Safe arrival of Twin boys

Yesterday I received the good news that the twin boys expected by Dutch friend Margot and her partner arrived safely on 1st November. They are called Maas and Eden. I am now completing embroidering their quilt labels and I have decided to gift the quilt featuring little boats to Eden and have called it "Sailing by ". The quilt with cute robots and space ships is being gifted to Maas and has the title "Zooming along". I hope to post them in the next couple of days, hopefully before the Christmas rush begins.

During the week I knitted another nine angels so handed them in at church this morning. They brought the total made by members of the congregation so far up to 248. Another ten days before the deadline so I hope to knit a few more before then but I am trying to finish two more baby quilts and make another one which hasn't been even started yet!

Angels with a message

Lots of ladies at church are knitting little angels. Very simple basic pattern but they look quite effective. They are knitted in bright colours instead of the traditional white for a reason. Each one will have a Christmas message tag tied around their neck.  They will all be dedicated at a service on 9th December and then on the following Wednesday we are going to put them around the town along our Main Street for people to find, read the message and take the angel home as a little Christmas gift. We hope our brightly coloured angel and her message will have meaning for the recipient.

Two finishes - Twin Quilts

I've been working hard on finishing these two baby quilts. 

The one on the left is "Sailing By" and the one on the right is called "Zooming Along" as it features rockets, planets and cute little space robots. 

I'm really pleased with them both. I machine quilted along the sashing and  hand quilted around the blocks.

Both backings and bindings came from stash so I didn't have to buy much new fabric for these projects. I have used quite a bit of stash this year which feels good.

Tomorrow I'm going to embroider labels for them -  minus baby name and date of birth as babies have yet to be born!

So many projects.... like juggling plates!

I always have several projects on the go ( plus those UFOs lurking in the cupboard of course) But at the moment there are more than ever that have deadlines.

Four baby quilts, two of which need to be ready by the beginning of December when twin boys are due in The Netherlands. Two more need to be ready for me to take to New Zealand at the very beginning of January. One I know is for a boy, the other the parents have chosen not to find out until baby is born. Really I need to take two for that baby, one for a boy and one for a girl.

One Dutch baby quilt is finished, the second one has the binding on and tomorrow I'll slip stitch the back at my Patchwork Group.

I have completed a flimsy for a girl quilt and I have a plan and have a bit cut out for the NZ boy one.  So, it's a matter of ploughing on with the quilts.

Then  I am knitting angels! My church has asked for a simple knitted angel (pattern and wool provided) as we are hoping to have lots and lots which will have a tag tied around the neck and will be secretly left all over our town in the run up to Christmas.  Whoever finds one can take it home and enjoy the Christmas message on its tag.  That's the idea anyway, we haven't done this before. They have to be done by 9th December. I have knitted four so far, two of which have been sewn up and are ready to be gifted. I hope to make a few more before the deadline as they are quite quick to make.

This year I have taken part in the Sunshine Guild blocks for charities. As the blocks are sent to the USA the postage is rather prohibitive so I decided to send two or three months of blocks in one packet. For what I feel is a reasonable amount of postage for me to pay I can send 10 blocks in one little packet.  So today I posted 4 "Brights" for October, 3 "Fall" blocks for November and 3 "Potluck" ones for December.
                                                        
                                                               October blocks

                                                          
                                                                   November blocks

                                                              December blocks

A very grey day here, rain too so I'm afraid the blocks all look too dark.
The centre square of each of the Potluck blocks is one of the string blocks I made a few weeks ago.
I just have one String square left now. Nice to turn those gifted scraps into finished projects straight away.