Welcome to 2025!

 Good morning, my friends, and...

I hope y'all have recovered from last night's celebration. As for us...we were in bed and asleep by midnight. We're old. We probably rang in our last new year with the new millennium. It's all been downhill from there. Now, they just flip the calendar page without us. I doubt we'll be around to usher in the next millennium.

On that happy note, I'll say I gave myself a lazy day yesterday. Today will be spent mostly in the kitchen. I have cooking to do for our celebratory ham dinner. I'll say more about the food tomorrow. As for sewing, my lazy day included selecting a background fabric for the 2025 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I selected the pattern several weeks ago. This year's project will be the Kittens in Cups pattern from Lorna McMahon.

The pattern includes instructions for a "baby quilt" or a large quilt. I'll be making the smaller of the two. Probably I'll add some borders to it, and that will make it a little larger. Picking through my stash, I decided to use the fabric below for the background. It seemed as good as anything. January's cup will be pink, and I'll get started on this within the next couple of days.

Yesterday's sewing started my journey through my list of WIP's. First up was to make the fourth block for the Merry, Merry Snowmen...this one:

Smitty was my helper cat. He was disappointed we weren't starting on the Kittens in Cups. He has some impurrtant input about any quilt that includes cats. Of course, his opinion is always appurreciated.

The first step is to piece together the background. I added the peeking snowman in the lower right corner so that I could catch it within the seam allowance.

And then I went ahead with the rest of the applique. It will have both hand and machine embroidery, and I'll be sewing on a couple of buttons. When it was finished, it looked like this. When I can get back to my sewing room, I'll top-stitch the applique and finished sewing in the rest of the details.

Heading back upstairs, I found Sadie like this:

She gave herself a lazy day too.

So, like I said, I'll be spending most of the day in the kitchen. Good food is a good way to kick off the new year. I hope y'all have something good planned for yourselves. If you're a football fan, then I hope your team wins. Happy New Year, everybody! Let's make it a good one.