Winner Chosen and a Christmas 4-Patch Ready to Quilt

Thank you to all who visited me during the Quilting Gallery's Blog Hop Party.  What a time we had! Thanks to host Michele and all her fabulous sponsors, we had the opportunity to hop all around blog land, meeting new friends and entering draws for some enticing giveaways. There were about 170 participants and I think many of these folks visited me, with several becoming new followers.  Welcome and many hugs!

I was kept pretty busy this week replying by email to the  171 comments. If you didn't receive a note from me, you may be a no-reply blogger and I'm sorry we couldn't connect.  Now on to what you are waiting for.  I used Random.Org to choose a random number. The winner of my giveaway, a "Spoolin' Around" pattern and kit by Kansas Troubles Quilters is Karen, comment 130, who wrote: "Thanks so much for the giveaway opportunity. And, thanks for no hoops".  I have emailed Karen and am waiting for her address.  Again thanks to you all for participating.  

Michele has a fantastic Christmas Quilt Show going on right now.  Several friends of mine have entered their festive creations so please pop over for some inspiration and to vote for your favorite quilt right HERE.   

Thought I'd start off this post with a picture of a Santa, just because you know I love Santas!  This Santa was cross stitched by my mother-in-law many years ago and gifted to us one Christmas.  

Woodworker Hubby framed it and we hang it every year in the living room.  

My MIL has been an avid cross-stitcher and quilter over the years and has been quite a source of inspiration to me.  She has made stunning quilts for all her grandchildren, using her excellent applique and stitching skills to create many treasured gifts.

For the last couple of days, I decided to play with my  little red and green 4-patches that I blogged about last time at Christmas Scrapping. I'm a bit of a perfectionist ( who, me?) so I ended up unsewing the Christmasy blocks that had white and gold backgrounds and chose instead to use fabrics with just red and green as the base.  I thought this would work better with the bright white I was planning to use for the sashing.  I'm just sewing on the borders here.

The final stitch, ready to cut the thread.

I laid it out in the ironing board for a better look and to get the creases out of it.

When I was ready to sandwich the quilt, I didn't want to cut into a large piece of batting for such a small project, so looked around and found a couple of pieces of batting and sewed them together.  Anything to save money at Christmas! I often use batting tape to press pieces of batting together but had run out recently, so sewing the batting worked really well for me today.

I found a great backing fabric for my project...a bright Christmas red and white plaid and sandwiched the quilt using 505 quilt spray baste.  In fact, I ran out of that too...my "to buy" list is growing.

I am all ready to quilt Christmas 4-patch. I plan to straight line machine quilt it is as Lori did in her Dolly Quilt Tutorial at Bee in My Bonnet  where I got the inspiration to make this little quilt.  I didn't follow the directions exactly, so my quilt is a little larger...about 20 x 28, and I have no idea what to do with it. I guess it may be a runner, or sit on  a corner of the couch, or be a floor mat...who knows? I just love working with Christmas colours!

But the quilting  is for another day.

I know we have all been so impacted by the events that unfolded on Friday in Connecticut.  As parents of two, and coming from a family of educators, including myself, hubby, our children, sisters, in laws, nieces, nephews and more, I just can't imagine.  Prayers and many hugs...