December 2025

Now that the busy tornado of the holiday season has passed I thought I would take some time to share some of the projects that I made in December.

I usually try to make a handmade ornament and/or gift for my son and this year I managed to make both (just barely).

For some reason my son and his friend are obsessed with Cheese-It crackers. I’m not sure if this is a part of some wider cultural moment happening with the youths or just an inside joke but alas the Glitter Cheese - It is born. Very easy and pretty fun to make. I also got to dip into my giant glitter bead and sequin bin (something I would like to do more of in 2026).

For the gift I made a large knitted slug. I also made a few small slugs that were small enough to send overseas to family there. This was a fun project and got me reconnecting with knitting. I used this free pattern from ravlery and sized it up 4x I think to do the big slug. They are fun because they are fast to make and they kind of hold their shape a bit when you bend them.

My final project of December was to finally make a tree skirt for our Christmas tree. I had been using this sad little piece of red felt for years. Every year of pulling out the sad red felt would remind me that I wanted to make a tree skirt but everything else always seemed more important and then the holidays would be over and I would forget. This year though we were hosting Christmas at our house and I found this long lost table cloth that I love (and no longer have a round table for) and it was as if the stars aligned. I had a backing sheet and batting kicking around in my studio and it was go time. The pom poms were inpired by our recent travels in Mexico. I was originally thinking fun rainbow colors but the red looked really nice so I went with that. Now that its finished I am so pleased that we’ll have it year after year.

I am very much looking forward to new projects in 2026. Like all years I vow to be more organized, more productive and generally just really get it together. So we will see what happens but this might really be the year!

Happy 2026 of crafting everyone!

The Chicken Quilt

It’s been a long time coming but it’s finally finished!

Some time last year in the fall I started to get that quilty feeling. I got it into my mind that we should all have special Christmas quilts to signify that the Christmas season is upon us. We have a small house so a Christmas quilt would add some instant cheer. I decided to start with my son. He loves birds and I found this pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew which is so cute. My thought was that I could make it more Christmassy through my fabric choices. One of the most fun things to do was to go to the quilt store. It took me a long time to pick everything out but overall I was pretty happy with it.

There was no way I could keep this a secret because it was such a big project and in the end my son ended up helping me arrange the chickens into their final order.

I actually gave it to my son last Christmas. I had just stitched in the ditch and then bound it but I wanted to do more quilting on the chickens. So I took it back after Christmas thinking surely I’ll have it done for next Christmas because I have a whole year….but it didn’t happen. By the time it was on my radar I already had way to much Christmas crafting and craziness upon me.

I managed to not let it go back into the UFO pile for 2025. First thing in the new year I buckled down and finished quilting the chickens. I’m really glad I did because it does feel good to finish something! And now I can move on to the next Christmas quilt.

SVS September Contest Entry

This was my entry for the SVS monthly contest with the prompt CLOUD. We had to make sure it had a cloud, a character and told a story. I'm still figuring out where my work is falling between comic and children's book art but I got a kick out of clouds having group therapy!

I’ve been trying to focus more on my storytelling with each illustration that I do. This was also my first time working with ink and a dip pen. I really liked it and it was a great warm-up to Inktober 2022.

This entry also made it to the finals of the critique arena where the instructors choose the top 10-16 images and then people vote for the winner. It has been a goal of mine to make it to the finals so this felt like a big win!