Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas here! Fun with family and lots of good food.
Posting with my iPad! Still learning all the functions, but it is cool!

Mug Rug

Ladies on the HGTV message board have been posting "mug rugs"-small quilt for your cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate and a couple of cookies. Had to give it a try, here is my first attempt. Used tutorial by: I'm Just A Guy Who Quilts

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas

First snow about an inch, continuing through the day. Good day to do house work and holiday things.

Trying to be ahead of things this holiday season. I started on my holiday projects in October.

My favorite swap, HGTV Secret Santa Stocking Swap (SSSS) is in full swing. Each person received the name of her SS mid October. Each person makes and fills a stocking for their SS, the completed stocking needs to be shipped to SS so that they receive it by Dec. 18th. My stocking is finished I have most of the items to fill it. Working on a couple handmade items but will be ready to ship by Dec. 13th. This is the crazy quilted stocking I made for my SS, hope she likes it.

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas. Enjoy time with family and friends celebrating and preparing to celebrate the holidays.

Craft Room Ready

My craft room space is ready!! Yesterday I started moving things in and organizing the space. Took all day to get the storage area set up. Lots of cleaning to do on the shelving/storage containers.

This is the view from the doorway to the left side of the room. Note, a bit of organizing to do! This will be the paper crafting area. Two tables one for tools: Cricut, paper cutter, Xron sticker machine, and embossing gun. Other table for work space.

Desk area, dog bed will be move to the side and Ott light will be moved to the other side of the room by the sewing are.

Sewing area: sewing machine and cutting table will be in this area. View out the slider into the backyard.

Storage area, still need to put the fabric and paper storage shelves/containers in here.

I'm sure things will change before I'm completely moved in but for now this is my plan.

Happy Friday!!!

Love the weekends. Last weekend was very productive, hoping this weekend will be too. Along with the clutches and needle case I posted last weekend, I also tried something new. Tried making a fabric background with bits of fabric placed between solvy. Found this technique in Fabric Art Collage -40+ Mixed Media Techniques.

Not as successful as I hoped, but not bad for a first try. I'll be trying this again this weekend, my friend Kathi gave me some good suggestions on how to do this technique.


Happy Friday, wishing everyone a WONDERFUL Weekend.

Made a few things

Sunday night already? Where did the weekend go? Stained door casings, made a couple sample clutches, finished my last "Ugly" Swap gift, and did a little crazy quilting.

I'm going to make a clutch for Emily, my daughter, to use on her wedding day. I've made a couple samples to determine what size she would like. I have a yard of Champagne Dupioni Silk on order. I made these two this weekend.

This one is about 7" wide Sarah choose the fabric for this sample.

This one is about 6" wide, made out of Ivory dupioni silk, great find in the remnant bin at JoAnn's.

I'll be trying another style next week.






I participated in an "Ugly" swap with the HGTV group. My swap partner was Dyed Grey, she made me this beautiful quilted table topper. Amazing what she did with the ugly FQ I sent to her.

I'm not a tradational quilter, I made a couple crazy quilted pieces and one quilt block zipper pouch. I need to mail this last piece, needle case.

Happy Creating, wishing everyone a Great Week.

FFT #10 RR finished

I have finished stitching on the last block for the Crazy Quilting International Fabulous First Timers Round Robin. To participate in CQI swaps or round robins every new member is required to complete a FFT RR. My FFT RR started back in October. A little setback but the RR is back on track. I have had the pleasure of stitching on the blocks of four very talented women.

First block I stitched on was Aida's, second block Colleen's, third block, Alice's, and finally Kathi's block. Everyone different but all beautiful and a lot of fun to stitch on. (click on the images to see enlarged)

Blogging...

Rainy, Windy, Chilly Day at Lake Michigan

Sunday we took our pups to the beach, Lake Michigan, for a little walk/run. It was a windy, dreary, misty day but the pups loved it. Look at Penne smiling. The waves were 3-4 feet. Penne is the only one that went into the water. We played a little frisbee until the wind caught it and it got stuck in a tree!

I found some mermaid tears, mostly green and a couple clear ones.

Did a little creating this weekend and learned a lesson about fabric paper and freezer paper. Here are the two pieces of fabric paper I made.

I liked how they looked better when they were wet, rather dull now that they are dry. May try to remove a layer of tissue on the red & green paper.

Lesson learned, check twice and make sure the shinny side of the freezer paper is up before you start applying the glue water. If not you will find, when your fabric paper is dry, it will not peel off the freezer paper! 

Making fabric paper is still a new technique to me, I will keep experimenting. These two sheets will be fun to play with.

Two good books - The Dark Tide, by Andrew Gross. Finished, it was good, sort of predictable but some good twists. And Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani, still reading and enjoying it. Adriana Trigiani is the author of Big Stone Gap and Big Cherry Holler, two books I read a few years ago. May have to read them again.