Great Mail to Brighten the Day

It is still cold, rainy, and windy today...but I have lots of shiny pretty things that arrived yesterday to fondle and admire!

First was a big Priority Mail box that returned my little art quilt, Second-Hand Rose, who has been traveling with the Breaking Traditions 2008 art quilt exhibit. Rose still looks good despite all the little flowers and beads attached to her.

In the box with Rose were two door prizes that I won for participating in the 2009 Breaking Traditions exhibit with my quilt Mountain Home. One prize was this wonderful little piece of pottery. It is a teabag saucer, donated by the exhibit curator Lynn Krawczyk. I love original pottery, and this piece fits right in with my home decor.


In addition to the little plate, I received a funky hand-knitted pouch donated by Vickie Boteler. I had just e-mailed to my friend Cathie Recca that I would love to try freeform knitting and crochet...and that very day received this little purse made of many different fibers. It is so cute...reminds me of a little hanging bird's nest.


Here it is hanging on my dragonfly wall hooks, along with a treasured mountain fiber art piece that I purchased at the Grove Park Inn gallery years ago.

After posting this blog, I started to put away the prizes and discovered another little surprise that I had overlooked...a piece of hand-dyed fabric and a lovely fiber cord from Chris Daly at Dye Candy! Thank you, Chris!

In the same mail, I received this fabulous hand-dyed fabric that I ordered from Vicki Welsh's Etsy shop. It is one yard of a gradient from fuchsia to blue. I love the variations in the colors, and plan to use this piece in a Layered Waves workshop with Ginny Eckmieir next week.

And since I was fondling fabric, it was only right that my package from Hancock's of Paducah arrived shortly after that, with this lovely assortment of batiks in bright jewel tones. The fabrics have ferns, hummingbirds, butterflies, and leaves- all my favorites.

I also ordered some packaged battings by Quilters Dream. I had never tried the Puff batting before, but wanted to try it for some old and puckery quilt tops that I have promised to finish for my sister-in-law. I have been putting these off for a long time, but am ready to start the first one. The Puff batting is polyester with a nice loft to it, that I am hoping will disguise some of the fullness in the star quilt tops. But, even my husband agreed, this batting is delightfully, delectably soft! It is supposed to be light in weight but incredibly warm. I will let you know how well it works with my Gammill.

New Things Quilty

I told Santa I only wanted one thing for Christmas this year...but it is a very nice thing! This is a Babylock 12-needle embellishing machine. I have not had a chance to play with it yet...

but now I have these...
which came from JoAnn's and from Mary Jo's. Lots of lovely soft wool roving to play with.

And for months I have been saving a bag of these at each of my sewing areas They are bits of thread, Angelina, yarn, and other various fibers. I have lots of these ready to be part of some future project.

The nice folks at Carolina Sew-and-Vac gave Santa a bag of this gorgeous rayon thread when he picked up the embellishing machine. I found it in my stocking on Christmas morning.



And here is a great gift for the machine stitcher...the little bendable sewing light. It attaches to the sewing machine. This was on my wish list at Quilts Like Crazy in Wake Forest and was a very appreciated gift from Dave and Emily. When the CyberBee met a couple weeks ago, I saw many of these being used by the girls who participated in the sew-in.

When I go to Mary Jo's Cloth Store, one of the first places I check is the Fat Quarter table. They had a great variety this time. Most of the FQ' s there are only $1.25, but not the batiks.

My niece Melinda sent me a link to the baby nursery bedding that she likes. So I looked for some fabrics that might work for a home-made version. She would prefer to have more lavender than pink.Anyway, I am ready to play! My alma mater (North Carolina State) has a bowl game this afternoon, so I will probably be watching football on the tube instead of sewing. But do you think I will need to start a new blog...All Things Felty?

New purchases

When we got back from the NC mountains on Sunday, there was my package of new fabric from Wish Upon a Quilt. This Raleigh fabric store is also an online store, and I had ordered my additional binding fabric from them for the butterflies quilt. Great, fast service! It is not washed yet, but I believe it will be just fine for finishing this binding

I also ordered two new batiks from them on sale. Aren't they pretty?

And last week I received a package with a back order from Quilting Arts with this neat product called Mawata Hankies. Each hankie is made from one silk cocoon, carefully opened at one end and stretched over the hand. Not sure what I will do with these. They say they are suitable for silk paper. I will probably use them on an art quilt. My colors are Chagall and Van Gogh. Artsy, huh?

Here is a look at my weekend: relaxing on the pond below our cabin. We did not get in it and float this time, partly because evening thunderstorms caused both the pond and creek to look very muddy. Also, Charlie and I viewed a monster snapping turtle in the pond!

Here are some views from the top of the mountain: a dirt road, a fern bank highlighted by sun, a Christmas tree farm with daisy ornaments.

Quick Update

Today I am back from spending three days in our mountain cabin- a wonderful weekend in which we were joined by our son and six of his college friends. It was a bachelor party weekend for one of them, full of fun and friendship. We enjoy being around the young people. Some of them stayed in our camper, and others pitched tents down by the creek. I tried cooking on my new stove, and found out that the smoke detector works! Two pans of sausage cooking set it off.

I am home for one day before heading to South Carolina to get my "fix," meaning I haven't seen my grandkids lately. Well, Avery was in the mountains a few weeks ago, but I haven't seen Lily since the beach trip. Now she is walking and almost running, so I have to get down there!

I purchased some fabric for the backing of my Round Robin quilt on Thursday. A local quilt shop that is also an Internet shop was having a sale on batiks and Kaffe Fassett fabrics, and I had a fifty dollar gift certificate from them for my first place in our guild's quilt show. Thank you so much to Wish Upon a Quilt! Their prices are always low anyway, but with the sale and my gift certificate, I got yards of a beautiful purple batik and still have a twelve dollar credit! I was thinking that I would get a gorgeous KF floral to go with this log cabin garden quilt top, but I just did not see one that I loved as much as the batik. I don't even like to use batiks as backings because sometimes it is difficult to get good tension. But I am going to try!

I also am anxious to get a sample cone of the new LAVA thread from Superior threads. It's supposed to be like Rainbows for Longarm machines. Rainbows is a shiny poly thread that often is difficult to use on a longarm because it breaks frequently. LAVA means Long Arm Variegated Art. That sounds perfect for me!