Sleeping Under the Stars - Thank You my friends

Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you all a wonderful day enjoying it with family and friends.

Today is the perfect day for this particular post. There is so much to be thankful for but today I want to say THANK YOU to all my quilting friends on the HGTV Quilting Board for making me the most beautiful quilt - one that I will cherish always as much as your friendship. Over the past 5 years I have met all but 3 of the ladies who were a part of making this quilt - quite a big deal when you think we all met as cyber friends and we all live all across the USA.

As many of you know, last April New England was hit with some major rain storms. It was a horrendous time for me as my husband had just left for a 2 week trip to Europe when our basement began to flood. I was home alone with water pouring in nonstop. I can't even begin to tell you how many buckets of water I bailed and how I was screaming over being sleep deprived. Over the next month Rob and I dealt with water, water, water everywhere! While I was busy bailing water, crying and screaming that my body ached, my friends were busy putting together a quilt for me to cheer me up.

Last week my friend dear friend Elaine (Quiltingnewbie), who spear headed putting this quilt together, presented me with the most beautiful quilt. The quilt is made up of Friendship Star blocks both small and large collected from each of 50 ladies and sewn together by Elaine. Elaine did an incredible job of piecing the quilt together using various shades of blue so that all the Stars blended together. The quilt is queen size so you can imagine how much she must have loved sewing the binding on LOL! The beautiful quilting was done by Thearica ( Pigtalesandquilts ) who does the most incredible machine quilting.

My beautiful quilt fits in perfectly with my BLUE bedroom and I can now officially say "I sleep under the stars" I am overwhelmed with the love and friendship that was put into making this quilt for me and Thank You all from the bottom of my heart. Sending big hugs to all of you - I love you my sisters, my friends.

The back:

While laying under my quilt the first night, I looked around my room and realized... WOW! I love the color Blue.... and WOW! Look at all of the things in my room that my friends have made me over the years. The 3 Kimono wallhangings in the first picture were made by my friends Karen (Daisy The Chocolate Mouse) ) and Elaine (Quiltingnewbie).

This beautiful porcelain figurine was sent to me by Thearica (Quiltaholic) last summer - she said it reminded her of me. She is gorgeous and a treasure for always.

A beautiful Crazy Quilted Journal was made for me by my wonderful friend Carolyn (Dec Painter). No, No Carolyn, I have to disagree... YOU are the Queen of everything!

This gorgeous Crazy Quilt Block was made by Tammy (Ms Bananas). I just had to make it into a pillow.

My beautiful Crazy Quilt tin was made by Karen (KMouse) - she stitiched an "N" in beads on it and knowing how much I love mermaids, she filled it with fabulous little mermaid cabachons.

And this beautiful little disk was embellished for me by my good friend Ely. Love it!

I guess you could say I love the color blue but more importantly, I love my friends who have showered me with gifts they've made especially for me. Ya'll are wonderufl and I'm so grateful that you are a part of my life.

A new blog header and another needle book

Seems like I've been on a CQ roll! I 'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that the holidays are slowly creeping up and everyone is looking for that special gift. I was recently commissioned to make 4 needle books for friend and am happy to say that all of them are done and in the mail.

One of the needle books was requested to be CQ'd in blues and teals.... Yea! - ya'll know how much I love those colors. In fact, by the time I was done with it I loved it so much I decided to crop the picture so I could use it for my new Blog header... what do you think? I thought it was time for a bit of a change ... a change with a tad more color added.

Using various pieces of my hand dyed laces, I tried to create a garden scene with butterflies and flowers. My favorite is a little piece of circular lace that reminded me of the sun.

This is the complete look - unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the inside before mailing it out. For the inside I made a small pocket to hold additional thread/needles or even a pair of small scissors and also sewed in a piece of matching wool felt to hold needles.

All buttoned up and ready for use. If any one is interested in having me make a special needle book for a friend, secret sister or even for yourself, please drop me a note prior to December 15th.

My first Christmas Stocking

Can you believe it! 48 days until Christmas and already it seems everyone is running around shopping and sewing up a storm. Me included. A couple months ago I had sign ups on the HGTV Quilting Board for the 2nd Annual SSSS. Secret Santa Stocking Swap. Everyone who signed up was matched up (random drawing) with a Secret Sister - she then has to make that person a Christmas stocking (not necessarily CQ) and fill it with no more than $20 worth of goodies. The goodies can be from her stash, made or bought. All stockings are to be delivered to the SS by December 18th. On that evening we will have a designated time (9:00 EST) where everyone across the US who has signed up will open up their stocking. Each stocking will have a Christmas card in it telling the person who sent/made their stocking. Last year we had 60 ladies - this year we beat it by 2 - we have 62!







Here is my finished stocking for ??????????? I sure hope she likes it. It's filled to the brim with little presents and I'm already ready to mail. Can you imagine getting a Christmas present 48 days before Christmas a not being able to open it? LOL!







About 20+ years ago I cross stitched a series of vintage Santas. I used one of them for my focal to start creating my stocking. I wish the picture would show all the gold threads in the Santa - very pretty.





Using, cottons, silk, brocade, velvets and lace I began building my stocking.

Once my stocking outline was compete I resized the pattern to cut it down.

Embellished the seams and added some bling then added the lining and some lace to trim off the top. SS - you know I love the color blue so I just had to add a little... the lining is done in a greenish blue... hehehe.

?????????? wish I could tell you that your present was on the way but then that would be a give away ... think I'll have to hold on to it until everyone starts mailing so you don't figure it out.