Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  This year's festivities included card making.

 Paper, paints, pens, stamps - what could be more fun?!

The first round of cards and gift tags

 

Every year B-guy decorates the house and sets up the tree and villages and I get to come home and enjoy.  This is just a small taste of the Christmas beauty.  The last thing we do is trim the tree together.  Even though it's a small tree, it's perfect for us.

 

This is the back of an envelope with a small gift to my niece.  I love how it turned out.

 

I hope everyone is enjoying his/her holiday break.  Here's wishing all of you a new year filled with  love, health and happiness!

Scrumptious!!

Last week my good friend, Donna, from DonnasLavenderNest, met me for lunch.  It was supposed to be a birthday celebration for her, but I'm the one who ended up with all the goodies!  Thank you so much, Donna!

Donna went to Houston Quilt Market and picked up the brochure for me since I wasn't able to make it.  She also gifted me a Clover mini iron that she won. 

 

And, then she gave me these scrump-dilly-icious fabrics.  They are from the "Scrumptious" line by Bonnie and Camille for Moda.  Donna has these lovely fabrics and so many more wonderful pretties in her store.  You can find them here and here.  Go order some beautiful fabric now.  You definitely deserve a treat!!

And that, my friends, is one great way to start a holiday weekend!  Thank you so much, Donna for all of your generosity and friendship.  You know how to make a girl giddy with joy!!  I'm so thankful for our friendship.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Looking for the Happy

And what makes me happy???  Fabric, of course.  And as much as I'd like to purchase all of the pretty lovelies I see, I know that I have way too much stuff!!  And I want to start making a dent in reducing the amount of "stuff" that I have.  So what do I do . . . I make more stuff!!  What???!!  Yes, I seem to come up with all kinds of crazy ideas during the days and sometimes I make those ideas come to fruition.

I had the day off on Friday and I woke up, looked at my bag of quilted scraps, looked at the wall of zippers and immediately thought of pencil cases.  I love, love how these little bags turned out.  Plus I used up a lot of zippers (in fact, I ran out of 9" zippers and had to switch to making small wristlets with 7" zippers) and a lot of quilted fabric that I just couldn't bring myself to throw away.

 Pencil cases

 

Pencil cases and small wristlets

 

Another yoga bag completed this weekend

 

A weekender tote finished this morning

 

A large and small yoga bag completed this weekend

 

Collection of small yoga bags

 

Collection of large yoga bags

 

It seems that people are liking my yoga bags (I mean, what's not to like?!) and I have sold quite a few of them.  Hopefully, I will get a store out there soon so more people can discover these absolutely beautiful and totally functional bags.

 

I also like these "etc" bags that were made with large pieces of quilted fabric scraps

 

And to satisfy my newfound love of drawing and paint and markers and the written word, I discovered these envelopes in the trash at work and promptly rescued them.  Here is my first attempt that is going out into the world.

 



Outside of envelope

 

Inside of envelope

 

And the other day I discovered the "Orphaned Postcard Project" and immediately signed up.  I picked the postcards that I wanted.  They arrived early last week; I wrote a note on each one and sent them back.  How fun!

 

And, lest you think I'm not quilting, here's my latest quilt top ready for the longarm:

It's a disappearing 9 patch 

 

And that, my friends, is my happy!  It's been a great weekend complete with cooler weather and a nice 4 mile run yesterday morning.  I hope each of you is finding your HAPPY!





Lost Loves

 

Co-doggie

04/1998 - 07/2013

 

 

Mama

5/1929 - 10/2013

 

I lost two beautiful souls this year.  In July my sweet, sweet dog who gave me so much joy  throughout the past fifteen years said goodbye and left me with a big empty in my life.  I miss him beyond words.  I love you, Co-doggie!

 

And then last month my sweet Mama went gently into that good night.  She spent the better part of October in the hospital, but her sense of humor never left her.  She wanted to go home and so we made that happen.  She was surrounded by family and love.  She gave us so much love and wisdom.  I told her that the best gift she gave me was my siblings.  I told her that I didn't want her to leave us.  I told her that there were things I didn't know yet, but I didn't know the questions to ask.  She told me I would be fine and I believed her.

 

She fought for a year and a half and in the end her body belied her spirit and it was time. 

 

Sometimes, like now, I realize I will never hear her sweet voice again.  That phone number stored under "Mom" will never be dialed again and when I want to know the history of the quilts we discovered after she died, I will never hear her voice tell me about her Mama sewing them.  

