Pieceful Christmas

Ours is a small congregation. In recent years we have settled on having a Christmas Day service rather than a Christmas Eve service. That allows those who have families who belong to other churches to spent Christmas Eve with them, and then on Christmas Day to come and celebrate Christ's birth and participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion. DH's homily emphasizes God's gift to all of us, the Son.

That means that we are unscheduled on Christmas Eve! This year we watched "A Christmas Story." (The screenplay evolved from a combination of several chapters in Jean Shepherd's "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." All of Shepherd's books are classics of American humor.) The movie came out in 1983. I'm was curious and I looked up Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie. He's 36 now.)

While we watched, I sewed. After the complexity of "Storytime Readers" I was ready for something simple. I cut up contents of the 1.5" strip box into 7" lengths. I sewed them into 6's, then trimmed them to 6.5", sliced them in half, and reassembled them. I pieced the resulting squares randomly--no layout, just one square attached to another. The top is 60 x 60--and I quilted it last night. How nice to have a started-and-finished object ready for the next charity request! [The quilt was contributed to a Boys & Girls Club fundraiser in February, 2008, where it brought $125.]

Santa (in the person of DH) was VERY nice to me with two triple-digit gift certificates, one to Royce Sewing in West Bend and the other to Willett in Fond du Lac!!!