Here's why I had to have plastic snow......

Ta dah!!! Aren't these just tooooo stinking cute??? Adorable little cupcake ornaments!




I got the idea here by way of this great blog OnePrettyThing.




I had everything I needed to make these except the plastic snow, so it was killing me that one item was holding me up. They are more sparkly in real life but I didn't have great light today. Ok, I'm dating myself but as a child I remember little snowballs like this at Christmas time. They were vanilla ice cream rolled in coconut and there was a bit of cherry on top. They were frozen and as I remember came 4 to a box. I just loved them. They seemed so special and we only had them at Christmas time. They were frosty and elegant in my 8 year old mind. Does anyone else remember these?

I plan on giving these in a cute little bag to my quilty friends (sorry guys that I had to show them here first but since we aren't planning on doing a holiday dinner till after Christmas I couldn't wait that long - and don't worry I have another part to my gift that will be a surprise for you).

We had a very snowy day here, our second significant snow event of the season. Luckily I didn't have to go out in it. Hope you are nice and dry and warm where you are.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

A rant and some quilty content...

I had plans, big plans to sew today but instead I spent hours running around trying to by a bag of fake plastic snow, sometimes called buffalo snow. How hard could it be to get a bag of this? Plastic snow at Christmas, a slam dunk easy errand - ummmmmm......no, no it wasn't.

Michaels - nope, went to 2 different locations and they were both packed

Walmart - nope,but retail sales look good here too

Hobby Lobby - nope, but I did use the restroom

Meijers (a kinda Midwestern Walmart) - nope, but I did see some cute Shiny
Brite ornaments I might go back and pick up

Target - nope but did buy some cute food ornaments for our "food" Christmas tree - I need to take some pictures

Lowe's Hardware - nope and can you just feel the desperation here?

Hallmark - FINALLY SUCCESS! this Hallmark store sells a lot of Dept. 56 Christmas village stuff and I was told they sell plastic snow year round!

OMG - I just counted these up and realized I went to EIGHT different stores for one 7 ounce bag of plastic snow. Insanity or determination? I'm picking tenacious. Now this took from like noon till 4pm. I drove all over the place and the Hallmark shop was actually the store closest to my house! Why didn't I think of them first? By the time I got the plastic snow I was too tired to start the project and I only had a short time before I had to go back out and pick up my son - sheesh!


Here's a pic of my design wall with the Christmas charm squares....



I'm loving the yellow sashing and red corner stones. I envision a wide yellow border.This is a little over half the top, its going be 11 blocks by 11 rows.

Isn't this flamingo fabric cute? Its a Nancy Wolff.



And this is another Nancy Wolff - a polka dot Christmas tree, I like.



I spoke with Heather who won the Christmas charm squares and she was so excited. She a young mother with 2 small kids and is just beginning to build a stash and wishes she had more time to quilt - remember those days? Don't we all wish we had more time to quilt? Anyway I could tell she will have fun with these fabrics. Hope tomorrow holds more stitching time for all of us!

Happy stitching-
carol fun

And the winner is......

Heather L! Come on down, Heather! I chose the winner the old-fashioned way. I wrote all the entries on slips of paper and had my son pick one. I tried to get the cat to do it but even with the bribe of kitty treats he wasn't having anything to do with it. Darn it was going to be a great photo op. Actually Heather I will get the Christmas charm squares and the gingerbread man pin to you. Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway and joined as a follower. I appreciate your interest and hope that I can keep you slightly entertained, now and again.

For my Sunday stitchy offering I have my youngest son's stocking.



I started this stocking before he was born, since I knew he was a boy (I did the whole testing thing). I wanted a stocking that coordinated with his older brother's but was different. Luckily my choice of Strictly Christmas designs made this possible. The background is the same on both boy's stockings -- a nice warm gold (see my love of yellow sneaks in everywhere!) There are lots of decorative stitches and fibers which really jazz it up. The fiber I used for the windows of the train resembled cellophane and I like the glassy effect.



I went all out on Santa's beard. Tons of stitches that were cut and fluffed. The trim on Santa's coat is one ply of angora -- OMG! I distinctly remember that you could only take a couple of stitches and then it would break. But being the dedicated (read stubborn) stitcher that I am I wanted that look and I was going to get it!!!



I changed the bigger bear into a panda and used a pink rayon Marlitt fiber on the pads of the arms and legs. I did go a bit crazy with the french knots on the dolly's head. Hey there I see no reason to hold back on Christmas stockings. I wasn't going for an understated look.



I do feel a bit better and I truly appreciate all the good wishes sent my way, but I'm still tired. Part of that could be the weather - its cold, windy, gray and snowing. We were suppose to have luminaries in our neighborhood this evening but it got postponed till next Sunday. We've done luminaries for years and it is soooo pretty but we've already got a couple of inches of snow. And the winds tonight are suppose to gust up to 40 mph which turns pretty white paper bag luminaries into infernonaries which cause neighbors to come out of their houses with fire extinguishers - not good.

