Virtual Christmas Cookie Exchange

 

Every year we have what we call 'Cookie Day', we spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving gathering at my mom's house and baking cookies. It's a tradition that we started years ago! My boys were little! I always looked forward to baking that day with my sisters and nieces. I always make the same things, caramel, dipped pretzels and peanut butter yo-yos. This year I bought some special frosting Santas and penguins to decorate my peanut butter yo-yos with. I also got some cute snowman carrot noses to make snowmen! I also purchased some cute boxes and bags to package things in. Most everything I make is an almond bark dipped item so that my nieces and sisters can use the oven. Mom's oven sure gets a workout that day! It's always a fun filled day full of visiting and baking. 

I make six batches of caramel and I'm also so appreciative when I have help wrapping it all!

Microwave Caramels

1/4 Cup Butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup light Karo Syrup

1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk.

Combine all ingredients. Cook 6 minutes, stirring every two minutes. Stir and pour into lightly greased dish. (I butter a glass pan.) Let cool. Cut, wrap in wax paper and store in airtight container. My mom's microwave takes 10 minutes. I check the caramel using my grandma's method. Dropping a little of the mixture into a glass of cold water, if the caramel can be formed into a soft ball, then it's done. 

DECEMBER 4

Just Let Me Quilt

Inflorescence

Songbird Designs

Words & Stitches

DesertSky Quilting

Quilting Gail

Days Filled With Joy

For The Love Of Geese

 

DECEMBER 5

Selina Quilts

Just Because Quilts

Karrin's Crazy World

Quilt Schmilt

Domestic Felicity

Happy Cottage Quilter

Nettie Sews and Lucky Quilts

 

DECEMBER 6

Hill Valley Quilter

Beaquilter

Crazy'boutquilts

Bumbleberry Stitches

That Fabric Feeling

Homespun Hannah's Blog

 

DECEMBER 7

MooseStashQuilting

Ms P Designs USA

Quilt Doodle Designs

Quilted Snail

Sew Many Yarns

Just Sew Quilter

The Life of Grammy

I have a notebook that I have been keeping recipes and photos in over the years. I love flipping thru it and remembering all of our cookie days and how our kids have grown up. They are now starting to have families of their own. I hope that this becomes a tradition that is passed down to their families too. I know that the recipes will!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope that you find time to listen to some holiday music and do some baking for the loved ones in your family. The complete list for the hop is above... stop on by and show some holiday love!

Happy Baking,

Cindy and Josephine

Peanut butter yo-yo cookies

Forgotten Kisses Cookies

A batch of these yummy cookies were in the oven a couple nights ago... an easy Christmas cookie to make last minute. I'm running out of time to get all I want to do finished, I know I'm not alone. These cookies are quick and easy to last minute. I usually pop them in the oven right before I go to bed. They're one of the favorites in our home and it isn't Christmas until I get these made.

Forgotten Kisses

2 egg whites

1 cup sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp peppermint extract

8 - 10 drops green food coloring

1  6 oz package chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.  Beat egg whites until frothy, gradually add sugar.  Add cream of tartar, flavoring, and food coloring to egg whites.  Beat at high speed 10 to 12 minutes.  Fold in chocolate chips, drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Set in preheated oven.  Turn off oven and wait 5 hours or overnight before opening the door.

The perfect treat to leave Santa...

Have a great day! Happy Holidays!

Cindy and Josephine

Christmas Gnome

 

It's hard not to start decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving. I did invest in a couple of new trees this year. A smaller tree for in the dining room and an adorable pencil style tree for in the four season. Both of them are prelit which is awesome! I did put the pencil tree up in my four season. It's not decorated, I am loving the shape and size. I try really hard not to start pulling out the gnomes and snowman before Thanksgiving. I'll be hosting a small Thanksgiving dinner so that is helping to keep the little Santas at bay until the day after! So my tree will just look adorable with no decorations until after Thanksgiving.

