While Christmas-time can be frantic and stressful, it doesn’t have to be. With a little help from our friends, we can reduce our stress and not only survive the holidays, but thrive! Here are my top ten holiday survival tips:

1. bake some Christmas cheer

There’s something special about the taste of made-from-scratch cookies, but making them doesn’t have to be an all-day affair. Gingerbread and sugar cookie dough can be prepared a few days in advance and stored in the refrigerator. Or if you prefer, uncooked dough can also be frozen for up to 9 months. Just thaw your frozen dough overnight in the refrigerator. Then enjoy a magical afternoon of cookie baking with the kids.

2. crafty decorating

If the kitchen’s not your thing, you can still have an afternoon of holiday fun with ready-to-paint Christmas tree decorations. One Christmas my daughter and I painted these mini wooden birdhouses. We still enjoy hanging them on the tree and the memories of making them together. You can also find paintable ceramic ornaments.

3. use your imagination

I have a red felt poodle skirt that I made for myself one Halloween. It doesn’t fit me very well, but the poodle skirt makes a fun Christmas tree skirt. What unusual things do you have around the house that would make unique holiday decorations?

4. personalize photo cards the easy way

If you’ve got a digital camera, chances are you already have all your family photos right there in your computer. I like to order my Christmas photo cards online because you get a wider variety of sizes and styles to choose from and you get to preview onscreen what your pictures will look like in the cards before you buy. Tiny Prints Christmas Cards even has fun die-cut designs.

Tiny Prints provides stylish, modern and unique stationery from photo cards to personalized greeting cards to thank you cards and business cards. Offering exclusive designs from the nation’s top designers, easy card personalization, a powerful preview engine and top-notch customer service and paper quality, their designs have been lauded by numerous television networks, publications and celebrities. With Tiny Prints by your side the Holidays will be a cinch! They offer adorable Thanksgiving Cards, Christmas Cards, Hanukkah Cards, and even New Years Cards. All fully customizable and personalizable.

5. craft a Christmas tradition

Crayola fabric markers are a fun way for children to create holiday mementos. How about a Christmas art quilt? Prewash 100% cotton solid white or muslin fabric, cut into the desired size squares and iron fabric squares to freezer paper (find it in the plastic wrap/tinfoil aisle), shiny side facing the fabric. This stabilizes the fabric so it’s easy to draw on. Let the kids draw Christmas pictures on the freezer paper-backed fabric, then remove freezer paper and heat set according to marker directions. Make a few new squares each year and save them up for a Christmas-art-through-the-years quilt.

6. treat yourself

In the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle, don’t forget to take a moment or two to treat yourself. My fave is a coffee treat, but others might prefer a chocolate truffle,  a soak in a bubble bath or watching a favorite movie. Afterward you’ll be refreshed and ready to jump back into the middle of all the holiday fun.

7. kid friendly decorating

Have small children in the house? Decorate a mini tree or wreath just for them. Find party favors in their favorite theme: princess, pirate or whatever they’re into most this year. Tie them to the tree or wreath with pretty ribbons. You won’t have to worry about the decorations breaking, and after Christmas is over, pass the party favors out to your children and their friends or save them for birthday parties or small rewards in the coming year. Next year choose a new theme to decorate the mini tree or wreath with.

8. gift from the heart & hand

There are probably at least a few people on your gift list who would love a handmade present. Try a mini purse or piece of jewelry from my book, Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Cover-Button Jewelry: Make Gifts & Glamour in an Afternoon (C&T Publishing). They really are fast, fun and easy, and with all that wonderful fabric out there to choose from, you’re sure to find the perfect print for that special someone.

9. customize a gift

Tiny Prints’ Customized Day Planners make a perfect holiday gift. There’s nothing more quick and simple to do if you already have a photo ready in your computer, and it’s a stylish and thoughtful gift the recipient will enjoy using all year long.

10. stock up for Christmas crafting

When you’re hitting the after-Christmas sales, don’t forget about holiday fabric. Pick up a few yards and stash them away. You can sew up Christmas trinkets in April, August or whenever the crafting bug bites. Then next year you’ll be ready for Christmas gift-giving, decorating or stocking a booth at your holiday craft bazaar.

What about you? Please share a holiday survival tip or two of your own.

Stroll through a few Christmassy shops and see what colors the trees are decked out in this year. Maybe you’ll discover just the right color palette for your first quilt of 2010.

Or maybe there’s a red & green quilt in your near future. Check out my “box of ornaments” above. 3 reds + 3 greens = 9 different red & green combinations. Not all of them are what we think of as traditional for Christmas, or even for red & green quilts, but it’s interesting to consider which patterns you might choose for each one and why.

I think it would be fun to make a Christmas tree quilt out of the bottom left combo. Which combo do you like best and what kind of quilt would you make from it?

On the other hand, making a quilt takes not only the right ingredients but also much more time. Some people can make an entire quilt in a day or two, even an afternoon. Most quilters I know need weeks or months to complete their quilted masterpiece. So although I am baking cookies this morning that will be eaten at my daughter’s class Christmas party this afternoon, the quilt I am working on tonight will make its debut next spring.

I’m also thinking about designing a fish quilt. See the cookies on the bottom left part of the tray? Those are my version of Christmas carp. Carp is traditional for a Czech Christmas Eve dinner. Since I’m vegetarian this is the only carp my family and friends will get to see this Christmas. Although perhaps next Christmas there will be a Christmas carp quilt.

Some of the fish below are carp, but some are koi. I’m going to have to do a bit more research before I hit the sketchbook. Happy Holidays!

Make blocks for baking cookies, shopping for presents, attending a Christmas pageant, and more. Just about anything, really. Then make a New Year’s Resolution to piece the blocks together and quilt them so that next Christmas you can reminisce and enjoy your quilterly creation.

This is my sample, done in wool felt on my Huskystar needle-felting embellisher machine. It’s decorated with yarn and Angelina fibers, and I hand-embroidered the front and back together with variegated pearl cotton, blanket stitch, my all-time favorite. It was quick, easy and fun to make.

Here are Lois Cowan’s stockings, first place winner for Moonlighters (evening meeting), made from recycled blue jeans. You can put stuff in the pocket on the top stocking as well as inside.

This is Yvonne Butner’s stocking, third place winner (daytime). The tree is decorated with all the things that cute little kitties dream about.

Phyllis Whitlock’s crazy quilted Texas Cowgirl Boot stocking took 2nd place (daytime). If only boots could really be crazy quilted, what a great thing it would be to wear to Houston!

And finally Kathy Willhoft took first place at the daytime meeting for her pair of beautifully appliqu

éd Christmas stockings. Enjoying eye candy like this is calorie-free!

Many cute stockings were made by guild members and donated to Community Service along with the stockings for the challenge.

I thought stocking ornaments would make appropriate “ribbons” for the winners. When you’re painting crazy quilt stockings and make a mistake, you don’t need a seam ripper to remove the “fabric”. Just paint right over it!

Have a pieceful Christmas and a scrappy new year!

I enjoyed working with the polar fleece. Wintertime is definitely the right time to be making things with fleece. It took somewhere between 5000 to 6000 snips of the scissors to do the raggy seams. At least I was warm while snipping (yes, I did have the spring-loaded scissors which saved my hand from a sure fate of repetitive-motion injury).

The plaids in the plaid raggy quilt were taken from colors in the snowman fabrics so now we have a set of cozy Christmas-y quilts. These ones are for my family. Most all of the quilts I make are given away, and so we mainly have store-bought blankets and such in our home. And since I’m still gathering Christmas decorations, they really add to the Christmas cheer in our home.

happy quilting!