 

There's so much sadness in my heart; sometimes I don't think that I can bear it.  But, then I remember that I am my Mama's girl and I will go on.  I will pay tribute to her by being the best possible person I can be.  She taught me those lessons.  As did my Dad.  They are reunited now.  The empty is still in my heart, but I can still hear her laughter.  I will remember all of the good.  I love you, Mama! 

When Is a Yard Not a Yard . . .

when you have someone at JoAnn's Fabric cut it and they do not sew!  Frustrating!!  Even though I caught the lady cutting a piece of my fabric 2" too short on one piece, I missed the other pieces.  When I got home one of the yard cuts actually ended up around 34" as it was cut at 35" to start and then it was cut so poorly the true-up cost me another inch.  Yikes! 

That was last weekend.  This weekend I started my conversation off with the JoAnn's cutter with "do you sew?".  And she did.  Yay!  I did feel obligated to tell her though that I was shorted a lot the previous weekend at another location and I really didn't want that to happen today.  It didn't.  She turned out to be a trooper when I had her cutting quite a bit of fabric.

And what am I doing with all this fabric???  Well, I'm on a roll right now with yoga bags and "etc" bags.

 "etc" bags

Aren't they awesome?!!

 

 Yoga bag anyone?!

 

 All cotton fabric quilted up nicely and ready for some studio time.

 

 Add yoga mat, water bottle, keys, wallet and you're set to go.

 

This is the fabric that was cut short.  Consequently the yoga bag is a bit smaller and the "etc" bag is a lot smaller, but still very cute and functional!!

 

Hope you've had a very productive and creative weekend also. 

 

Happy Mother's Day!!

Bag Lady

Who doesn't want to look stylish heading to the gym for some good old fashioned sweat time?

When I began this yoga bag making journey, I thought, "yeah, I'll do it for my SIL, but I don't think I'm going to like it".  And I was right . . . at least for the first few iterations of the pattern.  Each successive bag, though, I thought I'd picked out some good fabric and made a nice bag . . . and each one was not quite right.

Then I don't know what happened, but I hit my stride and I started producing these:

 

 

I found inserting zippers therapeutic and easy.  And once I finally decided to write down my actual steps that I took to sew a bag, the process became much, much easier.  Who knew I'd forget from one weekend to the next the easiest and least amount of steps needed to produce these gorgeous bags.

 

And last weekend I had an idea about what to do with the leftover quilted fabric.  And voila!  These babies were born!!  I LOVE them!  I have many, many ideas on things to make, but for right now, I'm stuck on yoga bags and these "etc" bags.  What do you think?

Namaste

The Hum of the Machine

I didn't get as much accomplished this weekend as I had hoped.  But, really, does anyone ever meet their lofty goals?!

I did sew two more charity pillowcases . . . and then it was on to yoga bags . . .

I pieced five more bags

I quilted the two brown bags at the same time.

This picture was taken after they were taken off the longarm.

The zipper was inserted.

Completed bag with inside showing.

A pocket for keys and wallet.

Voila!

 

It was another full weekend with lots of laughing and crafting.  I hope your weekend was as wonderful.

Footnote Friday

Spring Break . . .

 everyone took the week off . . . they sent me a temp!!

 

 

. . .I was the only one in my department at work this week . . . it could have been a lot worse!  Unfortunately I got behind in mailing out the giveaway boxes of AWESOMENESS! Okay, that may be a bit exagerated, but fret not, they did get mailed today.  Sorry about that, Ladies! The post office assures me you will have your respective packages by next Wednesday, if not sooner.

The view from my window this morning shortly after my temp left. 

 

And in the spirit of Spring Break, I left a few minutes early . . . shh, don't tell.  When I got home, I promptly sat down at my sewing machine and sewed four charity pillowcases and then went to Hancock Fabrics and bought zippers for more yoga bags. 

 

So, the plan for the weekend is . . . you guessed it . . . the sweat shop will be cranked up and yoga bags will be spit out!!  Well, at least there's a plan!  

Snowed In . . .

What a difference a week makes.  A trip home last week and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself snowbound for a few days.  I live in a state where snow is infrequent and accumulation is nil!  So, I flew in to 15" already on the ground and then another 7" fell the 2nd day I was there.  It was amazingly beautiful!

 Heading home

 

View of driveway from front porch

 

View from back porch

Backyard

Some kind of tracks made in the snowfall

 

Snow on Monday . . . Shoveling on Tuesday

Wow!  It's a workout that's for sure!  I haven't shoveled snow in over 25+ years.  Yowzers!

 

My accomplishment!

 

Of course, I wimped out before I got the entire drive shoveled, but I got at least 1/4th of it done before my back said "I give"!

 

And now I'm back in the land of high temperatures and high humidity.  But, for today at least, it is in the 60's and comfortable.