 I have been doing some holiday sewing and I'd love to show you what I've made the other day. It's so cute! It's a sweet little gnome in Santa's sleigh, or it could be Santa... wink, wink.... Instead of putting this applique on a tea towel, I made my own using some green shirting fabric which I thought would make a great background. For the applique I am using scraps from my new fabric line, Season Sampler by Marcus Fabrics.  

To make your own tea towel, I used a piece of material measuring 18" x WOF, I then folded it in half right sides together. Then sew around the edges a 1/4" leaving a 3" gap for turning. Then turn the rectangle right side out and press. I then did a top stitch around the rectangles edge. Voila! A pretty tea towel to applique on! (My towel is a bit smaller then what yours will be.)

Trace the applique shapes onto the paper side of your fusible web following manufacturers directions.

Rough cut the shapes out and pair with your fabric colors. Then press onto the wrong side of your fabric.

I am trying out a new fusible web, well new to me. You need to know I am not a paid representative for this company. I'm just trying something new then what I usually use. So far I like this brand. It fused my applique well and I'm happy with it. It says that you don't need to stitch around the edges, but for me a design doesn't look done unless there is stitching.

Cut all of of the shapes out and following the pattern placement sheet, arrange the pieces onto your towel, remembering to peel the paper off. Notice how some of the pieces overlap. Following the manufacturer's directions, iron in place.

Using a buttonhole stitch, I stitch around the gnome's nose, beard, mustache and sled rail with white thread. I use a brown thread to go around everything else.

~ Gnome and Sled ~

This cute new design can be found HERE and HERE.

This towel would be adorable put on display hanging out of a gift basket, wrapped around a bottle of wine or draped on a cabinet or oven door. This design would also be cute stitched onto a 10 minute table runner or turned into a quick candle mat or mug rug. There are just so many possibilities! Have fun with it!

Happy Quilting,

Cindy and Belvedere

Ugly Christmas Sweaters

I can't believe that it's Thanksgiving next week and the Christmas season is right around the corner! One of my favorite patterns is my Ugly Christmas Sweater Mug Rugs. These are perfect to use up your left over holiday scraps that you may have lying around in your sewing room. Fat quarters work well for this pattern too!  I'm thinking I want to make some more to have on hand. They are addicting to make and quick!  They make quick gifts and are adorable paired up with a mug and some chocolate. My Ugly Sweater Mug Rug pattern is available as an instant downloadable PDF or as a packaged pattern. They can be found in my Etsy Store.

 My pattern can also be found in several local quilt shops. If it's not in your local shop, ask for it!

Pin your sweater body right sides together onto your batting. I like to use batting scraps for these types of projects.

Sew a 1/4" seam....

Remember to leave an opening so you can turn it right side out.

Don't forget to clip corners before you turn your sweater shape right sides out.

The super fun part is decorating your sweaters. Trace all your design pieces onto your heat n bond, iron onto the wrong side of the fabric scraps and cut out.

A Christmas Ornament ugly sweater. Isn't it cute and it's not even done yet!

I got one of each design put together. I'm now ready to do my applique stitch.

I used a dark brown thread from Aurifil. I use the same color thread for all of my mug rugs just for ease of getting them all done quickly without changing thread colors. What's great about this step is that you are appliqueing and quilting your mug rugs all at the same time. So easy!

After all my mug rugs are appliqued, it's time to camp out in front of the TV for some hand work. As you can see, I have lots of threads to clip. I've put together a button pack for you thru Just Another Button Company with all the embellishments for the mug rugs. The pack contains enough buttons to do one of each design plus some extras... I added some snowflake buttons too. This slick button kit is also available in my Etsy Store.

Shhhh, this one's my favorite... 

Another super fun thing you can do with these is make a bunch and sting them together to make a garland! I just used some red and white baker's twine and some decorative clothespins.

We will all be missing those fun holiday get togethers this year with the Covid restrictions. Let's remember our friends and surprise them with an ugly Christmas Sweater mug rug and some chocolate!

Happy quilting!

