Fun and Relaxing Saturday

I started up a new quilt course this morning. My students have a three week Christmas Table Runner class. Today they cut their fabrics and started to construct their blocks. They have each picked out some gorgeous fabric combinations and I can't wait to see how they are going to turn out. I told them I will be bringing my camera to the next class to get photos of their blocks. Next week they will sew on the sashing and outside border. Its funny how time flies so quite. I start my classes at 10am on Saturday mornings and with the blink of an eye it is 1pm and the class is over for another week!

I have always found the weeks from Sept 1st to Dec. 31st just fly by. I noticed the other night we have about 6 weeks left til Christmas! Aaaaarrgggghhh!! I'm not ready!! I still have... hmmm counting5-6 more gifts to make for gifts, a couple more tree skirts to bind, Christmas baking, a bit more Christmas shopping to complete (at least I always start that nice and early). I just have so much to do! I have decided tomorrow to hand cuff myself to my sewing machine and spend the entire day of Sunday sewing and quilting and hope to get a few things accomplished or even finished!!!

After class, I came home, but it was too sunny and beautiful of a day to stay inside (yes I know I mentioned above I have 6 weeks to finish up alot of stuff, but the sun was out!!!) The temperature was a bit cool, but if you dress right for it it doesn't matter. Trevor and I decided to take a stroll downtown and visit some of the little specialized shops. We also had a nice lunch in one of my favourite little restaurants, Bagel Cafe. They have since expanded their shop and ooooh I just love their bagel sandwiches and homemade cream cheese. My favourite dish down there is the California Bagel. I have a multigrain bagel toasted with a nice breaded chicken breast with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and their yummy Sun dried tomato cream cheese!

When I came back I was in a baking mood. So I decided to make the pumpkin cranberry muffins (as seen in the photos here of me in the kitchen) and I also attempted some herbed cheese breakfast scones. Tomorrow morning I will make up some scrambled eggs and bacon and make our own little breakfast sandwiches. I managed to get 14 scones out of the dough mixture. I can't wait to try them in the morning! If they both taste good, I will post the recipes!





As for quilting related, I did manage to lay out all my crumb blocks the other night on the floor to see how they would look. I cut out cream tone on tone blocks to go between the crumbs, as well as the HSTs and the QSTs. As you will notice in the far right corner, I am missing two crumbs... well it seems I am short two crumbs, so I have to go back and make two more. I will put those together this week sometime, and hopefully by next weekend I will get a start sewing up the rows to get it looking more like a quilt top.




I still have many more borders to add, including more crumbs but a smaller size, and also some machine applique. I'm figuring I will be working on this for the rest of this year. But that's okay. One of my challenges was to see how far I could complete the quilt before the end of the year. I'm just loving making crumbs, and I want to make more. My students have even started giving me their little end pieces they know they won't use. I have plans for making other scrap quilts in the new year. I started one about a year and a half ago, but put it aside for a bit. I will pick it up again in 2009.

Sigh.. so many quilts to make, so little time. sigh..........

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea