Merry Christmas to All!

Wishing everyone the warmest of Holiday Wishes! Here is a shot of our christmas tree this year.

These are some embroidered kitchen towels I made for my Mom - now that she has them I can post a photo of them.

Embroideries Finished - YEAH

I finished my initial holiday embroidery projects this week and finally took some photos to post here. The towels look great in our pink 50's bathroom! And the tablecloth looks better than the photo - my chalk markings didn't exactly wash out today either! Oops!

Now it's on to finish a bunch of embroidered gift items and the tree skirt - which I hope to get done by Christmas Day!!!!

Christmas Embroidery - Finally!

OK - so I finally am getting around to putting the embroidery machine to some work with some Christmas embroidery projects. I am working on a tablecloth that I hope to finish in the next couple of nights!

And I made up a few towels as well - still have to stitch the border fabric to the towels but i'll take some photos of the completed projects at some point in the next week or so.

Look what the rain did to us!

We had an incredible amount of rain yesterday - close to eight inches fell here locally in our area and well, I guess this carport was not meant to be or it just didn't hold up with all that water and the gutter didn't keep up with the rain fall - or we are just unlucky these days -- who knows - and this thing is just 2 years old!!! What a mess - but we can't touch it until the insurance adjuster comes out - who knows when that will be. I hope it's before Christmas!

Guild Loot

We had our Stitchin Sistas holiday party the other night and this is the holiday loot I came home with! Our group is great and everyone walked away with a door-prize bag that was FULL of great items. I also had a stack of fat quarters (over there on the right in front of the fall rag-bag) that we give to the birthday person each month and it so happens my birthday is this month - I asked for red and brights! Yeah! I just love the embroidered coffee warmer wrap and the mini cutting mat with three rulers, that will be great for classes and I can take them along with my new scissors in my patchwork project bag that I got from our Santa Gift Exchange - everyone that wanted to participate brought a wrapped gift worth up to $20, I got the project bag -- yeah!

Great Calendar Give-Away

Check out this great barn quilt calendar giveaway that Ryan is having on his blog - be sure toclick here to check it out and enter the giveaway!

Noodle Swapping

Last month I joined a Swap-Bot noodle swap - aka - 5 inch strip of fabric swap and I just wanted to share what i've been receiving the past several weeks. I joined two swaps and each of them I was assigned 5 swap partners to send noodles to, both national and international. I love it! I love receiving packages from all over the world and I love sending things all over the world too! Today, I received a wonderful package from Holland that was beautifully wrapped in polka-dot paper and tied with ribbons and inside, what a great noodle.

Don't ya just love the fun fabric in black, white and hints of red!

This is what I've received over the last two swaps so far, still more noodles to come for November's swap but I jut love the variety. I already have plans to make some simple coasters with some of the christmas fabrics received and some swappers even send some minie blocks put together - that's ambitious but gives me an idea for the next swap too! If your'e interested in joining in on the fun, go on over to Swap-Bot and look for the 5 inch Noodle Swaps - they are coordinated by Ryan, another guy quilter like me!

Binding on a roll

I recently acquired via the wonderful world of Ebay several old wooden textile bobbins/spools and they not only have that great vintage appeal, they are utilitarian as well. The first purpose I have found is to roll my quilt and project binding on them to store until i'm ready to attach the binding to my project. I just keep them on the roll and set the roll in a box on the floor and it just unwinds as I attach the binding. Great! I am going to acquire a few more of these in smaller sizes and use them to store ribbons and ric-rak and such. Loving it!