Cindy

Belvedere's Bel Air

It's certainly not too early to think about the holidays. I've had this new design drawn up and ready to try in my studio for a year now. It's not that I didn't want to make it, it's just other things had to come first and this sweet design featuring Belvedere kept getting pushed to the back burner. It wasn't until I got some extra help from my sis that I finally have some design, sewing time. My days fly by so quickly that it's been really nice having the extra help stuffing patterns and making up kits. 

I was fortunate to get to know my great grandparents growing up. They were the sweetest couple. I don't know if they ever owned a Bel Air, but it's the kind of car I imagine them driving so I thought it would be fun to draw a Holiday design with Belvedere at the wheel. He's such a sweet goofy dog I certainly can imagine him bringing home a Christmas tree. There might even be some gifts boxes in the trunk including some squeaky toys for his doggie friends, Lola and Maddie.

When I do machine fusible applique I play around with stitch length and width on scrap fabric before I begin to make sure I like the stitch setting for the design I'm working on. For this design I used a 2.5 x 2.5 setting for stitch width and length. You may like a different setting based on your machine so play around and stitch on some scrap fabric and see what you like.

On the Belvedere's Bel Air design I used a dark brown thread to stitch around the tree, Belvedere, tires, windows, bumpers, and the turquoise section of the car.

I used white thread to stitch around the bottom white section of the car.

When it comes to embellishing the design with buttons. I use snowflakes 'buttons' for the falling snow. But these buttons from Just Another Button Company do not have the traditional buttonholes to stitch your button on with. I have been asked many times about this. So to fasten these snowflakes onto the tea towel, or your fabric square, I use white thread and do a 'criss cross' stitch in the center of the snowflake design until it's securely anchored in place.

~Belvedere's Bel Air ~

The car can be any color, red, blue, green. I made my car turquoise, I thought it was a fun retro color for an old car. I then sew on buttons for the cars hubcaps using a matching car color. The tree can be left plain but I like the added red button decorations. I used a black pearl cotton to stitch a French knot for Belvedere's eye. I used a satin stitch for his nose. I think this design would be super cute on a table runner or made into a pillow for the holidays.

 I hope that you enjoy this new design. It is available on the Quilt Doodle Website and also in my Etsy store, or a quilt store near you!

Hope you have a great day!

Happy quilting,

Cindy and Belvedere

This design is Belvedere approved!

Peppermint Snowman

July is almost gone and I have been thinking about 'Christmas in July' because I know that many of you are getting a jump on your holiday stitching. I thought I would revisit one of my favorite Santa designs. This applique design is now available in my Etsy shop as an instant PDF download. Let me show you my sweet block, Peppermint Santa... I love Christmas and the whole holiday season so I drew up this whimsical Santa. I also enjoy embellishing designs with buttons and yo-yo's so I just had to include my favorite finishing touches on this block too. 



Peppermint Santa

Let me show you how I used the block for a couple of delightful Christmas gift ideas.



I started out by tracing and cutting out four sets of the design pieces of the Peppermint Santa.
This is enough for my two projects.

 

To make a jolly table runner, I ironed on three sets of 'santas' on a 10 1/2" x 30 1/2"
cream rectangle fabric background...

For a cute wall hanging or mini quilt, I ironed one Santa onto a 12 1/2" green block.
Then I machined appliqued around all of the pieces using a buttonhole stitch.

To add some extra cuteness, I machine embroidered
'Ho Ho Ho' using a curly font. (Totally optional)

Then I added borders onto each background piece. To finish up your Peppermint Santa projects, layer backing, batting and the 'top' and quilt as desired. 



I used a red and white stripe fabric for the binding on my table runner. Oh it's sooooo cute!

The striped fabric also made adorable yo-yos that look like peppermint candy! The Santas are embellished with red yo-yo noses. Buttons are used for the holly berries. 

Have fun with this block, use traditional colors (red and green) or mix it up and use you imagination! A green and white striped hat would be cute. How about turquoise and red, hot pink and white... the possibilities are endless...

Check out the Quilt Doodle Designs Etsy shop for the PDF pattern.

Have a great day!

Happy Quilting!

Cindy and Belvedere