some late Christmas stuff

This photo makes the colors look a little overly vibrant--it's really more muted. Better photography in 2013?

I have some late Christmas entries that I couldn't post until all the gifts had been given out! Here's a quilt I made--this one for us, but I made a couple of similar mini-er versions as gifts. Way, way back when, I said that I had actually gotten some holiday stuff done much earlier in the year. Like February. That makes me sound really compulsive. It was really more like exceedingly late for last year.

I found this cute Christmas fabric at the after-Christmas sale at M&L last January, but I didn't know what to do with it. Then when I was shopping for something probably for Frances's birthday, I found the small coordinating prints and decided to make a display quilt just the right size to hang on the fireplace screen that hides our TV. I don't actually do much holiday decorating besides the Christmas tree, but I do have a place to display quilts--just never had a Christmas quilt before.

It's also my first attempt at machine quilting. I got an absolute steal on a walking foot for my trusty Kenmore ($30 marked down to $4.99! Last year's model? It rang up $4.99 and I didn't ask a lot of questions!) and gave it a try. It went pretty well and much faster than I had anticipated. Luckily I also found a website with lots of ideas for straight-line quilting, because all that beautiful free-motion quilting that I admire on everyone else's blog is way above my pay grade.

Wow. Once again, the colors. I'm really going to have to work on that.

I didn't find the yellow until I made another trip to the store for backing fabric, but the yellow got incorporated into the tops of the mini-quilts I made as gifts. Now if I can just remember to take it out and store it with the other Christmas stuff, it can become a holiday regular!