Happy Holidays!

Welcome to Treadlestitches!

I hope your holidays were happy and healthy.  Ours were wonderful, and busy, which is why I skipped blogging last week.  Our four youngest grand kids were here for the annual cookie baking and decorating.  Decorating is their favorite part, can you tell? From left to right we have Little Guy, Mr. H., Buddy, and Miss E.

Here are some of their creations.  They do get a little heavy handed with the sprinkles!

Our littlest boys were in a Christmas program at their school, which was absolutely adorable as you can guess.  Little Guy is in the front row, on the far left.  I missed my chance to photograph Buddy's class :(

We had a lovely family party at our house on Christmas Eve, and all the shopping, wrapping, baking, cooking, decorating etc. were so worth it.

We got everything cleaned up/put away, rested a bit, and then I finally had time for quilting!

I finished these two baby quilts yesterday evening.  We are having some welcome sunshine today, as you can see.

First is a Trip Around the World, made with pastel baby-friendly fabrics I had on hand.  It's one of my favorite go-to easy patterns.

Lots of ducky prints in this one!

The back is at least as cute as the front!  I just love that sweet chubby frog.

I showed the top of this quilt last time, before I added the final border.

Since the border was so light, I added a darker binding to set off the edge.

Both these quilts are square.  The Trip Around the World is 40.5 in. x 40.5 in. and the Charm quilt is 42 in. x 42 in. with the outer border.  They will both be donated to the local Community Baby Shower in January.

On Thursday we went antiquing, something we often do between Christmas and New Years.  I got this pile of loot:  a hard cover quilt notebook, some Sesame Street characters for the grand kids to use with play dough, and fabric.  I can always use Green Bay Packers fabric, especially in quilts for older kids, and I never have enough light prints.

My favorite fabric buy was nearly 2 yards of this Snoopy print.  It's meant for Easter, but is still cute.

This cup made me laugh!  I'm guessing the cup maker meant to imply that someone tried to be good for Santa, and didn't quite make it.  I took it a different way.

It made me think of how hard we all try to make holidays "perfect" (whatever that is) and how perfection always eludes us.  Thank goodness we can be happy without everything being absolutely perfect.

I was definitely thinking of this on Dec. 23, when our refrigerator suddenly quit working and couldn't be repaired.  Ack!  Thank goodness most of the food for the Christmas party was in the downstairs freezer.  We found a fridge in stock at a local store, but it couldn't be delivered until the day after Christmas.  We improvised in the meantime with help from our kids, and it all worked out.

Mrs. Pfaff and I have our work cut out for us this week, making more quilts for the Community Baby Shower.  I will do my best, but I know it won't be perfect, because I'm not perfect, and that's okay.  The quilts will be warm and cozy for the little ones, and that's what matters.

Have a lovely week, and Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading,

Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:

Alycia at Finished or Not Finished Friday

Angela at So Scrappy