Garden Bloggers Bloom Day December

Poinsettia blooming behind the huge Amaryllis bulbs that Robyn gave me at Thanksgiving. This is how much they had grown by December 7.

Detail of throat of one of the Amaryllis blooms.

Large quantity of Amaryllis blooms by Christmas.

Detail of actual small yellow green blossoms of Poinsettia with the bright red bracts surrounding.

I didn't post about what flowers I had blooming on the 15th; the weather was so miserable and cold and the garden so dead, even my back door potted pansies froze. But my indoor flowers are going blooming like mad and brightening my holidays, so I thought I would do a late post for December. If we can't have flowers outdoors in the depth of winter, at least we can have them blooming indoors. I even have a flower stalk beginning to come up on one of the orchid plants.

Check out other Garden Bloggers Bloom Day reports for December at May Dreams Gardens.

More Hexagons

Given my fascination with hexagons in quilts, I had to purchase this triangle ruler when I saw Denise demonstrating it to another customer at the Creative Cloth Closet in Canon City. I can picture all kinds of possibilities using this ruler. To start out I dug a set of Christmas fabric fat quarters from my stash and cut out enough triangles to make four place mats. The fabric under the ruler is the one I chose to back the mats.

Here is my progress so far. In order to fit them on my narrow design door, to photograph them, I overlapped the mats. I plan to use fuseable batting to sandwich the mats and then use gold thread satin stitch to embellish the seams and finish the edges. I'll do anything to get away from putting on binding.

Another Quard

Here is the front and back of the quard I just made for my Aunt Lucy in Albuquerque. It was her 83rd birthday so I made this to send from my Mom and me. The family photo, that was taken on Saturday after Thanksgiving, was printed on cotton and fused to the front. The greeting was printed onto adhesive backed cotton and ironed onto the back.

I've decided that this is better than buying a ready made card at WalMarts. I have the materials on hand and cards are not inexpensive to buy these days. I looked and looked for cards for my aunts and couldn't find any that were appropriate and these are a lot more personal.

Birthday Quard

My Aunt Esther, in Bakersfield, California, had her 90th birthday in November. Being in the hospital slowed me down but here is the birthday quard I made for her. That is a photo of her, from around 1938, printed on cotton and the fabric is a vintage taffeta from my Granny's stash. The greeting was printed on silk ExtravOrganza.

This was such fun, I need to do it more often.

I wish I had enough of that taffeta to make a long skirt for Christmas.