Sewing the Nine-Patches and getting a new Car!

I don't know what's more exciting - this coming together or getting my new car today!
Something tells me it should be the car...

It is very busy at work at the moment so with going in early and working late I am feeling rather tired. Always a shame when I can't summon the energy to do a bit of sewing in the evening. I don't have much left by the time the boys are in bed.
It was my husbands birthday on Saturday so I had to devote myself to waiting on him hand and foot and generally look after him, just as I would like to be treated on my Birthday.
But I did get the chance to do some sewing whilst he lolled about.
I am feeling pressured to get a move on with this Quilt as I will need to post it at the beginning of January. I really need to get it pieced by 10th of December, giving me 3 weeks to Quilt and finish it.
I am also trying to finish off a Rudolph wall hanging. It needs its' final border (it's already sandwiched and quilted), binding, 1 Antler and 1 Eye!
I always feel that all Christmas things should be finished by the end of November, and on display for the whole of December. Just to whip those boys up to maximum excitement level by Christmas!.
I need to check that the boys both have their Christmas Quilts on their beds.
Last year I made them both a stocking that I saw in Quilts Japan ( I've got a subscription to it). I managed to use up a lot of my Christmas scraps for the front of the stockings. It was hard work doing the snowflakes, cutting out the big snowflakes was so tedious, in fact I got fed up cutting the rounded knobs on the end of one of the snowflakes so I just cut them straight. And the bondaweb kept coming off the fabric (grrrrrr!). I hand-stitched them on one of the stockings, and machine stitched the other.
I had a lot of half square triangles left over from another project I had done so I joined them to make the backing for Josephs stocking. Still got some left.
Liam didn't want a pieced backing - (phew!) - he wanted his name. I found a font I liked on the computer then enlarged it on the photocopier. I used Bondaweb and did a zig-zag to secure.
In a shop I found these 2 little stuffed stockings which I just had to buy.

Mini Fall Quilt Progress Part 2

I have started to sewing the strip sets together into the Trip and the Chain blocks.
It's going OK.

Progress

Here are my first strip sets - now I need to cut them up and sew them together. It's going OK so far - I cut the strips 1 and 1/4 inches so the plan is for 3/4 inch strips / squares.

Mini Fall Quilt progress

As time ticks on I have decided to start a Trip to Ireland Quilt.

I have decided on this arrangement -














I designed it on Excel - I use conditional formatting to colour the squares according to the number I type into the cell. In this way I can try out different arrangements, and it adds up how many squares there are of each colour, and it calculates the fabric requirement.

In these fabrics -














I've cut all the strips, I've used a variety of fabrics in most of the groups in order to add "texture" to the quilt.