Quilt Bee

Yesterday my quilt bee "Log Cabin quilters" met at Mary's house. These are a few of her quilts. Mary loves math and piecing. Her quilts reflect it. The first one is Radiant Suns. Pattern by Carla Gulati (Mary is hiding behind the quilt).
This second one is her own design. Mariner's Compass wallhanging.

This is a cute snowman wallhanging, I don't know the name of the pattern. She embellished it with sequins that sparkle in the light.

This large wallhanging is called Psalms 1. She bought the white fabric which has psalms written on it, cut it apart and designed a quilt with them in it. I tried to get a close up on "Psalms 2&3" so you could see the writing. (didn't work too well).

New Purses

Last Friday I bought this purse pattern and some new fun fabrics. I think the pattern is called "Terry's Tote". It was very easy. I made this purse for my daughter in law.

And this one for me. I also made a "bottom" for each purse so they wouldn't droop when you put stuff in it. I used Timtex and covered it with some of the purse fabric.

Needle felting

My girlfriends wanted to learn needle felting, so I had them all over and we had a lot of fun playing around with it. This is Joni, making her new granddaughter a Valentine gift, she is going to embroider around the heart and frame it.
Laura's husbands birthday is Valentines day, she is needle felting him a card and also is making her 2 yr. old granddaughter a scarf with hearts needle felted on it.
Jody, is making a polar fleese scarf for her 2 yr. old granddaughter with a snowman needle felted on it.
Cathy and Jamie played around making a snowman on wool, they still have to add the embellishments.

Wool quilt block

This is the next block for my "family tree" quilt. This is a picture of my grandmother's grocery store at Christmas (I should have squared it up before I took the picture). My dad would cut down a tree and put it on the roof with lights. My cousin, who was a art teacher, would paint the front windows with Christmas scenes, I needled felted in wreaths. Also, the snow on the trees and smoke are needle felted. I'll embroider in all the family information in the front yard with dark gray thread. Next, is my husbands childhood home.
My good friend Deb in Alaska sends the most wonderful cards that are little quilt works of art. I try to reciprocate when I can. I needle felted this card for her for Christmas using a wonderful white yarn on my indigo dyed wool and embellished it with wool fabric and beads.

Canoing the Mangroves

After a week and a half at our daughters in Northern Florida we left and went to my parents home for a week in Southern Florida on the gulf coast. We love to pack a picnic lunch and canoe the intercoastal waters through the mangroves. We see so much wild life you never see on the beaches. I find a lot of shells here, a lot of them alive (which we never take, its so much fun to see them "walking" under the water) and a lot of them empty which I take for my quilts. My husband drills tiny little holes in them and I sew them on my wallhangings. I also have a basket in the camper for bigger unique shells. I'm not sure of all the bird names but one of these pictures of the white birds are called egrets.

A blue heron.
Osprey with his nest.

I call these shore birds, don't know their official name, but their so cute. When your on the Gulf waters they run back and forth with the waves looking like they don't want to get their feet wet.
?
This was the most peaceful and inspirational day. The next day a storm blew in with cold weather (the coldest in 5 years) so we stayed in. I did get a lot quilting done.

Our Christmas holiday

When we left Michigan it was 11 degrees, the trees at the rest area were beautiful, they were full of a heavy frost, not snow but frost. I thought they were beautiful.

We new when we made it to Florida, I love the decorated palm trees.

I made these Christmas stockings last year for my grandkids, I designed the pattern to look like a whimsical jester stocking. I purchased embossed velvet and my girlfriend machine embroidered the cuffs with their names.
This is Christmas eve, the kids got to open up one package each, we bought them Spider man pj's, all in different styles for their ages. The little ones also got Spiderman slippers, regular slippers for big brother.
The twins loved the "spider web" under their arms.

The day after Christmas, the twins went to school and the guys went hiking, us girls had "quilt bee". This is Melissa's good friend Katie and Alka finishing up their projects.
Vicky is finishing up a wallhanging her mother started 15 years ago, (Vickys mom, Sandy was my good friend and a quilter. She passed away from breast cancer when Vicky was 14 and Vickys been finishing up all of her unfinished projects). I would show you a picture of my daughter quilting but she was asleep on the coach.
This is Katie's wallhanging, its the first quilting shes ever done. She did the embroidery and picked out her fabrics for the boarders then I pieced them and quilted it for her. She did the hand work on the binding.
Alka saw this little wool pumpkin penny rug that Joni made and designed one for herself. My engineer daughter-in-law loves quilting. She doesn't have a sewing machine or much free time so when we see eachother (They live in Puerto Rico and she travels alot for work to different Latin American countries). I try to keep her well supplied with new hand work projects.