Another Year is Over...

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and are enjoying 2014!  My family has been visiting.  Much fun has ensued and I am crazy tired. 

My brother (who just came back from deployment about 2 weeks ago) came for Christmas with his wife and family.

my dad took their family pictures...It is so difficult to get a baby to sit still and smile!! (this is of course a horrible pic I took from my phone in the background)

 He is the reason for the crochet stockings..."They have to be just like ours"  *sigh.
This is what they looked like on Christmas morning...
 

Now they are finished...In time for next year is better than nothing, right?  They just used them without the names.  Isaac kept trying to look in his to see if more things have appeared.  :)

I got aurifil in my stocking!  I am so excited to try this out!  I want to start my next project right away!

My sister-in-law is like a sewing machine!  Since she has been here she finished a Christmas dress she started for my niece.

Then she got my mom to show her how to sew up the smocking she made into a dress:

AND she is getting me to show her how to make a quilt...her first.  Lets see if we can finish this quilt top up today (before she leaves tomorrow)!

There was no clean floor space anywhere - what with so many people staying at out house (7 adults, 6 children, and one dog, plus all the visitors that came by to see our guests).  It was super difficult to keep the kids from walking on the fabric!  Even the older ones walked on top of our layout. 

 

*I did finish two quilts and just gave them away last night - in our last Christmas gift exchange.  I'll post about those later in the new year!*
  
Merry Christmas (5 more days till Epiphany!) and Happy New Year!
XXOO - Katelyn

Hang your Stockings and say your prayers, cause Santa Claus comes tonight...

Well not tonight, but soon!  After I made my sister's children stockings last year, one of my best friends asked me to make stockings for her children.  Of course I said yes.  However, I decided that instead of doing different patterns in red and green, like I did with my niece's and nephew's (see photo here), I was going to get patterned Christmas print and piece it in simple squares.  After finding Amy's stocking tutorial, from Diary of a Quilter, it was so much easier than when I made the others!!  I had my mother embroider the kids names on them, and just love how they turned out!

of course, I was not without snafus -  I did sew the loop on backwards once and had to take out my stitches and redo it. 

But really they turned out nicely.  I would recommend the tutorial (mentioned above) to everyone.

I quilted a crosshatch through all of the squares

The back of the stockings

Fabric: Joy by Kate Spain for Moda
           aqua and red solids from JoAnn Fabric and Crafts

I purchased the fabric before Christmas last year and have already told Lesile that if she has more kids his/her stocking will not match, cause I may have used the rest of the fabric on a quilt.  opps.
Now that's four stockings down...two more to go.  Next time - crochet.  Let's hope we see them here, finished, sometime next week!

Happy Holidays!!
 - Katelyn