Design wall Monday 12/27/2010

We had an exciting Christmas Eve! It was the first time my stepson and his family joined us! They had come for baking day, and accepted my invitation to return. A good time was had by all.

I had thought long on a theme / gifts for the adults. With the economy so bad, there isn’t much money for just of fun stuff. I wanted to give them useful things, but something they wouldn’t use their own money to buy. We decided on Omaha Steak Gift Packages for each family. To go along with the theme, I made table runners and placemats to go with the Steaks.

This is the set I made for my daughter. She has a round table. DH asked what I was doing with all the neckties. The oreo fabric reminds me of a fabric I made my daughter and myself blouses out of when she was small. I just had to make DGD#2 and DD with the same fabric. All the placemats and runners have neutral backings except DGD#2’s, pictured here. She is always playing with my scrap strings, so I just had to put them on the back of her placemat. She and I also made a hot pad using strings for her mother. She picked the strings and sat with me with her hands on the fabric pushing it through the machine. She really liked sewing. The binding fairy missed these two placemats, but should do them today.

The second picture is the set made for a nephew and family. Their table runner is  a shorter one, as is their table. It contains one set of pieces from each of the 10 fabric I was working with, except the Oreo fabric. It was just too big of print to look good as braids. I managed to make all of these with the ten fabrics – 8 fat quarters, and two half yards, with a few brights for one runner. The binding fairy managed to finish this set.

The M&M set is for my stepson. I didn’t have large pieces for the placemats left of any other fabric, so made all theirs the same. This is the one that I used brights for the braid as there wasn’t enough of any fabric left for another set of braids.

This last set for for DS’s family. They have a 6’ table, so they have braids of every fabric on both sides of the center block.  These were the placemats that the binding fairy entirely missed, but DDIL managed to miss that fact and packed them in the van in the bottom of a sack, and didn’t want to find them to leave here. She said she would bring them back – I hope soon.

That’s the extent of my design wall right now. I will be working on the pink and purple quilt shown several weeks ago, but first I have to clear away some of the debris in the quilt room. What a mess. The cutting table is also used as a wrapping table at Christmas time. Need I say more?

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Christmas, and will have the same for New Year’s Eve and Day. Please go to Judy L’s blog to see more design wall pictures.