It is the second Saturday in December, which means that the Christmas season is in full force in my little suburb within a suburb.  Right now there is a constant drone of sirens as Santa rides around in a firetruck and hands out bulging bags of candy to kids.  I love this tradition – so surreal and so blue collar and so kind.  Just like my neighborhood.

It is full-on Christmas season in our house too.  I finished my Tula Pink city {Christmas} sampler.

I loved loved loved making the blocks.  I indulged and completely skipped the triangles section.  So it was all lovely scraps and right angles.  Fun.

I fell in love with the striped, nestled setting that is featured in one of the sampler quilts in the book.  Ugh.  I like the result, but no fun.  So much strip sewing.  And I am challenged by keeping long cuts accurate.

But I am glad I stuck with it one looooong Saturday afternoon.  The stripes make it – and look at me sewing with solids!

The quilting is free motion (!) rectangles.  Definitely far from perfect, but when the quilt was washed, the quilting provided a lot of lovely texture.  So much fun to free motion quilt.  I was sad when I was done.  As compared to straight-line quilting when I think I am going to give up the whole hobby if I have to sew one more line.

The quilt is now ensconsed in our dinning room, the focus for 2-3 more weeks until it has to come down.