the front of the left column. It had arrived at my home two days before Christmas in a baggie of "scraps" from my retreat buddy, so I felt it belonged in my baggie challenge piece.

In January I will do a post where I will link up all of the monthly mini makers who chose to participate in my baggie challenge. I will draw a name to receive one of the quilts I have made from baggies of scraps in the past. I may have a few other prizes for some lucky participants, too.

I hope you had a lovely holiday, whether you were surrounded by friends and/or family, or celebrated quietly. We had a unique Christmas Eve/Day activity. Our DIL is an artist by profession. She offered to give us all a chance to try our hand at painting with acrylics on canvas. She put a LOT of work into it, and transformed our living room into a classroom. 

She had invited us to bring a picture or object that we wanted to use as our inspiration, and then she gave us a session of instructions. We were then set loose to try our hand, as she moved among us giving help and suggestions as needed.

Some family members have natural artistic talent and the rest of us were out of our element, but had a good time. We spent hours on Christmas Eve working on our paintings, and those of us who hadn't quite finished up spent a few more hours on Christmas Day.

Here we are on Christmas afternoon with our mostly finished pieces, and our proud teacher. Our granddaughter (front and center) had started two pieces, so neither was completed yet. Our oldest son (married to our teacher, and standing on the far right) was doing a more involved piece, since he has had private lessons already, and he still had more to do. Hubby is absent from the photo as he chose to spend the time with our youngest grandson who has disabilities that prevent his participation. Our oldest daughter and her family remained in Oregon for Christmas, so they are missing as well.

It was a stretch for some of us who are artistically challenged, but it was fun to try something new!

We celebrated New Year's Eve just the two of us this year. We usually have some family and/or friends over. But hubby had his second dose of the Shingrix vaccine yesterday and he has been feverish, achy and coughing. So we had no guests and hubby went to bed early. I just finished up New Year's Eve with my usual routine, watching the classic movie, "Bachelor Mother", starring Ginger Rogers and David Niven. Love that movie! As midnight strikes I can look out the French doors of our family room and see fireworks going off from one end of our valley to the other. As much as I enjoy fireworks, I always worry for all the people and animals that are traumatized by the noise.

May you enjoy a wonderful start to the new year, and may we make it a kinder, healthier year for us all. 

Until next time,

Janet O.

I leave you with the photo that was the inspiration for my painting attempt. This was taken just outside those family room French doors as the full moon rose over the Bear River Range of mountains on December 18th.