Christmas/Winter Table Runner

I had a lot of left over scraps from a wall hanging quilt top that I made.  Our daughter has our old, very long, butcher block table that goes back to her childhood.  It's plenty scarred, but very much loved.  She likes my work very much, so I made this table runner for her table out of leftovers from other projects.  I tried to keep it wintry, but not outright Christmas so it can be used all winter.

Nativity Scene Wall Hanging

I found a beautiful nativity scene on fabric in a little quilt shop in Traverse City recently.  The artist is Liz Goodrick-Dillon.  I love the way the people in the scene look true to what we know of their ethnic heritage.  It's about 43 x 50 inches.  I added borders and binding of my own and quilted it in a way that I thought enhanced the picture.

Too Many Men!

I just finished a quilt (approx 40" x 40") called "Too Many Men."  I saw it on display at a quilt store in Traverse City a few weeks ago and just loved it!  My version is a little different.  It was a lot of fun to make.  It's perfect to display for winter....right through Christmas.  If you look close you'll see little snowmen peeking out from haystacks, trees, everywhere!  I love the snowman moon shining down on his friends.

Art Nouveau

My son has asked me to make a wall hanging for a space under a new skylight in a stairwell of the 100+ year old Craftsman style home that he's renovating. We're designing an Art Nouveau trees landscape piece that will be about 30" by 80". I haven't attempted any creative design pieces this big yet, but I'm pretty sure I can do it. The hard part will be making sure it has all the colors and style that he wants. I think that putting it together will be easier than designing it! I plan to use batiks and free-style the cutting and stitching based on all the photos we've collected online. These wall hangings are usually woven into tapestries or painted and lithographed. Here's what a typical Art Nouveau tree wall hanging looks like:

Ear Warmers!

My new embroidery machine is still in the shop....the repair technician has been busy with quilt shows around the state and hasn't been able to fix my machine yet :(  The good news is they let me borrow back my old trade-in machine.  I finished all the work I could on my Christmas projects to get them ready for embroidery and am just looking for small projects to work on until I'm up and running again.  Thankfully, we visited our son in Chicago over the weekend.  It was beautifully sunny, but very cold, reminding me that I need some new ear warmers :)  We're going up North this weekend, so I hurried up and made a quick ear warmer wrap.  I used some fabric that I dyed this summer with my daughter and granddaughters - it was really fun.  So I covered a piece of polar fleece with a scrap of my dyed fabric and added a sequined embellishment from JoAnn's.  Voila!

 

 

 



Sewing Machine's in the Shop!

My sewing machine needs a new part....I haven't been able to sew since last Friday....this is the 4th day without it and I probably won't get it back until this Thursday!  I'm in serious withdrawal...and so many projects to finish yet.  In the meantime, I've cut as much fabric for my projects as I can without the benefit of sewing things together first.  Used some of my time shopping at my favorite thrift store and found some great flannel red and white snowman sheets and white sheets with green snowmen(women?).  All good for my Christmas projects' backing :)  Went to the Dollar Store to get what I need to make a fall garden flag that I found on Pinterest....as soon as I got home, I found a flag that I bought last year!  O well, I'll still give the Dollar Store flag a try just for the fun of it.  Is it Thursday yet???????

Our 43rd Wedding Anniversary

With YaYa's quilt top ready for sandwiching, I switched projects to make a little something for our 43rd wedding anniversary which was yesterday (9/27).  It was a very small project but brought on every kind of problem a user of a new-fangled sewing machine can have!  I finally got it finished in time to give to Jack....he was very pleased.  It was all worth it!