Swedish Christmas Traditions & French General Lone Star Quilt

I'm participating in Tablescape Thursday!  It's been a while.  If you're visiting from there, welcome!

Ahhh!  We've had our Christmas morning and all the dreams came true.  While I'm downloading my CDs to my itunes library (I got an ipod touch and a speaker deck thing-y to listen to it upstairs!), I'm going to do a quick report of one of our Christmas Countdown Chain activities and reveal the lone star quilt I made for Katy's family this year.  Multi-tasking!  I've made it an art form.  (My brother-in-law, Ben, once told me my life must be very "symmetrical."  He always uses exactly the right words.)

Three of our chain activities were honoring our German, English, and Swedish ancestors by having one of their traditional meals and talking about their crazy Christmas traditions.  For the Swedish dinner we had meatballs with mashed potatoes and cream sauce from a mix I bought at Ikea.  Swedish!  I read online that one of the Swedish treats was something called "pink caramels."  Sounds cute, right?  But it's just a regular ol' caramel with pink peppercorns ground on top.  Since Mom, Dad, and Aaron were joining us for dinner, Mom jumped on my bandwagon for finding pink truffles for our treat.

I found these raspberry and white chocolate truffles at Dear Lizzie in Alpine.  They were beautiful in my mouth, too.  In my research I also discovered that a Christmas tradition in Sweden is ornaments made of hay.  We got an angel made of hay for a wedding present and it was strange at the time, but we've always put her on top of our tree instead of a star.  Who knew?

My parents were staying with us because Dad sang the baritone solos for the Utah Oratorio Society's Messiah performance over that weekend.  Brian and I were able to go to the Sunday performance.  It was heavenly.  I cried like a baby.  And the boys got to open gifts from Grandma and Grandpa a day before their birthday.  Please take note of Emil's tie.  Hee!

I've taken a break from sewing for most of December.  I think the only thing I've done all month is the blind stitch hem on Katy and Matt's quilt.  I'm getting excited to start some new projects over the next week or so.  Remember how last year I started my own tradition of making a lone star quilt for the sibling I give a gift to for Christmas?  'Member that?  It's an homage to our Great Grandma Rhoda Paskett Lee.  She made lone star quilts for her children and grandchildren.  Here is the one I made for Katy & Matt.

She asked for a black and white one.  I searched and searched for a combination of black and white fabrics that I liked, but it didn't happen.  Until I'd finished this and it was already December.  Katy has five daughters and the pinks and reds made me think of a girl-y household.  Sorry, Matt.  I'm sure he's used to it by now anyway.

The back is one of the French General woven fabrics that are kind of to-die-for, I think.  It will look good with black, Katy!  I promise! 

Merry Christmas, Everyone!