Christmas has arrived ....

... at The Country Loft!  Today was our Christmas opening and we had loads of cute Christmas kits, from quilts to ornaments, pillows, bags, etc.  Of course the store was decorated for Christmas and it was beautiful!  So much fun ... we had Christmas music, and we were all dressed in our Christmas attire.  I do not like the early arrival of Christmas every year; I am against the ridiculous greed that goes along with the holiday, and I hate that the pilgrims and the turkey do not get their holiday .... BUT, I absolutely had a wonderful day today, and it was really, really fun!  I am glad the week is done and I survived!  This week I taught three classes, finished piecing a huge quilt, machine quilted five quilts, worked at the store 2 1/2 days, and I am still standing!!!!  Wahoo ... I do believe that every experience can bring a lesson, and I have learned a few this week.  The most important being that I really need to pay attention to my time management, and not overschedule myself like I did this week. 

Here is a picture of the last quilt I quilted ... it was for Maureen ... we had a 1/2 square triangle challenge at the store, and all the samples were hanging today and they were so beautiful, but Maureen's really stood out ...

Look at her cornerstones ... 1/2 square triangles ... wow!  The blue borders just made the quilt shine.  I didn't bring my camera to take any pictures today, but I hope to be able to grab some photos off of the store blog to show you later.

Here is a picture of my machine quilting class yesterday.  We were supposed to have six, but we only had four ...

Ellen, Maureen, Isabel and Judy ... they are working hard, aren't they?  They were really concentrating ... it was towards the end of the day and we were doing free motion quilting.  The concensus was that free motion quilting was a lot harder than it looked.  None of them thought they did a very good job, but they were just being too hard on themselves.  They did great ... stippling was a real challenge, but when I had them trace a design onto Golden Threads paper and then sew it onto their fabric ... well, they didn't think they were doing very well when they followed the lines, but when they tore the paper away, they had to admit that it didn't look too bad!  I love teaching people ... it is really exciting to see students get excited about quilting and stitching!  I am looking forward to a restful rest of the weekend ... enjoy your's!