Great mail!

It has been a whirlwind for the past few days.  My local bee met Thursday night.   The Carolina Longarm Association met Saturday at Quilts Like Crazy in Wake Forest to work on a raffle quilt for our next show.  It will be a pine tree pattern with hundreds of half-square triangles.  We each brought green fabrics to make leaves and tree pieces, and there was quite an assembly line of sewers doing the paper piecing.  I could only stay for a short time, so I used a rotary cutter and ruler to trim the paper along the solid lines.  Then I passed them along to another volunteer to finger press and tear off the papers.  The quilt is based on a block similar to this:

Then it was off to my Cyberbee meeting in Raleigh.  This sub-group of Capital Quilters Guild meets quarterly.  I'll share some pics from my bee meetings in a future post.

Sunday was a special treat.  My husband's birthday is coming up on the 19th.  Dave and Emily gave him tickets to see Celtic Woman perform at the Durham Performing Arts Center.  I love when I get to share his presents!  There were times during the performance when I had tears of emotion and/or chills down my spine.  It was a memorable afternoon!  You can check them out on You Tube.  We loved Amazing Grace and You Raise Me Up the best.

Yesterday was the monthly meeting of the Anything Art bee.  I know, four quilt groups in four days...Yikes!

This time, Peg Henderson was showing us some of the skills she learned during an intensive session at Calloway Gardens in Georgia with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn,  We had homework!  She gave us each a piece of Aquamesh, which is a water-soluble stabilizer with a sticky side.  We were to make a drawing, slide it under the aquamesh, and construct a scene with fabric, roving, bits of thread or fibers.  Then, we were to stitch it all over with a piece of tulle or Solvy on top.  I chose this picture of violets in the woods after a rain shower in the mountains.

I drew lines so I could see the outlines of the flowers and leaves.  I wish I had used a broader point Sharpie so I could see the lines better through the stabilizer.

I  used mostly fabric to create the leaf and petal shapes.  I added a bit of wool roving for the brown areas representing the forest floor.  Then I stitched the outlines of the shapes through a piece of Sulky Solvy.

Peg got out her huge stash of fibers and yarns for us to play with.  I used a back stitch to add some stems and textures.  There is a lot more to do!

Last night, our doorbell rang after dark.  The dog went crazy.  We almost never have unexpected visitors to the house, especially at night.  We have a very long driveway.  We wondered who it could be.

It was the UPS delivery man!  He brought a package, and I immediately knew who it was from!

The clue was the zebra-striped duct tape.  I recently won a blog give-away sponsored by Tracie Hanson of My Blooming Life.  You may remember Tracie from my posts about the Doodlicious Daybook from the 21 Secrets Journaling online class.  We painted large doodles on brown craft paper and cut them up to make a journal.

I won a beautiful hard-bound sketchbook with lots of thick, pure white pages from Papaya! Art.  It is designed by Sabrina Ward Harrison.

The cool thing is that the book is reversible.  You can choose your cover.

The inside covers are different, too.

I will enjoy filling these scrumptious pages!

Look at the fabulous art that Tracie sent along with the book.  I love the wild woman on a grocery bag!

Thank you, Tracie!