Stitching the last days of December

Last night I finished off as far as I can on my new addition for my Bionic Gear Bag.  Sally Thompson aka Ripstitcher designed a Little Trash Bag Thingie to hang off the bottom of the BGB.  I'm waiting on some special glue to arrive so I can add the magnetic snaps to the bottom of the BGB, straps and Little Trash Bag Thingie and it will be done.  Currently I've just pinned it in place.  

 I managed to cut up some of the very few scraps I have remaining for my original bag to make this and just love how it turned out.  It actually folds down and fits inside of the BGB!  If you are interested in buying a pattern or joining her series of Mastery Classes check her Sew Much Nicer webpage here. You can also find some of her other patterns on Craftsy here.  I'm planning on making her new Mother Lode Retreat Bag which will be able to accommodate a 6 1/2" x 12 1/2" ruler and all sorts of other goodies. She has a Facebook community that you can ask to join where she share some hints and has some videos to share and lots of shared images of these bags.

 I also finished up the stitching on my Cheri Payne Santa Clause comes but....

 I realized I probably should have mixed up the whites on the hat and his beard but love how they turned out.  Here is a closer look at number 1.

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 Santa Claus come but once...

 ...a year bringing toys and cheer..ho ho ho

 I've also decided to have some fun making some free cut Christmas Trees.  I cut two rectangles about 6" x 8" and then used my ruler to cut the lines.  This requires some straightening of seam lines and the resulting blocks are about 5" x 7".

 I've seen some that were paper foundation pieced but want to have fun seeing what will come when free hand cutting.  My second set were also done in pairs and started with rectangles about 5" x 6" and ended up a bit bigger than 4" x 5".  I changed the angle of the bottom of the tree and varied the width of the tree trunk also.

 I'm contemplating making some in the 5" x 7" range and see how they work out.  I'm also hoping a couple of friends will join me and swap some out with each other, but will see what happens.

 I also got a charm square package in the mail as a gift for subscribing to both Simply Moderne Quilt Magazine and Simply Vintage Quilt Magazine from Quiltmania.  They are from Kathy Doughty's new line Folk Art Revolution. I'm hoping to get some yardage of a couple of these to work with the charm squares.

My phrase last year was Explore new directions, looking at things from a different perspective.  What appears straight can be full of twist and turns.  I'll have to see what next year's phrase will be and how many different perspectives I took in the past year and review them with you before the year's end.  Enjoy these last two days of 2016.