Wooden Needle Holder and Bag

Here is the gift that I selected to give to a member of my quilt bee during our gift exchange tomorrow.

It is a turned-wood needle holder by Meiki's Designs, which I purchased at the Vendor Mall of the Ashe County Piecemakers Quilt Fair back in September in West Jefferson, NC.  The maker is http://meikisdesigns.com . Fortunately, I was able to find it in time for our Whacky Ladies party tomorrow.  Sometimes when I buy gifts way in advance, they disappear before it is time to give them away!

I decided to make a little "holder for the holder," or a little cloth bag to put it in.  Here is when it is handy to have a supply of pre-painted, pre-quilted fabric ready to cut up and sew.

All I did was zigzag a piece of pretty fiber all around the edge, sew on a button, and wrap some more fiber around the button to close.

Here is the back view of the little needle case.

In case you are interested, the blue and green fabric was made by squeezing Elmer's glitter glue onto muslin, then painting with Setacolor and other fabric paints.  When you remove the glue, you have markings on the fabric where the glue resisted the paint.  The outside flap was painted with Shiva Paint Stiks.  You can see how I made them here if you scroll down through the post.

After the party tomorrow morning, I have to do some cooking before my husband's Christmas dinner for the office tomorrow night.  Yes, it was just Thanksgiving last weekend, but this weekend my son and his family from South Carolina will be coming up for our family Christmas.  When you work in retail and also have to share children among multiple sets of parents for the holidays, you have to celebrate when you can.  We are looking forward to seeing them and having an early Christmas!

Whacky Ladies Christmas Brunch

Friday was a treat for me, since I got to visit with my quilting buddies from The Whacky Ladies bee in the Wake Forest area.  We had breakfast at Brig's Restaurant.  It is fun to see the staff and other patrons enjoying our show-and-tell!

We always have a gift exchange, with the chance to "steal" someone else's gift.  Carolyn ended up with the most coveted gift...a quilted pillow with a Christmas tree made of yo-yo's and buttons!

Irene was very happy with her Santa who could hang around by his arms.

  

We also exchange small gifts for each member.  I did not make mine this year, but brought a basket of memo pads in beautiful paper covers.

But I collected some lovely gifts of fabrics, ornaments, and yummies.

I showed the ladies the new red and white blocks that I have made to go with the sampler blocks that they made for me.  I don't think I have posted the latest one..."Moon Over the Mountain."

Speaking of mountains, we did not go back this weekend as planned, since my hubby came down with what we think is Norovirus.  Try not to get it!  Plus, they are supposed to have an ice storm today. But we have gotten a few pictures of the cabin with its cathedral ceiling in place.

   With the bad weather and the approaching holidays, I'm sure there will be a lot more delays in building the decks, walkways, etc.  that's okay, we will enjoy it when it is ready!     

Sort of Quilty Gifts

Today was the annual Christmas brunch of the Whacky Ladies Quilt Bee.  We met at our usual restaurant, Brig's in Wake Forest, which has always offered us plenty of space for all our gift bags and show-and-tell (plus generous portions of delicious food.)

We actually only had one show-and-tell quilt this time, a red and white beauty by Caroline Ormond.  Unfortunately, my photo is out of focus.
(No, we were not drinking Bloody Marys or Mimosas!)

 

She made the blocks from Block-of-the-Month kits from Wish Upon a Quilt.  This one will be quilted by our bee member Donna Sontag of Whatever's Quilted.

 

We traditionally exchange small gifts for each person.  What a lovely selection of candy, ornaments, soap to take home!  Okay, this picture's upside down.  (No, I didn't come home and start drinking Bloody Mary's!)

 

 

Donna made these cool silvery quilted ornaments on her computerized longarm.

 

In addition to the small favors that we exchange, we each bring a larger gift to go to one person in the "Dirty Santa" exchange.  You know, you pick a number, then choose a gift.  The next person can either steal your gift, or choose one that's not opened yet.  This year no one stole any one's gift.  I guess we were all on our good behavior today.

I made a journal with a needle-felted cover and hand-painted pages.

 

Here is the back. (I swear the folks at Blogger must be doing handstands today.)

 

 

Here is the hand-dyed inside cover and some of the pages.

 

 

Here is when it is very handy to have a stash of painted papers lying around in your studio.  I just chose some that sort of coordinated with the rainbow colors of the cover.  They are sewn in by machine in three signatures.

 

 

The cover itself has silk fibers and ribbons needle felted to a piece of wool felt, then quilted on my sewing machine with a decorative stitch.  The lining is fused to the back.

 

 

For my small gifts, I made yet another round of watercolor ATC's.  This time it went much faster, because I fused the whole sheet of watercolor paper to the backing paper, and then cut out the ATC's. 

 

 

I don't think I showed the backs last time.  I made large color photocopy of a painting I did in the free Strathmore online class with Traci Bautista,

 

 

and sections of it became the colorful backs of the ATC's.

