>Holiday Tutorials On This blog

>Clicking on words will take you to tutorial; clicking on image will take you to where that image is hosted on flickr.

1. We three trees
2. Pomander Balls
3. Cream cheese Mints
4. Kid’s airplane ornament
5. Holiday Brooch
6. Old fashioned rock candy
7. Kissing Ball
8. Embroidered Felt Ornament
9. Holiday Journey — Not a tutorial, but a fun family activity
10. Triangle Hair scarf; easy gift
11. Yoyo doll vintage-looking gift

>Fall Quilt Top

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I have assembled the quilt blocks from the swap at MJF. This will make a very good sized sofa blanket. Not too big or so small you can’t share with the person at the other end of the sofa. This will be nice for the fall months in the coming years. I doubt I will get it all quilted before this fall is over, so next year hopefully. There are all kinds of styles in this quilt from embroidery to appliqué to pieced and rick rack, yoyos and button embellishments. I am glad I signed up for the swap twice; I like this amount of blocks. I am going to embroider in the center block with the names of those who participated in the swap, and I might embroider some leaves there, too.

>Patriotic Quilt Top/ Happy Veterans Day

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This quilt is a collection of two 4th of July swaps and three different embroidery/signature block swaps. One swap for quilt blocks was over 6 years ago for all star blocks in a patriotic fabrics. They are six-inch blocks to which I had to add a boarder to make them work with the other blocks. The next swap was what felt like the never ending signature swap; it ended after the second signature swap did and after the second block swap ended. The last signature block I got about two weeks ago from an on-going block swap over on MJF. The last five blank blocks are for my family members: one for each kid, husband and self. I will embroider on them later after they each have picked a picture. I am sure it will be a butterfly, lady bug, fairy for the kids; a peace dove for me; and haven’t got a clue what my husband will pick for me to embroider. Even though these blocks where not originally intended to make one quilt, I think they came out fine together. This is a twin size quilt. I probably won’t get this quilted in the near future, but at least it is out of block stage. The spacer blocks have writing on them; I am sure you cannot read it, but it is the pledge of allegiance written over and over again.

What you cannot see in this photo is me and my 6-year-old daughter standing on the stairs trying to hold this up while my husband takes the photo. Those little hands on the top left of the photo are hers. It was funny because as she was standing on her tip toes trying to hold it as high as she could without falling over, she was wobbling all over the place.

>Oya

>Found another site that sells oya needle lace. I have emailed all kinds of people, and they all tell me the patterns are in peoples’ heads and not written down anywhere. I have offered to write patterns if I could see samples, but the answer is always the same: Well, we don’t need them written because we know them in our heads. I try to explain they could use them to make a book to sell, but they don’t seem to understand that when the person who has them in their head dies, so does the pattern unless it is passed down, and this doesn’t always happen if people in the family don’t want to learn the skill. This is so sad and frustrating to me.