A cold winters night, a toasty warm fire and a bit of color left from summer flowers.
Perfect night for working on my next wool house block. My own home done with a Autumn yard. The tree leaves are needle-felted wool, the shrubs still need to be sewed on and a few other details. I'll then embroidery in all family names, birth dates, etc. The dark "shadow" up the middle of the block is mine, I couldn't get rid of it taking the picture, had to keep the block flat so the shrubs didn't fall off.
This year the National Herb Society named the Rose "the Herb of the Year". Yes, rose petals are edible, some being more tasty than others. Roses you absolutely do not want to eat are the ones from the florist. The foreign growers use lots and lots of pesticides to get those perfectly stemmed (although no smell) large roses. Your home garden roses are best, use only organic fertilizer and sprays on them.
This past Tuesday was our local Herb Society meeting with Roses being the evenings lecture. My girlfriends and I made the refreshments. I made a rose tea using organic dried rose petals, oranges, nutmeg and food grade rose syrup and rose water. In cheese cloth I placed the petals and chopped up oranges, then poured boiling water over it and let it seep 5 minutes. Then I added the nutmeg, rose syrup and water. I made a large crock pot full. It was a cold night and everyone enjoyed it.
Next I took a good butter cookie recipe and added the rose syrup to the batter (along with vanilla). They turned out very good. The grand kids loved them and wanted to eat them all.
For our table we had a display of different color roses and their meaning. I separated the roses by color and put them in their own vases using parsley around each rose, after all it is a herb meeting.
With my vintage linen tablecloth, beautiful rose napkins and all the food our table was beautiful. In the black vegetable platter there were roses made out of tomatoes. I wish I got close up pictures but we were so busy.
We also had white chocolate candies made with rose syrup and almonds. My cookies next with rose syrup alsoo used in the frosting.
There were also lots of displays on different rose products, tall jars of rose hips (great for tea, hips are full of vitamin C).
Many rose books and knick-knacks.
Miniature rose tea set.
Rose teapots and dishes.
Leaving Herb Society.... My girlfriend is going to Japan to visit her new grandson. Her son married a girl from Japan and they live there. She made and sent baby quilts when he was born, now she's bringing this new one with her. I thought this was so cute with his name spelled in Japanese style letters. He love soccer so the quilt is full of wonderful soccer fabric including fabric with kids of all nationalities on it.
Made with wondeful batik snowflake fabric.
It seems like every weekend we have a new craft project that somehow doesn't leave me alot of time for quilting, but nothing is better than making crafts with my grandchildren.
We had to make Valentines for the Great-grandparents and special people in their lives, so off to the dollar store we went, they had a wonderful selection of sparkly heart stickers, paper doilies, foam heart stickers and of course candy hearts.
What beautiful cards they made to send.
My favorite. Happy Valentines Day.
My daughter wanted to make a tote bag for her girlfriend's birthday. Her friend loves animal prints, she picked out this bright fun print. We "team" made this bag, I cut and ironed the fabric and she sewed. (things get done fast this way).
Her girlfriend also loves football, especially the Jacksonville Jaguars, this is the reverse side of the bag.
Of course we never sew alone, little brother came down wearing my slippers and his "pirate" scarf and played with scrap fabric
creating his own fabric pictures.
A house in a snow storm with a tree and lawn
The full moon last night is known by some Native American tribes as the "snow" moon and others around here as the "hunger" moon, I'm sure by this time of year food supplies were getting low and rationing had begun.
I choose to stitch the "snow" moon. And being as it was cloudy here last night I added some snowy clouds floating over it.
When I woke up at 1:00 a.m. the moon was shinning in the window but I didn't have the energy or want to go outside and take a picture of it. I just enjoyed it from under my quilts.
At quilt guild meeting Kathy Preston showed a quilt she just finished for her niece. They had a going away pool party for her and at the party Kathy painted each foot with fabric paints and printed them on fabric squares and had the person sign their name. She stitched around them and embellished them with ribbon and buttons to represent flip-flops.
A couple close-ups.
Wonderful!
Back to my challenge quilt. This is a picture of one of my blocks
and here is how four of them will fit together. I have the 12 made for the quilt. The warm buttery yellow is nice on the eyes this time of year.
Now to start on the other 12 that tuck in and around them.
Every year we have a new quilt challenge in one of my bees, this year it's a different kind of challenge. This challenge you must use fabric from your stash adding up to two new purchased fabrics. My daughter wanted a summer quilt so I decided to use this fabric with the (right side) brown & green purchased for boarders. The outside green fabric kind of changes the look of it a little, not so Moda "sweet". A pattern was picked for everyone to use.
With 6 different ways to place the light & dark fabrics and rotate the block, you can end up with 6 totally different looking quilts.
Number 2
Number 4
Number 5
And number 6.
Speaking of my quilt bee's, at my other quilt bee we finally were able to have our Christmas party last week. A month late but still great. Cathy made us all aprons with fabrics to match our style.
Joni always gets us new slippers,
And this year on her cruise, while on Grand Cayman Island she had a bracelet made for each of us by a native women.
Jamie's husband made us each a ruler stand. How nice was that!
Jody made us each a pair of pot holders, we all needed them. It seems like you always make cute things as gifts and never keep yourself a set.
Cathy shared with us how to make this cute "pin". I believe this was a commercial pattern but I don't know the name. She took a 2 1/2" x 12" strip of fabric, cut it with pinking sheers, folded it leaving about 1/4" edge. Stitched the folded edge and gathered the fabric around a bobbin or (sew on a button). I think this would be nice made out of wool with an antique bobbin to wear on sweaters or winter coats.
Cathy also suffers terribly with migrains and has been going to Mayo the last 2 years trying to get some relief from them. This wall hanging is her at Mayo with all her migrain symbols sewed in.
I love how she did her hair and facial expression during migrain.
