July 4, 2010

Thinking about Christmas

No, I'm not a "Christmas in July" person, but it's a very popular concept with Australians who hanker after a cold northern hemisphere Christmas.  For me, I'm very happy with our lovely Australian WARM weather in December!  However, I have done some thinking about Christmas this week as I had desperate e-mails from two editors, both needing more Christmas projects for their magazines.  Well, I had the time to drop what I was working on, a couple of designs popped into my head, and of course there was unused Christmas fabric in the stash, so I thought I could help these lovely editors out.  It only took a few days to produce two new designs:

A sneak peak will have to do for now:


I can tell you it is gift wrapping with a difference:


I knew those lovely navy and gold fat quarters would come in handy one day!

Then I looked on the green shelf and found this elegant fabric which soon turned into this:


So there's been more pattern writing to do.  Maybe one day someone will invent a programme that will watch what you do and then produce the instructions automatically!!!!  I'll be first in the queue to buy it!  As you can see, writing up instructions is not my favourite part of designing!  I have a rule that I'm not allowed to start a new project until the instructions and templates are complete for the just-finished design.  Mostly I try to be disciplined and stick to my rule, but there are occasions when the lure of fabric is just too great!

Thank you to all the lovely people who had sympathy with me and my sore fingers.  Some milder weather made them much more bearable last week, but it looks like the air conditioning will be on high heat for the next few days!

Whatever your weather, I hope you are able to fit in some lovely stitching time.

Regards
Val

4 comments:

Shirley said...

Very nice designs Val. I just wanted to pop in and tell you I finished the latest in the Gifts of Grace BOM. You are so amazingly talented and I wanted to thank you for offering these to us. Just when I think the next one couldn't ever be prettier you come up with something that blows me away. Thanks again

Teresa said...

I like what I see - and hope to see more. I finished the first block of the Gifts of Grace this week. I just discovered your blog recently and have been sharing it with many of my friends who are also going to do the Gifts of Grace now. Thanks for sharing your talents.

Kris Meares - Tag Along Teddies said...

Hey Val! I'm in the same boat at you ... putting projects on hold to answer Christmas SOS's! :0) And when you find that program for instruction writing ... I'll be RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!! It sounds like you're much more disciplined than me, though ... I flit onto the next project cos I am so keen to see it happening, then have to go back and intpret my odd notes! :0) Am getting better at note taking though!! Stay warm and happy Christmas stitching and instruction writing!! Bear Hugs! KRIS

Allie said...

What lovely sneak peeks, Val! I'm with you on writing instructions, blech....