Jingle bells in October

I can't get the song jingle bells out of my head.  I know! It's October for goodness sake!

 But you see, it's craft related, so it's okay.

(As if that deters from the possibility of my looniness, ha.)

I've been putting more thought into the design for my secret partner's tablerunner...

...and the goal is to keep it modern & bright..  Cue the voices in my head-

Dashing through the snow
In a one horse open sleigh
O'er the fields we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on bob tails ring

Making spirits bright

What fun it is to laugh and sing
A sleighing song tonight!

It's a perfecty logical, non-crazy-quilt-lady connection, see?

Now before you think I have competely forgotten Autumn in my search for the perfect table runner, let me show you some of stuff I've done to get into Halloween mood around here.

May I present to you, my autumn shadow boxes:

 The printable in the frame is from pinterest.

 It's not something Better Homes and Gardens will be busting down my door to get at, but it does the trick.

...in a 'I-cant-put-holes-in-the-apartment-walls-if-I-want my-security-deposit-back'
kind of way. 

wink 

Oh! and I can't forgot these guys!




A little food coloring and some spraypaint later,
I have a Severus Snape worthy potions collection.

I'm particularly fond of my "verituserum"
(which is truth serum for those of you not versed in Harry Potter lore).

 In case you are wondering the Pheonix Tears and Swamp Water labels are from here,
the Acromantula venom from here and last but not least, the Veritaserum is from here.


Moving on (or back?) to Christmas...

I really like the lights from my original tablerunner design. But, thanks to the wonderful feedback from ya'all and the Flickr group, I think they may be a tad more 'holiday' than my partner may care for....

so I've gone from this-



To this-

 AND

I've pulled and purchased this combination of fabric to get the job done..

Not final, pending feedback from partner, but they read as Christmas bright to me!
Anything stick out like a sore thumb? Any you'd want to see lots of?

 Oh and I liked those little lights too much to forego them all together,
so I designed a pillow that they could go on (on my couch *evil grin*).


Sorry for the long post, but believe it or not,
that's only part of what I've been up to!
I'll be back tomorrow with some progress on my quilt along projects.

Till, then....


(humming jingle bells softly as she closes her laptop)

I.O.U 2 Basement Curtains

Back in December I played a little round of bumper cars while visiting family in New Jersey.

Hubs was wonderful and promptly began putting the pieces back together for me. He's a mechanical repair genius, but can only do so much on the gravel patch we call a driveway.  Enter my Uncle.. who let us invade his warm, dry, garage for the repairs.

How could we ever repay him?
Well, for a start, he's alluded to needing some simple basement curtains.

I picked up some blue cotton remnant fabric.  The plan is to make a giant tube, slice and dice it to make 8 loops, and just hem around two   24x22 rectangles.
Seems straight forward enough, right?

Here's a close up of the  loops...

See the white lines near the bottom of the loops? I measured and marked the loops 2.5"  from the fold, to make sure they hung the same distance down from the curtain rod. Yay for thinking ahead!!


It's going together quickly when I am working on it, but I'm not a fan ironing in this heat, so I've stepped away from it a few times. So far, I've turned the top and bottom hems and have started putting loops on.

My goal is to get it done by Wednesday, so I can bring them to their new home on Thursday!
 _____________________________

Edited: This is a finished project and the recipient was pleased.