Getting Christmassy

The present shopping the nearly done, the cards have been sent, just a small amount of food shopping to do and we're nearly there!

I have managed to fit it a small amount of sewing, not a lot.  The weekend before last I found on my facebook page that Quilting Bloggers linked to a Christmas Mug Rug make on The Crafty Blogger here, though I have found there is a correction to the original instructions here.  I found this quite quick to make, just taking up an afternoon then adding the binding on the next morning.  Here is my rug

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That Sunday also involved a going to the Quarterjack's Christmas speaker afternoon, for which I was lucky to get a ticket.  The speaker was Christine Porter, from Bristol, who has is a quilt teacher and writer and once was one of the editors of British Patchwork and Quilting magazine.  Quite an entertaining speaker with a lot of quilts to show, many of which had to be produced for her books.

I succumbed and bought her Tessellated Quilts book, but didn't buy any fabric!

Idly reading the e-mail messages from BQL Yahoo group, I noticed a recurring theme on the subject of owls.  There were several suggestions of sites which has instructions on how to make owls, and came across this site which had some really sweet and simple owls, called Efemera Ink.  Like the Sunday before, this last Sunday I went and had a go, this is the result.  Following the instructions this little guy only took over an hour to make

 And here he is on the Christmas tree

 In today's post I had a surprise belated birthday postcard, in purple with some brown and gold lace, trimmed with gold coloured thread, very lush.

 To go with it came a lovely machine embroidered Christmas stocking, thanks to Marion for the surprise!