Cookie Night Catch-Up

Tonight was cookie night--gingerbread, sugar, and chewy chocolate; all are safely packed away for family gifts. I've been making my Christmas cookies from the same special cookies-only edition of Martha Stewart Living since 2001. Say what you will about her personality (and ethics), every darn recipe I've made from her cookbooks or magazine comes out wonderfully. This year, both of the kids were old enough to help with the decorating, which was both hilarious and horrifying. Luckily, good taste and good taste need not go hand-in-hand.

Since I'm feeling productive, I thought I'd go through my picture file to see what I haven't posted. I'm realizing that I never posted the quilts I made for my son. So, here goes.

The first is based on a Country Threads bulls-eye pattern. I think it was *the* pattern that inspired all the raw-edge cut-n-piece blocks that appeared a few years back. His nursery was blue and yellow, so I knew my color scheme--and again, all these fabrics were from my stash at the time. Here's the weird thing--I know exactly when I made this quilt because I was sewing it the morning of the Columbia shuttle disaster. Initially, I just had on CNN because it was background noise. Then, I looked up because I started to hear those eerie calm tones in the NASA radio announcements; the same ones you hear from doctors when things have really gone wrong. I had already decided to name the quilt "Digable Planets," as a nod to a long-ago trip hop band and to the fact that I had put up star curtains in his room, but the events gave the name an edge that otherwise wouldn't have been there. I quilted it with lots of spirals. At a distance, the disjointed blocks in this color scheme have a real Eric Carle-feel to them that I like very much.



I made both of my children a pieced and an applique quilt. Initially, I bought the Monsters pattern for another quilt for my daughter, but life intervened (literally). So, I redirected this project for my son. As it turned out, the Monsters quilt suits him perfectly, my wee little beastie. When he was still in his crib, I would take both children over to touch each monster at night. They especially loved the green one in the lower right with perle cotton "fur." Now, it hangs above his bed, and he fiddles with the bottom when he tries to fall asleep. So, at least once a week, I rehang it to get the weird wrinkles and warps out. This pattern was a block of the month through a neighboring quilt shop, but I skipped the massive triangle overload border in favor of a plain one (quite honestly, time was of the essence at that point). I still love this border fabric; it's such a fun red. The blocks are closely stippled on the interior, and the border is looping squiggles. I remember that I initially stippled a couple blocks in variegated primary, but it was so distracting that I ripped it all out and did it again in plain white.