Christmas Carol Row Along

Deck the halls with boughs of holly!

When Marian (seamstobesew.com) put out the announcement that she was going to host a Row Along in the Fall, focusing on Christmas Carols, I immediately thought of the Christmas carol, DECK THE HALLS and signed up. This is my 3rd year as a designer in one of Marian's Row Alongs.

Fun!
If you are new to a Row Along, you're going to have fun! On a certain day, each designer posts about the row pattern they created. The patterns for the rows are free (for one week from the designer's post date) during the Row Along. We really want to have each visitor download their own pattern; so please, don't share the patterns, but tell your friends to go to each site and download the patterns. Further down in this post, I have links to the designers.

Giveaways!
Marian has spent a great deal of time gathering giveaway sponsors' for the Row Along. (The rules for giveaways are listed at the end of my blog.) Enter for a chance to win one of the great giveaways.

Northcott is a prime sponsor of Marian's Row Alongs. They have kindly supplied the designers with some fabrics to use in their rows and they have provided some fabric packs for giveaways, too. We thank them for their support. 
. 
Giveaway on my blog!
You will find the Rafflecopter entry further down on my blog for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate from The Fat Quarter Shop.
There are other great sponsors, as well. You can find out about all of them at Marian's website.  

Traditions!

In researching the song and the tradition of decorating with holly, I found out that
"the ever-popular “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” has been sung since the Renaissance. In old England, more than the halls were decked with holly boughs. In some towns, so were the streets. A half-century before Columbus brought news of a New World across the sea, Englishmen were erecting upright timbers called standards in the streets and adorning them with “whatsoever the season of the yeere aforded to be greene.” But for most Englishmen, and most who immigrated to the colonies, Christmas decorations meant indoor greenery."                 (from http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn08/holly.cfm)

More information can be found at the site above, including the origins of decorating with greenery in the winter months and how it came to be incorporated in the Christian celebration of Christmas. 

There are 300 species of holly and 15 are native to North America. Holly plants are male or female, only the female plant has the red berries (which are not really berries, but drupes). Woodworkers use holly wood as inlay in furniture. I am not sure what species of holly my row depicts, but it does have berries made of buttons, so it must be feminine.

Deck the Hall Row!
I enjoy piecing my quilt tops and projects. Applique is not my prefered technique; but, I will use raw edge applique when necessary. I knew ribbons had to be used in my row, and worked in a little raw edge applique with some red buttons. I chose to use prints from Northcott's 'Tis the Season line of fabrics and a solid red from their Colorworks line.

21738M-12 HERE

21740M-24 HERE

21740M-76 HERE

#9000-24 HERE

My row finishes 30 inches wide and 10 inches tall. 

Download the Pattern HERE.
I use Payhip for my pattern downloads. You will have to fill in your email address,
then you can download the pattern. 
Payhip will send you an email link as well. 
Sometimes Payhip does not download well to cell phones and tablets, 
so you will have to use a computer.

For the Giveaway

use Rafflecopter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Other patterns!
Visit the other designers today and in the last few days of the Row Along!

Thursday, September 21, 2017
Martina Latimer
Quilt Fabrication
Patchwork Breeze
Patti’s Patchwork
Miss Loreen’s Schoolhouse

Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Cheryl LaPlante (sponsored by Quilt In Piece)
Morning Glory
Pampered Pettit
Fun Threads

Thursday, September 28, 2017
Mountain Meadow Designs
Quilt Art
Made By Marney
Renee’s Quilting Addiction

Tuesday, October 3, 2017
MaryMack’s Blog
Kathys Kwilts and More
Pamela Quilts
Duck Creek Mountain Quilting
Heleen Pinkster

Thursday, October 5, 2017
Seams To Be Sew
A Dream and A Stitch
Upstairs Hobby Room
Words & Stitches

Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Show and Tell Day
Designers participating will be announced prior to October 10.

And,
Marian wants everyone to know the

Rules and Guidelines For Giveaways
Please take the time to read it.

