Small Quilty GIfts

If you exchange small gifts or stocking stuffers with a group of quilting friends, here are some great ideas from our Whacky Ladies Christmas brunch last Friday.

From Gloria, everyone received an owl pin cushion made from beautiful funky fabrics.  LOVE!

Gloria also gave us some candy and some Mary Kay product samples.


                                       


From the Moda Bake Shop collection, a mini-charm pack of fabrics from Carol.

Great idea...Carolyn gave us a bag of S'mores ingredients with instructions!  

                                              

Also in the bag, some bobbin covers.  I had to look this one up.  It is called a bobbin clamp or tulip.  You can string them from one of those metal key chains to keep all your bobbins together.

For you stampers out there, here is a set of gift tags with cute floral decorations.

We have some clever ladies in this quilting group!

Hand-Made Christmas

I have been to three Christmas parties with friends since my last post!  Should have gone to another on Saturday, but it is getting down to crunch time to get my preparations ready for Christmas.

The "Christmas Craft Night" with my daughter-in-law's mother was a first for me, and a really fun idea.  Emily and her mom are awesome hostesses, and this party was no exception.

Maribeth had set up four stations with instructions, a finished product, and all supplies needed.  I felt just like I was back teaching elementary school and creating successful learning centers!

One of the most popular was the fabric garland.  We each got a strand of electric lights, and all we had to do was knot strips of fabric, burlap, trim, etc.  Mine is going to look perfect hanging over the kitchen window in the mountain cabin.

I also love my snowman ornament.  We used chopsticks to stuff some fiberfill into a clear glass ornament.  We twisted red and green pipe cleaners and glued on cotton pom-pons to make him some earmuffs.  A permanent felt-tip pen and some orange paint created the face.  How cute is that?

We also made some plain red pillar candles look much more glam for the holidays simply by applying double-stick tape and adding glitter.

There was another project to make gift bags out of lunch bags, but I have not decided what to put in it yet.  I have an assortment of ribbons, tulle, and gift tags punched from Christmas card stock.

Maribeth said all her project ideas came from Pinterest, and most of the supplies came from stuff she already had or the Dollar Store.

The next morning I drove back to Wake Forest for the annual Christmas brunch with my Whacky Ladies quilt bee.  We have a tradition of exchanging small gifts for everyone, and a larger gift for one person in a "Dirty Santa" game.  (Person number one chooses a wrapped gift and opens it; Person number 2 can steal it, or choose an unopened gift, etc.)  I managed to hang on to my beautiful little snowman quilt made by Marilyn.

Mary made Christmas trees from buttons and cinnamon sticks!

Lori added crystal beads to wooden Christmas ornaments.

Marilyn made the blue heart-shaped snowman ornaments.  Her embroidered felt ornaments represent a good percentage of my Christmas ornaments after twenty years or so of this Christmas exchange!

Donna Made machine-embroidered mug rugs in red and white.  I'm not sure if she somehow made these via a computerized pattern on her long arm.

I feel so lucky to have these enduring friendships and people to share my love of quilting and crafting.

Mountains and Crafts

Charlie and I went back to our mountain place this weekend.  We had a much smaller crowd- just the two of us, our neighbors Ricky and Mary, and their two grandsons.  Very quiet!  Saturday was rainy, so we went to the Northwest Trading Post on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Glendale Springs.  They had some nice quilts, like the dramatic red and white stars above, and the red and blue floral quilt below.

This hydrangea fabric quilt is being sold as a fundraiser by the Ashe County Piecemakers Guild.  They are asking $750.00.  I am so sorry that I will miss their annual show in Jefferson Station next weekend.

In addition to the quilts, there were split oak baskets

some floral brooches that had an actual stem from nature

some colorful aprons

and lots more.  I bought my first Christmas gifts, as well as some banana-walnut bread that we enjoyed for breakfast this morning.

On the way back to Laurel Springs, we had some spectacular views of Mt. Jefferson shrouded in clouds (this shot is just above Ashe County High School...wouldn't you love to go to school with such magnificent beauty right out your window?)

The clouds were right over the fields

and continued all the way home to our turn-off at the Upper Mountain Research farm.

Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny, with a crisp autumn feel to the air and a nice breeze.

We were dismayed to find that a giant oak tree near the bridge over our creek had come down during the night.  This tree had a bent trunk that formed almost a bench that you could sit several kids atop.  There was a hollow place in the trunk that I always peered in to see if there was a small animal inside.  When we used to camp down by the creek, the tree was kind of scary because it looked like a man with giant arms.  When I gave my husband one of those tree faces for Christmas, he climbed on a tall ladder and mounted the face on this tree.  Then it really looked like a man!

This is what was left of the tree this morning.

You could see right through the hollow in the stump.

Fortunately, it fell into the creek, and not across our driveway.

I have taken pictures of the dam from our bridge countless times, but this was all you could see from the bridge this morning.

Before we left, Ricky had pulled the tree out of the creek with his backhoe, and onto the grassy field for the neighbors to cut up for firewood.  We are sad to see it go.