A Few More December Finishes

In addition to the table runner/wall hanging mentioned in the previous post, I finished a few more gifts in December.

My niece was expecting a baby and delivered a little girl in mid-December, a few weeks early.  Thankfully, both mom and baby are doing well, and (also thankfully) I had finished her baby quilt in the nick of time.  

My daughter had helped me pick out fabrics for it when we visited a new-to-me quilt shop in November.  I used a free baby quilt pattern by Amanda at Jedi Craft Girl, which I'd used before for a different baby quilt.  It's a nice one for larger or more elaborate print fabric that would otherwise get lost if you had to cut it into smaller pieces.

I really like the colors in this quilt.  The coral color is a nice alternative to pink.

While we were fabric shopping, my daughter mentioned she needed a new makeup bag, as the zipper pouch I'd made her several years ago was looking rather worn.  She picked out a couple of fat quarters for a new one, so that became one of her Christmas gifts.  She was pretty excited to open it on Christmas Day.

Lastly, as part of my goal to make each of my nieces and nephews a quilt, the Waverly (Storm-at-Sea) quilt was finished and gifted at Christmas to my nephew Brandon.

Local long-arm quilter Sandy did a great job on the quilting.  She gave me several options and I chose one that I thought gave the impression of a rolling sea or splashing waves.

It turned out very nicely.  I finished the binding a week or so before Christmas and that was a wrap!

So that's what's been happening here behind the scenes, sewing wise.  

I had an issue with my computer in November and ended up buying a new one during the after-Thanksgiving sales.  Setting things up and bringing myself back up to speed seemed to take a bit more mental bandwidth than usual.  It had been almost 10 years since my last computer and many things had changed.  I allowed myself a little more grace and time to get things switched over and definitely felt like the proverbial old dog learning new tricks.

(Temporary setup on the dining room table during the switchover)

One thing I'm still working on is learning different photo editing software, since the one I had been using on my old computer hasn't been supported for several years, and I felt like I needed to explore other options.  So far I've downloaded GIMP, but it seems pretty complicated for my needs, so I downloaded FastStone, which seems more user friendly.  I mostly do just simple editing for color and lighting correction, cropping, straightening, resizing, and watermarking.  Yesterday, after watching way too many YouTube videos on both programs, I was finally able to create a watermark in GIMP that I can use in FastStone (yes, I needed both programs to do that one simple thing...ugh). 

What do you use for photo editing, resizing, etc., and do you like it?

~Paulette