1. Giveaways offered by sponsors are assigned to the various bloggers for their featured day.
2. There are no prior announcements on who is doing which sponsor except to the sponsor themselves.
3. You’ll have to visit the blog or the featured blog to enter the giveaways. Not all giveaways can be entered at Seams To Be Sew.
4. I will start announcing winners on September 12, 2017, and finish announcing winners on October 12, 2017 with the exception of the Calibre Art giveaway, those will be available after each featured day, starting September 06, 2017.
5. In most cases, the blog where you won at also will announce their winners.
6. You must give a valid email address when you enter the giveaways, any email returned to me, loses the ability to win automatically.
7. With the exception of Show and Tell Day, all giveaways run for approximately one week.
8. You are given 3 days to answer the email, if you do not answer within 3 days a new winner will be drawn. Check those spam/junk mail folders, you may miss that winning email if you don’t do so because there are no exceptions to this rule.
9. If you are notified that you are a winner, in most cases, you will need to provide your name, address, city, state, zip code, country, telephone number, and email address.
10. In some cases, you will be asked to comment on the blog to enter the giveaway… do the right thing and thank them for the time it took to create the pattern, thank them for the pattern and…
11. Thank the sponsor by buying their products for the giveaways. This helps them continue to offer great prizes for these types of events. You can also comment on their social media pages. Even if you don’t win, letting them know you love their products is a huge incentive and they really do love hearing from you.
12. No purchase whatsoever is necessary.
13. You must be 18+ in order to win a gift.
14. You are responsible for claiming and paying any tax owed on the value of any gift that you win. Prizes valued at $500.00 should be claimed.
15. All winners are chosen at random.
16. All winners will be announced on the blogs via the Rafflecopter entry form and/or post by the blogger at the site where they won and here at Seams To Be Sew. All winners must allow for their first name and first initial of their last name to be announced on this blog.
17. Odds of Winning a prize are based on a total number of rafflecopter entries during each week and in total for all giveaways.
18. This giveaway is void where prohibited by law.
19. Participating bloggers may enter any of the giveaways.
20. The word giveaways in the rules and guidelines are also known as sweepstakes.

Most of the giveaways are international shipping this year
in some cases, you will be asked to pay for shipping your giveaways.
I am not rich and I do not ask sponsors for money, they provide prizes only.
If they shipped the prize to me, you will be asked to pay for shipping.
All giveaways will be shipped that are in my home within 48 hours of my having heard from you.

An invoice will be sent to you via Paypal, and shipping will take place via Paypal, so your Paypal email will be needed to send the invoice. You will receive a tracking number except for overseas shipments. All shipping will either be first class which averages out at 2.77 to 4.00 up to 13 ounces. Paypal fees are added to that amount to cover that fee. All fabric bundles from Michael Miller, Hoffman, and Moda will be shipped via Priority Mail to protect the fabric itself.

Please note, every effort is made to protect the prizes. They go into a plastic bin when I receive them, and it is covered by an air tight cover. I have a dog in my home and I have a smoker in my home, so I do everything possible to protect the prizes.

Most companies are very good about getting prizes off to customers quickly also, but some companies are overseas, so please allow all sponsors a 2-week time period before you report to me that you still haven’t received your prize. When the company is overseas, it can take 6 weeks to 90 days for an item to also arrive.

Whether or not you read the above, the rules for giveaways are in place to protect everyone. I do not want to hear you didn’t read them, they will be posted on my blog daily during each featured day. There is no excuse for not reading them.

Thank You!
I am so happy you visited my blog. I hope you enjoy making my row and use the pattern in many other ways such as birthday or special occasion quilts or wall hangings. Send me a photo if you do make my pattern, I'd love to see it.

(I reply to comments via email) if I can. If not, I reply here on the blog.

Quilts for Charity and Blog Hop

I finished quilting 3 charity quilts during the sewing time with the ladies this week. I used Marilyn's longarm machine. I have bindings and labels left to sew. These were quilts the group at church sewed together.

These photos were taken this morning on our deck. A breeze was blowing and the sun was lovely, but distorted the colors a bit.

I am excited to be attending the Quilt Exp in Madison, Wisconsin this upcoming week. I am going with my friend, Sally, who I've known since 9th grade! This will be our first time at this show and the literature about the show promises nothing but wonderment for me! Are any of you going? It would be great to meet in person.

Also, on September 5, just a few days away, the Christmas Caroling Row Along begins. I am so excited to be able to download, for FREE, so many beautiful patterns. Think outside of the box with these patterns, tablerunners, banners, use a portion of a pattern for a gift bag, and so much more. There are outstanding products in Rafflecopter giveaways from sponsors that will amaze you! Click the link for the Row Along in the first line of this paragraph to read about all the products in the giveaways. My day to post is September 21, and my row is ready to show!

Make it a good day in whatever you do.

Appreciating Sewing Time

With our daughter's wedding and then my hip replacement surgery, most of my sewing was put on hold for the last 1-1/2 months. The happy couple are settled after their honeymoon. My recovery is going very well four weeks after surgery. I am walking much better and got the O.K. to drive. I am able to walk downstairs (carefully) and I was able to do a bit of sewing.

I finished sewing a sample of my row for the Christmas Caroling Row Along coming in September, hosted by Marian at Seams To Be Sew. I am sorry I can't show you what it is; but I will say it is a pieced row that measures 10" x 30" and has so many possibilities for it's use.

I made one sample of a child-sized bucket hat for The Yellow Window Boutique and Consignment Shop. I have so many children's fabrics I can use. It was very satisfying to sew a non-quilt project. I'm going to make more in various sizes. More quilt-related items are on my daily schedule.

I am so happy to be at my sewing machine again! There will be more photos to post soon.

