xmas crafting

This year I made 25 glittery Christmas cards and 6 batches of cookies. I mailed everything yesterday. It took two trips to the post office!

For the cards, I used photoshop to create the border and text layout; then, I printed two cards per sheet and added GLITTER. I used a smallish font so I had to use my tiniest paintbrush (it probably has 20 bristles) to apply regular elmer's glue and then sprinkled glitter all over.

I forgot to take more cookie pictures! These are the spiral sugar cookies. I made a few other colors and one that was a chocolate and sugar cookie spiraled together, plus another type of chocolate cookie. Every year I make two kinds of cookies (one year I made fudge instead) and mail them to all my family and a few very dear friends. It's quite an endeavor but who doesn't love getting cookies in the mail?!

QUILTY POO

 I FINISHED!

 A view of the finished edge and the backing. The backing was machine-assembled (it's made up of 10" muslin squares). The binding was attached by machine, then finished by hand. All other sewing and quilting was done by hand.

 A close-up on my beautiful mitered corners.

I don't feel very emotional about finishing this project - I've been working on it for so long (4 1/2 years) that it has sort of become its own entity. Almost like a creature that I don't really own, but that has deigned to be included in my life. This isn't to say that I don't love it, but I feel a weird sense of separation from it.

This may sound funny, but I'm really looking forward to starting my next quilt! I don't have any particular plans for it, and I need to collect more scraps before I begin, but this project was really enjoyable (most of the time). I do think that the next one will also use muslin scraps for contrast, the way this one does, because I still have a lot that I collected at school, and I like the way that brings recycling into my work.

I also have a theory that having this quilt sitting on my couch, unfinished, for so many months was sapping my creative energies, so I'm planning on working on different projects for a while. To begin with, it's Christmastime, so I've been testing cookie recipes and planning my holiday cards! Time to be holly jolly...