A little more Christmas...and first felted pieces

Here are a few more holiday photos. My brother-in-law Richard has a new orange kitten named Tigger. Doesn't he look like he belongs on a December calendar here?
Soon after that shot, he began eating the pinecones. He and CJ spent most of their time chasing and teasing each other.
We had a new great-nephew this year. Here is my BIL ,Grandpa Grady, with his son Philip's baby, Zach. He was a very friendly baby who looks like he is also very well-fed!

Yesterday I finally started playing with my new toy, the Baby Lock embellishing machine. I started out with a small pink felt square and added wool roving and Angelina, yarns, and sari ribbon.

It is great to just move the piece under the machine, and never have to worry about starting and ending threads! Later I added a piece of sheer fabric with gold spots, and burned some of it off with the heat gun. That sort of finished the edges of the felt.

I found an issue of Quilting Arts with some felted backgrounds for landscapes, so I tried a couple of those. You use netting on the back and top, layer yarns and roving in between, safety pin, and needle-felt. These were fun and could be some future postcards.

Finally, I got a piece of lime-green fleece and used most of my pile of thread, ribbon and yarn bits. It ended up looking sort of like a strange-colored forest. The fleece really got distorted, though. Probably too stretchy to make a good base.

On all of these pieces, I liked the back side as well as the front. Better even, on this green one!