Book Club

Our November selection is Little Bee by Chris Cleave.    It was a #1 New York Times Bestseller.  I haven't started it yet, still have a week to read it.  The story is sad I've heard.  The book jacket doesn't give much away, just says it's about two women that have to make a terrible choice one day when their lives collide.  Then they meet again in two years and the story starts.  I'm looking forward to reading this, will tuck it in my carry on bag on my trip to Philadelphia.

November craft night

This craft night was a little trickier than the last couple.  There was lots of trial and error and we learned a lot about proceeding with making our "forest of trees".  Sometimes the pictures and directions don't tell the whole story.  Here's my "little forest".

We used skewers, wood blocks, circles cut from old music sheets and sewing books, green paint, walnut stain, glue, felt and glitter.  It was lots of fun and everyone who has seen these think they are as cute as ever.

Here is my smallest tree.  It has white glitter on it and doesn't seem to show well in this picture.

This one is my favorite.  It's made from the pages of a sewing book.  And I LOVE the silver glitter.  I plan to make more and hope we perfected the process.

Older Quilt #3

This is a really bright, whimsical quilt.  It was started in a class using a magazine article for the pattern.  It's designed by Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins from Piece O Cake Designs.  I own several of their books and truly love their designs and style.  I call this "Just Dotty".

EVERYTHING about this quilt makes me happy.  It is paper pieced (which I love) and the fabrics are all polka dots (an all time favorite of mine) and stripes.

Two of my quilting friends made this with me.  We had great fun trading dots and stripes.  I love it when I have other quilters' fabrics in my quilts.  This makes them even better.  It's funny how after so many years (this was finished in 2004) I can still remember where most of the fabrics are from.  Here's the dotty backing.

I hope you've enjoyed some of my older creations.  They are so dear to me.

Great Book!

I just finished this book and it was great! 

When I was in Monterrey this summer, we kept teasing one our friends about this book.  She was reading it on her Kindle and we heard the clicking of her turning pages all the time.  So I decided to get it from the library, which took some time, since it is a very popular selection.  It's science fiction for sure.  But definitely with a big human element.  I don't read science fiction very often.  It's long but easy reading because you can't wait to turn that page.  My husband read the book jacket and thought the plot line would make a great movie.

Craft Night at my Sister's

My mom, sister and I started a monthly craft night in September.  It all started because I love to make cards -- I've shown many of them on this blog.  I bought Mother's Day cards this year and was shocked at the cost -- $4-5 for simple cards.  So I started telling them we needed to get together one night and make a card stash.  Well, you all know how easy it is to let life get in the way!  So then I started nagging them about scheduling a night.  We had so much fun in September, it's now on our calendar each month.  Last night it was at my sister's.  She came up with a fabulous project for us.  She found the inspiration in the April/May/June issue of Somerset Life magazine.  Here is my finished project.

She bought old pictures at Goodwill Thrift Store for the frames.  The flowers are made from muslin -- this was the most labor intensive of the evening.  Not difficult, just took some time.  She found the chicken wire in the garden section of Lowe's.  The red polka dot bird is from Michael's.  The tags, crystals, and tags are from her stash around the house.

Here's a closer look of one of the corners.

Here's another look at it.  I love it.  We made these in about four hours.  We are choosing projects we can finish in an evening.  This in going in my sewing room!  We have next month's project chosen -- it will beginning to look like Christmas!

Halloween Fun

I've been busy making some fun Halloween coasters to give or send to friends and family with their Halloween cards.  This coaster was the inspiration -- sent to me years ago in a Valentine card exchange.  I use it for my water or soda in my sewing room.  You can see it is worn and faded.

I made 40 of these the other night while watching one of my favorite movies.

So, you can see these go really fast after the prep work (cutting and pressing) are done.

I learned to do them on a tutorial at www.allsorts.typepad.com.  If that link isn't just right, I found it by "googling" coasters.

I just mixed and matched fun Halloween fabrics.  Here are the stacks.

Happy Halloween!

Another Older Quilt

This is the second of my beloved, older quilts, made in 2003.  It's called "Aunt Betty's Attic".  I made it in a class that used a magazine article for the pattern and I don't have it anymore.

This quilt was made with some fabrics used to redecorate our bedroom all those years ago.  Some of the fabrics were decorator fabrics with some Aunt Grace prints added. 

This is one of the decorator fabrics I used for the backing.  Isn't it sweet?

This is a close up of one of the blocks.  This was another of the decorator fabrics.

This is a close up of the scrappy border (with a ruler sticking out from under).

The really special thing about making this quilt was the people in the class.  I discovered two of my dear friends there.  One I knew before but we didn't know we were quilters.  She was there with one of her best friends.  We now sew monthly and take quilting travel adventures.  That was a great class for me!