Welcome to 2026: Crafty goodness from Christmas

 Well once again it's been several months since my last blog update and I have a bunch of art quilts from the last third of 2025 to share (so so behind), but I thought I'd do a quick recap of some Christmas crafts first and share some goals for 2026.

I'm not sure there's much point in doing a 2025 wrap-up for art quilts since so many of the quilts I have to blog about in the next month or so are actually 2025 finishes.  But as I think about 2026 goals, there are a few crafty things on my radar. It feels weird to focus on these small creative pleasures when so many awful things are happening to our democracy, but here I am anyway.  

First, I want to finish my liturgical series.  I'm not sure it will ever be truly finished, it's something that feels like I'll want to keep adding to it, but there are two key quilts to finish so that it is ready to exhibit and I want to start exhibiting it towards the end of this year.

Second, I'd like to come back to a bunch of things that I have pieces for but aren't fully conceptualized.  This includes another pom pom quilt (for which the pom poms are already made), another test tube piece, something that uses a collection of recycled plastic water bottles I've been saving, something that uses the grandmother's flower garden blocks made by my great-grandmotehr, something with the silk cocoons I bought somewhere last year, and something incorporating the metal braid I learned to make at a workshop.  So many different random resources, but no clear direction.

Third, I'd like to think more clearly about what kind of work I get excited about making.  It always seems like I'm pushing from one show entry to the next, and of course I enjoy all the things I'm working on, but sometimes I wonder if I need to pause and step back and really think about my artistic direction.

Well, enough navel gazing for now,  here are some of the crafty Christmas goodies from 2025.

I've always loved the straight line drawings that make curved and circular shapes, and I decided to use that idea to make my ornaments this year. It was so much fun to pick out different threads and patterns.

I also made a special ornament for my brother-in-law who plays Warhammer 40K.  He loves building and painting the miniatures, so I made this ornament based on one of his Warhammer people. 

I didn't really make very many gifts this year, but I did finish this pair of chartreuse socks for my friend Anna, and the hat just below for my friend Carolyn (who adopted a white kitty this year).  I have some things on the needles now, knitting really is a nice thing to fill in the holes around the art quilts.

I loved all the different cats dancing around the hat.  Both of these were sort of cobbled together from multiple patterns in my pattern library.

Finally, here's a crafty finish that's been multiple years in the making.  My good friend Kristin sent me a set of tiles from Santa Theresa Tileworks in Tucson and then about a year ago I put them together into this mosaic with some house numbers I picked up in Tubac AZ, and some other mosaic-ing tile.  Unfortunately after applying the tiles, it set for over a year in my garage.  Finally just after Christmas this year I pulled it out, grouted it, and made it a frame from some door molding I saved after a dog ate the rest.  It's pretty heavy and I'm not sure I'll be able to hang it on my house (the siding and brick are both hard to drill into) but I think it's pretty and it's sitting on a shelf in the house for now.  And I'm super glad it's finished.  

We also had the very bad storm this past weekend, with ice, snow, and very cold temperatures.  On saturday morning while staying inside I made myself these new placemats.  The fabric, cam from my dear friend Georgia, and I fell in love with it.  I consider it the very best of grandma upholstery fabric and I thought the placemats would go great with my pink dining room chairs and blue pottery (they do).  The flowers remind me of spring!