Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

I’m feeling like my small portion of the world is getting back to normal a bit. Whatever the new normal is going to be anyway.  There are parts of the old normal I won’t miss, and parts of the new normal I’m not happy about but…isn’t that what “normal” is all about?

There’s been so much in the news of late about shopping delays with the advice to get Christmas shopping done ASAP. I’ve decided to do some of my “shopping” from the crafts I’ve done through COVID and some of it from my stash of craft supplies. I’m going to try to get a few sock knitting and fingerless glove projects organized for knitting in front of the tv. My nieces always like quilted projects so I’ve been looking for fast and easy quilts. The fastest project I know of is a jelly roll race or jelly roll 1600 quilt. Do you remember what those are? There was quite a bit about them on this blog back a couple of years so if you’d like, you could search our archives. Just enter “jelly roll” in the search bar at the left and several entries will come up. Many of us at that time decided that although the concept is fast and easy, the quilts are sometimes blah. I found a youtube video that shows an idea that I think I can make work from stash fabric. Where she uses batiks (always make a pretty quilt, don’t they?) I’m going to use christmas fabrics. I think I have enough in the stash to use all greens or all reds for the main fabrics and then the opposite choice for the accent diamonds. Here’s the video link for you to check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loiM2xGMWJk&t=936s

Have you found any quick projects that you’ll be making for the holidays? Please share in a comment–I’m certain I’m not the only one of us who’d like some ideas.