Design Wall Monday 9-17-12

Today my son turns 21. My goodness ... where has the time gone? I'm very proud of the man he's become.

Okay - on to sewing. I'm continuing to work on the Christmas wall hanging that I posted about last week. My progress this week has been to finish the bead-loom woven central focal piece - well, I say "finished" but I still have 80 ... count 'em 80 ... thread ends to weave in - then it will be finished. I have the quilt sandwich made and will quilt it and bind it this week. This pattern is actually a cross stitch pattern from Mill Hill Designs that converted quite nicely to a bead loom chart.

The very last step will be to applique the cross-stitched and bead woven "decorations" onto the wall hanging. Thank you to my sister for naming this piece for me ... Deck The Halls.

Thursday night Ruth and Lori came over to my burrow for Needle Nite. We had a blast playing with polymer clay and making buttons. I think it was Lori who casually tossed out the idea of swapping some Christmas fabrics between the 3 of us for a table topper called Crooked On Purpose. Then Saturday we had an impromptu Needle Nite and agreed to move forward with the Crooked On Purpose plan so everyone brought 3 rectangles of 5 different Christmas fabrics. I finished my table topper top tonight! Love it! This week I'll quilt and bind it.

Am continuing to work on the Craftsy.com blocks of the month. 18 are finished so far for January through September. October will be paper piecing then we'll have a 20 block quilt to assemble.

Next I'm hoping to begin working on sweatshirts converted to jackets. These seem to be good candidates for the handmade polymer clay buttons.

Visit Design Wall Monday to check out what everyone else is working on.