December 2020 Recap

Hi everyone and hope you're enjoying the new year so far! I had a great first day of the year - slept in late, took the dog for a walk, Zoomed with friends, pieced some blocks, and put a few stitches into a new project - let's hope those are all good omens for the year ahead! But before I go into 2021, I want to share what I worked on in December. I had a lot of vacation left to use this year, so my last day of work was December 11th - I have really enjoyed the three weeks off and took advantage of the time off for lots of crafty time. 

In the cross-stitch area, I have two finishes for the month - I got my last month of the Months of the Year SAL and stitched that right up, then went back to May to figure out how I wanted to fill in the hole that was left there - I decided to stitch a Medal of Honor in honor of Memorial Day - each year, Indy has a Memorial Day parade (tied to the Indy 500) and in one of my early years living here, they brought all living Medal of Honor recipients to Indy for the weekend and dedicated a really nice memorial to the Medal of Honor. In memory of this, I drafted up a pattern, which is a mix of the different service's medals (there are actually three and you can learn more about the Medal of Honor here), and got it stitched right up. I put the final initials and date into the project on Christmas Eve. I really do like this one and think I will make it into a wall hanging - will just need to find a good place to display it! I stitched this one on a 27 count Northern Cross linen that I got from a friend - I knew I'd be cutting it close on the 18"x18" fabric and phew, I just made it! I used all the called for DMC colors.

May block with Medal of Honor

December block celebrating Christmas and Narcissus

The finished project - 12 blocks of celebrations and flowers

The other project I worked on in December is an old Lizzie Kate from 2000/2001 called By Golly Be Jolly. I've had and loved this for years and don't know why I didn't stitch it before. I picked up fabric for this one last summer (2019) and pulled it out to start during Stitch Maynia - I only put a few stitches in at the time and then moved along to other projects. As it got closer to Christmas, I wanted to get this one going again. I finished it on my mom's birthday, December 29th and I just love it! This will probably be made into a pillow to go with the other Christmas cross-stitch pillows that I display on the couch in our living room. I stitched this on 25 ct. Raw Natural linen (one of my favorite linens!) and used mostly called for colors - you can see in the picture the few colors I subbed out to use thread from my stash. Santa had a ton of Wisper in his hat/cuff/beard and I was super happy when that was complete! 

My last stitching finish for 2020!

I also did a little ornament finishing in December - like last month, I prepped more projects than I finished, but I did get two done - the first is HoHoHo Holiday by Lizzie Kate - I stitched this last year and finished it as a flat ornament - the fabric you see behind it is the fabric on the back. And big thanks to Carol for some cording advice so that I could get the right size for my ornaments - I love how this cording turned out! 

The second is Snowman Love Mini - I think it was officially called Let It Snow - and it is from the 2015 Just Cross Stitch Magazine. I stitched this on a mystery linen over one and it finishes up at about 2"x3"! I think this is the smallest ornament I've ever made! I mounted it on a piece of mat board and then glued a hanger and some felt to cover the back. 

On the quilting front, I had some good time in my sewing room once I had finished work for the year. I started out with making a few pillowcases - one for my couch to help support my back when stitching (the travel sized pillow) and two for donation. My mom collects them and gives them to a local foster care organization to hand out to their foster kids. I thought it would be fun to make a few cheery holiday themed cases. 

Next up, I took care of all the quilting scraps in my room - I made them into pet beds that will be donated to the local humane society. I sewed up ALL of my scraps into these bags and by the time I got to the bottom of the scrap bag, I was looking at scraps from projects 3 or 4 years ago! 

The last finished project was my Sashed Half Hexagon quilt. This quilt is from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and I started in in 2019 on one of my retreats. The borders were added in early 2020, back made in mid-2020, so it seemed fitting to finish it up at the end of 2020. I quilted it with a pantograph and it quilted up quickly and with no thread breaks! I used Warm and Natural batting and So Fine thread top and bobbin. I made the binding and attached it by machine. I think this quilt will be a great one to display once the Christmas decorations are put away. 

Sashed Half Hexagon - complete! 

Quilting Close-up

A lovely dark brown floral for the back

I ended the month with some work on my son's End of the Rainbow quilt - I picked up the remaining blues I needed for the background and spent a little time cutting and prepping them for the remaining blocks. It is nice to continue moving that one forward. 

End of the Rainbow blocks in progress

All in all, it was a great month (what wouldn't be with three weeks of vacation?!) and in addition to lots of quilting/stitching time, we had a really nice holiday with our immediate family. We did a few Zooms, watched a bunch of Christmas movies, and enjoyed time together. I hope all of you were able to find the same joy from the season as normal even if the celebrations weren't normal. 

Here are the stats for December: 

Stash Usage - linking up with Donna at QuiltPaintCreate
Fabric added this month: 3.5 yards

Fabric used this month: 5 1/4 yards
Fabric added year to date: 15 1/8 yards
Fabric used year to date: 82 5/8 yards
Net usage for 2020: 67 1/2 yards (hooray, 4th highest net usage since I started tracking!)

Crafting time: 27 days with at least 15 minutes of crafting time = 87%

linking up with Kate at Life in Pieces

Exercise time: 4 weeks (and on track to finish up week 5 today) with at least 90 minutes of exercise

Thanks to all who have followed along this year, and a special thanks to those who leave a comment - I will be back soon for a year end recap and pictures and look forward to sharing more with you in 2021!