Hand sewing. Boooooring.

Working on hand sewing bindings this weekend.  My fingers hurt.  I'm tired of hunching over the desk squinting at the striped binding. 
I'm whining.  I know.......

On other fronts, I completed the Quiltmaker mystery quilt - sorry, no picture, post one later.  It turned out it wasn't a pattern I would have chosen to make, but oh well, it will be a good gift for someone.  If I had known the color placement, I would have chosen differently.  One danger of mystery quilts.

The binding has to take first place because I let it stack up since the first of the year (blush) except for my niece's quilt.  Now I have to get all this completed before my nephew's gift quilt comes back from the longarm quilter.  After all those gift quilts at Christmas I was totally burned out on hand sewing bindings so now I have four (four!) to finish.  Sigh

Here's a non-whining reason for this post, the center of a little Christmas quilt I need to finish:

Cuteness progress report

Haven't joined the blocks of the outer border yet but here it is so far.  I love this modified spool block.  It's amazing how much work these little 4" things are, though. 

It is my aim to have enough small Christmas quilts to decorate this holiday season.  I want to take down the ones hanging up now (back hallway, den, main hallway, master bedroom, sewing room, computer room/guest room) and substitute Christmas themed pieces.  I never took down the quilts on permanent display before during the holiday season, mostly because I didn't want to have to store them and they were some of the prettiest ones I had made.  But the whole house needs to be festive.  And I should make some more table runners too.  This is the time to concentrate on these projects, when I've got 4 or 5 months to finish them. 

Last of the Christmas gift quilts

I finished the binding before bedtime yesterday, in spite of spending the day cooking. I was sooooo tired, but was determined to get this gift completed. It's 62" square and will be a couch quilt for my brother in law and his wife. I know that parts of her house have light green carpeting, and am hoping that includes the living room so it will coordinate. Rather happy with how this one turned out. Sherry's quilting is perfect, as usual.

Debbie Mumm Christmas Sampler 2008

I just got this one bound and had to show it off. I don't usually particularly care for Debbie Mumm designs, a little too country/cutesy for me, but this sampler was fantastic. I'll be very happy to display it this Christmas.Here's a little close-up of Sherry's quilting work: she did holly in the sashing and the border, and quilted each block according to what worked for it, with outline/meandering/patterns. It's just lovely. I hope she doesn't mind I added a link to her blog - she might get inundated with work!

The checkered tale of a quilting book

Some of you might remember several days ago I posted a request to find a book of Christmas applique patterns. Through the inter-library loan program, my local library finally located a copy and I picked it up today. As it turns out, kind offers to copy pages from the book wouldn't have helped because the patterns were on large pull-out sheets in the back (which, wonder of wonders, were still with the library book. What are the odds of that?)

The pages I thought I needed, which I had determined applied to the patterns I wanted from looking at the Table of Contents on Amazon, would only have given me fabric requirements and a layout for the borders (I wasn't even going to use the borders). So, when I finally got the book in my hands I hied myself to the Kinko's and copied the 22" x 31" pattern sheets. Now, I can cut them apart for each block and scan them, and probably enlarge them - there are some teeny tiny applique pieces on these things.

Thanks to the people who looked for the book for me. No people are more helpful than the quilting community.

I don't think anyone should be holding their breath waiting to see results. This is going to be a queen size quilt, all hand appliqued. It might take years.