 

 

I also only went around the outside once with zigzag stitch, which makes a neater appearance on the backs especially.

 

Here are some of the ones I especially liked.

 

 

 

 

 

Since I collaged some printed words this time, I applied a coat of matte varnish to the front of each card.

 

Recently one of the members of my art quilt bee lost her husband.  Our bee each made an ATC to send her.  All together, they made quite a lovely showing of love and support.  I found another piece of painted, doodled paper in my stash and used it to wrap around the ATC's before mailing.

 

 

 

So, moral of the story, keep painting and doodling and you might find the perfect items in your stash the next time you need to make a gift.

 

Now I must get ready to have the whole family of kids and grand kids arrive for the weekend.

 

But first, I may just need to drink a Bloody Mary!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Things

Today was the annual Christmas brunch for my local quilt bee, The Whacky Ladies.  We met at Brigs' Restaurant in Wake Forest.

Our custom is to exchange small gifts, often handmade, for each member.  This year I made a selection of quilted bookmarks and magnets.  Here are the needle-felted magnets, made of silk roving and Angelina fibers.

I also had a few made from one of the mini quilt sandwiches that I use to check thread tension on the longarm.  I added some beads and/or embroidery to these.  They look kind of Cinco de Mayo to me!  Wrong holiday, but they got snapped up pretty fast!

And there was one magnet from some of the Non-Traditional Patchwork from Rebekah Meier's book, Fabric Art Collage.

The bookmarks are quilted pieces from a piece of Setacolor painted/and or foiled  fabric.

We also exchange one big gift. This year I made a tote bag from a tote bag! 

I opened the sides of one of those gimme-bags from a school conference.  I added patchwork made from my own hand-painted fabric and commercial fabric.  These are painted with Shiva Iridescent Paint Sticks.

I added some fusible batting and the patchwork, and sewed the sides back up.  I added a lining in a light striped fabric.

My big gift from the exchange was a Yankee Candle Snowman candle holder, with cinnamon-scented candles. He is very happily at home in my Christmas Snowmen display! (Right in the middle, front row)

I came home with some wonderful little gifts.  Here is a change purse from Sharon with "Quilting Bee" fabric.

From Janice, our scrapbook queen, a beautifully decorated metal box of beautifully-wrapped candies.

Several lovely new ornaments:

And, a gift I've been enjoying while typing this post:

But, the best New Thing of all....

I finally decided I was ready to get another dog, especially after babysitting for my Grand-dog Roo  recently.  I've been looking online at all the local shelters. Finally, I found the one I wanted on Craigslist.  I went to get her yesterday.  We are already in love!

She is three years old, a Golden Retriever mix, but much smaller.  She only weighs about 35 pounds.  She came from a family with lots of children.  So far, she has been a perfect dog!

She loves our big yard and going for walks.  So far she has stayed downstairs, thus avoiding my longarm quilting room where she should not venture.  She loves to sleep at our feet, and will sit with her paw on my lap.

We are not sure what we will call her yet.  Stay tuned!  I am so happy to have a sweet doggy again! 

Christmas Brunch

Today was the first of the Christmas get-togethers of the season for me. My local bee, The Whacky Ladies, met for our annual Christmas brunch at Brig's Restaurant in Wake Forest. We have so much fun at these parties, although this year we were sorry to miss two members who both underwent surgery this week. One of the things we do is a gift exchange. Most of the time we have a "gift grab,", where you choose an unopened gift in order of drawn numbers, and open it. Then the others can choose your gift instead of an unopened gift. This year, we did something different. Carolyn read a story about the Wright family. You had to pass your gift to the right or left every time you heard those words in the story. This was fun, kept us laughing, and no one had their gift "stolen."

I got a much-needed desktop needle threader and some lovely red fabric.

The inchie on the left, is actually a "twinchie", or two-inch little art square that I made everyone for favors. More about those next time.

Donna made our brunch more festive by bringing everyone a Christmas tapestry place mat to use right there at the restaurant. Mine will go well with all my snowmen!

Mary makes lots of gift items, and made us each a rose brooch. This pic is a little out of focus.

Marilyn made an assortment of embroidered mittens. She does beautiful handwork!

Janice made adorable errand lists in a padfolio-type of notebook.

After the breakfast, at least four of us headed to our LQS, Quilts Like Crazy!, for their 30% off sale today. I purchased some fabric that is very different than anything else I have, with the thought in mind of making a tote or perhaps a little girl dress. Look how Janice's memo pad matches the fabrics. Do you think she influenced my color choices?
The print fabric with the birds and dots is by designer Tina Givens, who lives right here in little old Wake Forest, N.C. It also has some fairies on it.

For my final bit of quilty news, here is the Jim Shore nativity set I treated myself to yesterday. Jim Shore's work usually has quilt designs used in the clothing of his characters. I have quite a few of the Santas and angels, and one Snowman. I have been wanting the nativity for a long time. This is the smaller one from this year's designs.