sewing catchup

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I had a little adventure in making mashed potatoes. Here's the thing - I don't really like mashed potatoes or gravy. It's all about the green bean casserole for me :) BUT last year at Jan's I messed up the instant potatoes (what? who does that?) so I volunteered to make scratch taters because really that's the only way I know how. I asked a lady at work how many potatoes I should use? She said about 2 potatoes per person. Huh. So like 22 potatoes. Which is right under 10lbs of red potatoes. Which equals a crap-ton of potatoes! I had planned to whip them but realized I would probably break my handheld mixer! So I added parmesan, fresh crushed garlic, cheddar and heavy cream and stirred until my arm hurt! I totally underestimated how long they would take to boil so then I was also in a hurry!! Good thing I had one moment of clarity to take a shower and dry my hair early! I also make my spinach artichoke dip and cranberry orange sauce. I'm happy to say that pretty much everyone liked the potatoes. Next time though I won't use as many potatoes! Yikes.

And so, I thought I'd finally share a pic of the table runners I went on and on about. It's not a great pic, but you get the idea. I ended up selling one from the craft faire after all, and then 2 at work! The one I have left is the far left one, the Christmas one with the red binding. After the Craft Faire I finished up this Christmas wall hanging that I started in the summer.  I really like the way it turned out.  I had been wanting to try out a scrappy binding on something so I used up some red and green binding that I had leftover from other projects. 

My friend Kristin had asked me a little while ago to make her some hot pads. That project had been put on the back burner getting ready for the craft faire. So, this weekend I put my nose to the grindstone so to speak. She had asked for plain hot pads, but I just couldn't do it. I don't think she'll really mind though. And if she does then there's still a TON of fabric left and I can re-do some plain ones. So I took this opportunity to try out a few things I've been wanting to. Like the churn dash square, which is the one with the dark brown shape  and the green binding.  Looking at this picture I really don't like that pinwheel one.  It's really not that bad in person.
Here are the plain ones.  For these I just tried a couple different quilting stitches.  Like the bottom right one I quilted circles.  And the one with the purple binding is loop d loos.  I used one layer of batting and one layer of Insul Brite so they should be very heat resistant.  That's what I used on the ones in my kitchen and I think it's a good combo.  They are pretty much 7.25 inches but the ones with straight lines turned out smaller because straight line stitching really stretches the fabric and sort of distorts it, which means when you're trimming down you have to cut off more than desired to get a uniform shape.  I guess I could have started with 10 inches and then cut down to 7.25 but you know, that whole hindsight thing......lol.
I didn't take a picture of the backs, they are just boring.  But each one is a different fabric that coordinates.  I hope she likes them :)