Hi everyone, and Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and got some time to enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. Christmas time is my absolute favorite!

As for my family, we tried something completely different this year, and spent Christmas with our extended family on a Caribbean cruise, courtesy of my very wonderful and generous father. We had planned it way back in March, thinking we would be post-pandemic by now. We were a bit nervous to still go, but it all worked out well, and we had a blast! It was warm, sunny, and very relaxing. However, I must admit, it didn’t feel very “Christmas-y”. (Is that even a word?) We all agreed that as fun as it was, next year will be back to Christmas at home, complete with chilly evenings, lots of baking, and too many Hallmark movies.

Here’s a little snapshot of me and some of my family taken on Dec. 23^rd.  You’d never guess looking at this photo that it was two days before Christmas, haha! Shorts, tank tops, and sunglasses don’t exactly evoke that cozy holiday feeling, do they? In case any of you are wondering, this was taken at the Chacchoben Ruins in Mexico. It was fascinating!

Ok, enough about me. Let’s get on with talking about this Ruby quilt.

This month we will be making ANOTHER five Irish Chain blocks. I know, not very exciting, especially since we’ve done this before. And we will do it again! Since I’ve already written not one, but two blog posts about sewing up this block, I don’t think any of you need me to do it a third time. Feel free to refer back to blogposts for Month 2 and Month 4 if you want a refresher.

After getting these 5 additional blocks made this month, you should have a total of 15 finished. This means, if you’re counting, we have 10 more to go before we’re done with them.

Here are my finished stacks to date: The left stack is just the Irish Chain blocks, and the stack on the right has all the unique blocks we’ve made thus far.

Since my design wall is currently occupied by another project, I decided to lay out everything we’ve done up to this point on my living room floor. As you can see, we still have some holes to fill in, even when I move some blocks around, as you’ll notice I did in the bottom photo. BUT, it is actually starting to look like a real quilt now, which is exciting.

And I must say, that the colors of this quilt do look quite festive, especially next to my Christmas tree. (Yes, I STILL decorated, even though I knew I would be gone. Did I mention I LOVE Christmas?)

So I guess finishing up this quilt over the coming months will help me feel like it’s Christmas all the time!

Until next time…Happy Quilting!

Kristin