Tiny Christmas Stockings, and Darning

 I've completed stitching three pair of tiny felt Christmas Stockings, which were handed out at last month's quilt club meeting.  Each set of stockings came with an extra strip of felt.  These will be hung on the display of Christmas Trees in December, our club's entry in the Avenue of Trees.

Red, white and green

After putting my thinking cap on, I had worked out how I wanted to decorate them.  They are tiny, so keep it simple, I decided.  Sadly, I failed miserably with blanket stitch, so just did running stitch instead.  I'm sure it's not that hard, but I just couldn't get my head around it.  Maybe I'll ask the Sew Wots to show me sometime.  With a bit of simple stitching, a couple of buttons, and ribbon hanging loops stitched on, they were done.

White, green and red, and I found one tiny Father Christmas looking for a new home

I can't remember when I last did some darning, but I had a hand knitted sock emergency.  Most of my cozy thick socks are knitted with 8 ply wool, ply 4 ply sock yarn, and these are hole free, so far.  But I did knit a couple of pairs using 12 ply wool in the early days,  and one of these pairs developed a hole under the heel.  There was only one thing to do, try to darn the hole up

That's no good, is it.

I had a very small ball of grey acrylic which toned in quite well, and  used that.  No darning mushroom though - I can remember these from my childhood when my Mother expertly darned socks.  I improvised and slipped a glass into the sock, and started working.  I don't think I'll win any prizes for my darning prowess, but it did the job, so I'm pleased with that.

Finished is better than perfect!

I've just finished another library book, Fallen, by Karin Slaughter.  I've read a lot of her books, but missed this older one somehow.  It features one of my favourite detectives, Will Trent, together with Dr Sara Linton, Will's partner Faith and boss Amanda Wagner.  This was such a gripping story, and I hadn't worked out the who and why as the tale progressed, as it hurtled to the climatic ending.

Just finished, I could hardly put it down

I have seen the Will Trent series on TV and was quite disappointed with the casting.  According to the books, Will is white, tall and lean, with a runner's body shape, and the TV show featured a darker, maybe Mexican character.  Rather like casting Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, readers all know Jack is a big, powerful, strong  man, so I refused to go and watch the two movies featuring  the much smaller Tom Cruise.  Guess I like things to stay the same.

A Finish - String Blocks of many colours

 This project resurfaced after my great wardrobe malfunction last year, and I was determined to work on it once I had completed my secret quilt sewing.  It started out like this, a bunch of multi-coloured string blocks, which I had started sewing burgundy batik sashing strips on.

String blocks

The top was completed in June, then it was  layered and pinned up ready for machine quilting.

Pinning up the quilt outside on a sunny winter day

The quilting took me ages, with stops and starts along the way.  Some days I was busy doing other things, and some days I just  couldn't face it.  The quilting was finally completed last week.  Then I settled down to stitch the binding on, always my favourite part of quilt making.  

Binding time

And here it is, finished at last.  It always makes me smile when a non quilter asks, "how long does it take to make a quilt?"  The answer of course is, "as long as it takes!"  Some of my finishes are very long winded indeed, in fact years old, while others are relatively fast from start to finish.  All sorts of reasons about the time taken come into play,  and for my projects, they are often put aside and forgotten about for no particular reason, and other things can take priority.  No apologies or excuses, that's just the way I am.  I had one string block over, so made a little draw string bag to go with the quilt.

A little draw string bag to go with the quilt

This project was practically free to make.  The string blocks were stitched from left over strips from years ago, and the sashings were left over strips from a quilt I made one of my grand daughters way back.  The blue border fabric was left over from the memory quilts I recently finished for my niece and her daughter.  The batting was "frankenbatting", leftover pieces stitched together, and the backing was a large floral piece I received from my neighbour Dorothy.  So all in all, a great lesson in using up what you have.

This will be donated to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.  The co-ordinater Fleur will be the speaker at the next quilt club meeting, so I will pass it over then, together with the dinosaur quilt.  It will be so nice to see her again, and to hear about the special work she does with families.

There was another project bag tucked away with the string blocks - chickens.  I would like to get on with that one next.  As I used to tell Robin, I'll never run out of things to do!