Happy Holidays

The boarder fabric on the wallhanging was our first bee challenge fabric. Its full of pink and purple santas, what a challenge. I decided to do a "city" quilt as most of my quilts have more of a wilderness feel. This is called "Christmas Eve in the City" All of the people are rushing home as Santa is coming down from the North Pole in his train. I hand dyed all of the buildings, train, and tree fabrics. The cars are quilters lame, the tracks are a wire edge ribbon. The rinestone tree was a vintage pin of my mothers. The wheels on the train engine are very old buttons. I also added lots of beads. This was such a fun quilt to make.
Here we are all packed (over packed) and ready to leave to Florida, to spend the holidays with our kids, grandkids and my parents. I think we're the only person in Michigan with a canoe on their R.V, ready to go.
This is a quilt I made called "The Florida we know". We have been traveling to Florida for the past 25 years for a break every winter. My parents winter on the Gulf coast. Now, our daughter lives in Jacksonville and our son lived in Miami and we love to snorkle in the Keys. This quilt shows our canoe as we canoe through the mangroves looking for little shells and secret beaches. The upper left water shows two little Horseshoe crabs I found dried up on shore. The four little Nemo fish represent our four grandchildren, my friend Deb made them from Fimo (I'm not sure of the correct name) clay. I used my wool fabric for the palm tree, mangroves, blue heron and alligator. Then I added glass fish and beads. This also was a fun quilt to make.
I hope you have wonderful holidays and will be back January 8.