Christmas is coming!

So, we finally found the right size light bulb for the glass-topped coffee table that sits between the 2 red chairs in front of the fireplace, and now that there is an outlet in the floor, we were able to see how it looks when it's lit up. It's a fun table!
Last night I decided to finish a UFO (UnFinished Object) in my long list of quilting and sewing UFOs. I'm also probably procrastinating on finishing DD's window seat cushion because I'm not exactly sure how to go about making it. :-D

I started this quilted wall hanging back in 2004, right after I'd taken an online quilting course (Starting From Scratch) at http://quiltuniversity.com/. I embroidered all the reindeer and Santa squares and sewed the top together. After that, it sat for quite a while because I had never done machine quilting before and I wasn't quite sure what my next move would be.

The green squares were embroidered after I put the quilt sandwich (backing fabric, batting, quilt top) together so that the stitches would help hold the 3 layers together. I was having an issue with my sewing machine back then and the tension was really loose on the back of the quilt, but I didn't realize it until I had embroidered most of the green squares. I set the quilt aside for a while (which turned into a couple of years - I didn't like going down to the basement to sew in our former house). Last night I got the quilt out and "stitched in the ditch" in the blue squares, in the two text squares, and around the outer border. Then I trimmed the quilt up and sewed the binding on the outer edge.

I like how it turned out. I designed the quilt from scratch, using embroidery designs from http://emblibrary.com/. Here are some close-up shots of some of the squares. Here is Dancer and the Christmas tree outlines...
And here is Donner and the Santa hat outlines...
And, of course, Rudolph had to be embroidered on blizzard fabric instead of the snow fabric that all the other reindeer were embroidered on, since Rudolph had to save Christmas in the midst of a blizzard...

I still need to make a label and sew it on the back, but it's nice to finally have it done (and it's only been in the making for 4 years!).