FABRIC, here I come!

Half of May-Gone?

It is the middle of May and I liked looking back at the photo gallery on my phone. Sometimes I get so involved with the things of life that I forget what I have accomplished in crafting. The first part of this post is about those things of life that took precedence over crafting and sewing.

The last weekend of April was our youngest daughter's wedding. It was wonderful to have all my siblings and nieces and nephews attend, since most of them live out of state! I had time to visit with my brother and his wife from New Mexico. We don't see them all that much. It was fun to see all the cousins dancing together that night. They come from Washington, Florida, Tennessee and Michigan. I was so pleased with my dress and hairstyle. And I was able to do some walking without my cane (no dancing). Hip surgery is coming in May!

As any good parents would, my husband and I made the card box our daughter wanted. My husband built the box (18" x 12" x 12") with a lid that locked! I painted it. I found and painted the frame and made a chalkboard inside of it. I gave my daughter a few chalkboard inserts with font styles and some blank chalkboard inserts. I was very pleased that she figured out how to get the font she wanted chalked onto the insert! Yeah! A budding crafter.

After returning home from a long wedding weekend, I found some lovely tulips in bloom in the garden. I decided to cut them to enjoy in the house. I wanted to get them before the deer got them as they did last year. The donut was a nice treat for me, too.

I took photos of the centers of the tulips. I think I will try using my Kaleidoscope Kreator program to turn them into fabric shapes for projects and add the filigree embroideries to them.





I finished two honey bee blocks for the Queen Bee of the Gridsters before I left for the wedding. This is one of them. Rachel is a beekeeper and has a tutorial to make these blocks HERE if you are interested in making any.

         

I received all of my Queen Bee blocks from my fellow Gridsters by the first week of May. I am working on a design for a pattern, so I am not revealing all of the block. But just a peek for you now. 

I can tell you that the blocks on my design wall look spectacular together. 

The builder arrived the second week of May to begin putting vinyl siding on our house along with replacement windows on the south side! It really looks nice, I have to admit. And as we age, my husband and I will be happy we don't have to stain the house every 2 years or hire it out. I have to say the hardest part was trying to find the color we both liked!

I put some of that life aside and got busy sewing. I made two placemats with hedgehog fabric for a gift. I had a fat quarter, so the fronts have strips of stash fabric that worked with the print which you can see on the backs of the placemats. 

I used the embroidery from EmbroideryIt to make some more coasters. I found with felt, it is best to use a large needle (size 14) for little thread breakage, atleast with my machine,

I skipped a few stitches and added some letters to make this dish towel. 

I used another embroidery for the applique on this potholder. 

A little basket I found at a thrift store became a pincushion. 

I sewed a sample row of my pattern for the Christmas Caroling Row Along coming this fall. I can't show the row yet, but it did sew up easily. I have to work on writing the pattern to submit in early June. 

So thankful I have sewing as a stress reliever as well as satisfying my creative tendencies. How about you? 

                     

April Sewing Projects

My primary focus for the past few weeks has been on the upcoming wedding of our daughter! Since we were having guests staying, my husband suggested we get the spare room painted. I bought paint a year ago when the local hardware had buy one get one can free! He recruited a friend's high school daughter to help paint. (I am scheduled for hip replacement in May, so no climbing or bending right now.) She did a fine job and earned some money over spring vacation. The guests have a lovely, fresh room to stay in.

A new place for my "Love" quilt in the room.

Sewing has not taken the back seat. I am posting a photo tour of the items I have worked on this month, with a brief caption under each. 

This wall hanging was finished and sent to my aunt in Wisconsin. 

It hangs in her room at the assisted living home.

I used Island Batik fabrics with her favorite color--purple.

Another set of Michigan coasters and

 a pincushion basket to sell at The Yellow Window.

A pillowcase for donation.

Michigan Potholders

GRIDSTERS BLOCKS

A test of the bee pattern for the Gridsters Bee block exchange selected by the Queen Bee for May.

Last month I forgot to post the 2 piggy blocks I sewed for the Gridsters March's Queen Bee.

Check Elizabeth's blog to see the quilt top she made with all her piggies.

I am April's Queen Bee and the blocks are arriving. I designed the block pattern. They are beautiful. 

I can't show them yet; they are for a special project. 

FOUR-IN-ART REVEAL COMING SOON!

I am also working on the finish for the Four-in-Art Reveal for May 2. Be sure to check back then to see how each of the members interpreted the theme of "Light in the Darkness" for this quarter. Here is a little section of the quilt.

SEPTEMBER ROW ALONG

I have been working on my row submission for the Christmas Caroling Row Along - sponsored by Seams to be Sew. It begins September 5, 2017. Over 40 pattern designers are participating! This should be a spectacular event. Put it on your calendar to row along with us. You can find more details HERE.

I wish you a happy ending to the month of April and hope it includes many things you like to do.