Just a Few Updates

Hello Everyone!

Wishing you the most merry of Christmas holidays!

I really hope that as the holiday stress rises and you feel more and more like you are not ready, or the presents are not ready, or your house is not ready, that you are just able to take a minute and breathe….

And then breathe again… and then make yourself a cup of tea and sit down next to the Christmas tree or the mantel or any other place that makes you feel "in the spirit" and take a moment to take it all in. Whatever "it" might be.

Even for those of us who might be experiencing difficult situations, mourning, loss… there is still usually something that we can "take in". Something that can make us smile regardless of what is happening around us. I just wish and pray peace for all of us during this season especially. It makes me sad that this seems too often be the season that makes everyone more nuts and more stressed out than usual instead of the oppositie. Myself included….

Wishing you true peace this season. Even if for just a moment here or there.

Around here we are celebrating Christmas in 4 different celebrations in several different locations and are trying to find moments of peace in the midst of it all. I hope to share more soon but wanted to at least send out some updates about Fig Tree stuff in the midst of everything else. Celebrating with fabric and thread are one of the ways that I personally find peace in my days and figure that you do too!

MODERN BLOCK OF THE MONTH

The MODERN BLOCK OF THE MONTH shipments went out early last week and should be to everyone by now. Sorry for the slight delay on those. We really tried to get all of the 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS boxes out to everyone before we starting processing these. We hope that you are enjoying them now or that you will get a moment to yourself to work on them after the Christmas festivities have subsided.

They range in size from 18" to 6" this time around and introduce our lovely red tone on tone red from Somerset along with the soft grey floral. Two lovely additions to all those solids and other prints! We love the combos on these! We are absolutely loving seeing all of your blocks all over so please keep those block pics coming!

FIG TREE MYSTERY BLOCK OF THE MONTH SAMPLER

We are working diligently to get this one finished before we take a little holiday break. It will be going out after Christmas in order to avoid the Postal Service insanity that goes on last week and this week. In an effort to maintain some sanity around here and in the hopes that we would lessen the chances of your packages getting lost or misrouted in the holiday rush, look for your goodies right after Christmas. 

Some of the fabrics we are working with this month…

Oh my gosh… we are loving the blocks for this quilt so far!

AMERICAN PATCHWORK & QUILTING

The current issue of APQ has a wonderful new little feature that we will be doing monthly. It is called MAKE IT MINI. Each issue, we will choose one of the quilts already in the magazine and work up a miniature version of that quilt. So far we have worked on a couple of these and they are really fun! The first one is up here in this issue…

We do have a few kits for them available. You will need to purchase the magazine seperately and… THE KITS WILL NOT SHIP UNTIL THE END OF MARCH WHEN THE ALOHA GIRL FABRIC ARRIVES FROM MODA.

We will show more photos on this one soon after Christmas too!

SINGLE NAVAJO STAR

Many of you who have emailed and contacted us about the blog directions for how to create the single star version of our popular Navajo Stars pattern. The instructions were up on the sidebar of the blog for quite a while and then thanks to the wonders of the internet, they dissapeared! So we are in the process of getting them back up but meanwhile here is the info for those of you who are anxiously awaiting!

The star block is made exactly as the one in the pattern. Trim it up reguarly just like you would for the quilt [so we are assuming a 23 1/2" trimmed up star]. Then add the following borders:

1st inner border [Somerset red]: (1) 1 1/2" x 23 1/2" and (2) 1 1/2"  25 1/2" strips.

2nd middle border [ivory solid]: (2) 1 1/2" x 25 1/2" and (2) 1 1/2" x 27 1/2" strips.

3rd outer border [green floral]: (2) 2 1//2" x 27 1/2" and (2) 2 1/2" x 31 1/2" strips.

Bind with (3) 2 1/4" binding strips [aqua solid].

Here is a a little Christmas version of the same star. Perfect for any bundle of red, green and cream fabrics!

Talk soon,

Joanna