One Wild Birdhouse!

A couple days ago I received a surprise in the mail. Upon opening the box you could have heard me screaming OMG! It was the coolest, prettiest, most colorful, awesome birdhouse! My friend, EverythingQuilts from the HGTV Quilting Board made it for me. Oh... I just love it. Little did she know that for the past 10-12 years I have been collecting birdhouses for my sun porch. This pretty has found a great home ... think I'll have to figure out a name for the bird. Don't know why - but the name MAX just came to me... so Max, welcome to your new home.

Crazy Quilt Hearts-n-Lace Ornaments

I have been busy making a variety of Crazy Quilt Christmas Ornaments for a couple of swaps I am in. As you my have guessed, my theme is once again Shabby Chic.


Last year, at a yard sale, I found a piece of an old quilt cut to about 20x20. The colors were just too pretty to pass up so I bought it for .25 and figured some day I would find the perfect use for it. Well....that day finally came. I cut out about 12 little hearts and decided to make Christmas Ornaments of of it. First I embellished each one with various small pieces of my hand dyed laces - dyed them to match the colors in the fabric. Then I embellished each piece with beads, threads and ribbon. Once the embellishing was done, I put the hearts back to back and used a heavy cotton floss to outline the hearts in a blanket stitch. Just before I closed up the edges I stuffed each one with cotton. Ta da - now all I have to do is bead up some little hangers for them to hang on my tree. Hmmmm ... just thought - If you don't want to hand them from a tree, throw them in a pretty bowl as a decoration to be used year round.

Crazy Quilt One Block Swap

Recently, I hosted a Crazy Quilt One Block Swap on the HGTV Forum. If you would like to see some of the most incredible CQ blocks, please click here: Crazy Quilt One Block Swap 33 Crazy Ladies were matched with one other crazy lady and were given an idea as to what the other person would like to have depicted in a 12.5" CQ block. For instance, I had asked for my block to depict a combination of greens, pinks, purples, flowers, butterflies, dragonflies - a garden theme. As you can see from the picture above, SassySuzanneQuilts did a BEAUTIFUL job on my block and I just adore it. Thank you sooo much!

My husband Rob actually was the one to draw the names to be matched up with each participant. I ended up being matched up with Shawkl and was excited to see that she wanted her block to be done up in a romantic, shabby chic, girlie, flower & lace theme. I had a blast working on it and spent lots of time up in Maine sitting contently sewing away for hours. Starting with a shabby chic sort of pallet I created my foundation by using various colors of silks, satins, brocades, velvet and even some fairy frost cotton and then started my embellishing by layering some dyed laces around a picture of a little girl sitting on a wall. I wanted to give the block the feeling that she was lost in her dreams in a beautiful garden . I hope Kathy enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it for her.