A quiet and relaxing Christmas

I hope your Christmas was as enjoyable as ours was. It was calm, no arguments and everyone coming together throughout the day but also spending time doing their own thing. Lucy and Richard spent a lot of time together as they had decided to get one of the Lego models down, take it apart and rebuild as a different vehicle. It took them a long time to separate the bricks and sort them ready for the re-build. With just over 4000 bricks I'm not surprised the activity kept them occupied over the whole holiday period not just Christmas day. John and I cooked Christmas dinner together and it was a very traditional meal with turkey, roast potatoes, sprouts (yummy) creamed leeks, roast parsnips and carrots and sage and onion stuffing. We had a mixture for starters as we couldn't make up our minds what we wanted so there was roast camembert with cranberries in filo pastry, mushroom pate, and prawn cocktail. Lucy is vegetarian and so had a tart instead of the turkey. Much later in the evening we enjoyed a cheese board and port. Katy phoned but otherwise there was no interaction with anyone outside the house. We also had a few drinks along the way. Bucks Fizz with breakfast, mulled wine when we opened presents and wine with dinner. I'd meant to make some Irish coffees after dinner but everyone opted for a cup of tea. 

I'd put my sewing machine away for a couple of days and today I set it up to finish off the Austen Family Album quilt. I didn't sleep well last night and was tired so I made a couple of silly mistakes at the beginning that I had to unpick. After a couple of cups of tea my brain started to function better and soon I had the top finished. This is a big quilt and finishes at 96 inches square. 

I put a narrow border of the fabric I used for the cornerstones and then a wide 6 inch border of the green fabric. I will start the quilting on this quilt in January.

Over Christmas I've been doing hand stitching and the borders, cornerstones and missed stitches are all completed on the millennium sampler. Tonight I will finish off the spitfire. That will then leave some back stitching to do. This will be finished this year. I will be celebrating it's completion with some bubbly. I'm not posting a photo until it's all finished.

I had some quilting goodies for Christmas. Since we are effectively in lock down John got me a quilting jigsaw puzzle . I love that over the year we have put together several jigsaw puzzles whilst shops, museums, art galleries etc are closed and we've been unable to travel to complete parts of the coastal path.

John also bought me a book on making landscape quilts. I've wanted this for a little while. I want to finish a couple of other projects before I start a landscape quilt but the book is very interesting to read and gives a lot of instructions and hints and tips. In addition there were useful sewing items, thread, new pins and new rotary cutter blades. I'd given everyone instructions that I didn't need any more fabric!

Richard also gave me sewing items which I will share in a future post and Lucy gave me a new 24inch long ruler. The non slip on this one actually works and made cutting the borders for the quilt a pleasure.

On Wednesday 30th December Carla from Creatin' in the Sticks is hosting a blog hop. Here are the blogs taking part. 

Just Let Me Quilt
MooseStashQuilting
Words & Stitches
 Sew Many Yarns
Websterquilt
Cocoa Quilts
QuiltFabrication
Stitchin At Home
Ms P Designs USA
Life in the Scrapatch
Kathy Kwilts and More
Karen's Korner
Quilt Schmilt
selina quilts
The Joyful Quilter
Becky’s adventures in quilting and travel 
Karrin's Crazy World
Quilting and Learning: What a Combo
VroomansQuilts
Cynthia's Creating Ark
PamelaQuilts
Quilting Patchwork & Appliqué
Kathleen McMusing
Quilting Gail
Homespun Hannah's Blog
appliqueand...
Songbird Designs
Storied Quilts
Susie’s World

She's Stitchin Again
Creatin' in the Sticks

I need to go and cook dinner and then I can get back to my hand stitching. 

Take care

Lyndsey