Well, stay warm and I hope that you have some stitching time available during this busy holiday season. I still need to do some decorating but I'm almost there and I hope to be able to do some sewing on my Christmas quilt. I'll show some design wall pics tomorrow.

Happy stitching!
carol fun

The best I can manage today...

Oh I had high hopes for my week. I was going gangbusters on my Kitchen Sink quilt - all it needs is the borders. And I started laying out my Christmas quilt - all the Christmas fabrics are cut and I remembered I have some cute Nancy Wolff Christmas prints - a flamingo with a Santa cap and Santa in a snazzy sports car. I can tell you this is going to be one busy quilt but I'm loving it! And then came Wednesday evening.... around 10 pm..... I tried fighting it off as long as I could but I couldn't win and boy did I get sick! I haven't been this sick in years. Who knew that projectile vomiting would make abdominal muscles hurt so much? I certainly didn't! So yesterday I spent the entire day laying on the couch counting the hours since I last errped -- I don't recommend this activity for anyone! I was able to keep down a bit of banana and some chicken soup today. I am upright and have spent several hours sitting in my chair working on the picot bind off to my Holden shawlette.



Isn't it pretty? I love it but my brain is so addled that it has taken hours to get to this point - I'm having a lot of problems counting to 4. How bad is that? You don't even need a full hand to count to four! Oh this picture is taken from my chair on top of my laptop. The only reason this post has a picture is that the camera was in a basket next to the chair and I didn't have to get up, cause it hurts to stand up, and cough too -- coughing is not on the agenda today, at all!

Well tomorrow has to be better, doesn't it? Remember I'm giving fabric away on Sunday!

Happy stitching-
carol fun

I loves me a.......

gingerbread man! What I love the most about gingerbread men is that they are soft and warm and never give you any guff about that stack of fat quarters you just tried to smuggle in from the car --- I'm just saying..... they know how to keep their mouths shut- LOL! Anyway isn't this a cute gingerbread guy?



He's made with a brushed flannel body and I tea dyed the rick rack and handstitched on the buttons and bow ties. Now you know I must really like him because while I love buttons I don't like to sew them on. This was a pattern for a potholder, I think in an issue of Fons & Porter's magazine several years ago. And he was sooooo cute that instead of a potholder, I made a dozen on them!



Sorry for the bad angle, this quilt is hanging in my kitchen hallway and there is no room to back up for a better shot. The fabric is an older Sandy Gervais Christmas line that I loved because the "reds" were really more peachy reds which is perfect for my kitchen with the peach tile floor (remember I talked about this floor, it ain't going anywhere no matter what I want). This is the 2nd quilt I made from this gingerbread boy potholder pattern. The first was browns/red/blue and used a border print that had a gingerbread recipe on it. That one lives at Stephie's house now. So you can see how I get carried away with gingerbread men.

And then there is this batch of gingerbread guys.



These are made of cotton batting, two layers sewn together. Then you painted them with a mixture of glue (I think Aleene's Tacky glue), water, instant coffee and cinnamon and you "baked" them in the microwave. (I'm not kidding this is how you did it.) Anyway you "bake" them on one side and then turn them over and do the other side. The cinnamon made them smell so good and they really look like dough. These guys were special and I hand embroidered their noses and made a whole family. They are quite cozy with my polka dot Christmas tree (I have 3 of these cute dotty
trees).



I also made a bajillion of theses little gingerbread guy pins a couple of Christmases when my youngest was in grade school and gave them as gifts to teachers and aides. I went to a retirement party this summer and somehow the gingerbread men pins came up in conversation and several people told me that they still wear these pins and staff members identify each other as people I liked - LOL! A secret society of elementary school staff who I thought were special people.

Along with the giveaway of Christmas charm squares I'll include one of the little gingerbread men pins. Don't forget if you want to be in the giveaway leave a comment on that post. Ok, I'm off to stuff I have to do, like laundry and clean the litter box and I hope to have time this evening to do stuff I want to do, like play with my Christmas charm squares.

Happy stitching!
carol fun

Christmas Giveaway of the Cottony Kind

Well it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. We had our first measurable snow on Saturday and it was very well behaved snow-it covered the lawn and the trees but pretty much just melted on the roadways. And since it was Saturday no one in my house had to go out into it to go to work.

I've done a little decorating around the house and I cut out quite a bit of Christmas fabric for the quilt that I really don't have time to be playing with, but I will anyway! I figure that I need 121 5" squares for my quilt but I cut out more than twice that amount - over 250 5" squares! So I would like to share some Christmasy fabric goodness with you.


There are 27 different fabrics here and there are 6 squares of each. I think they'd make a great scrappy Christmas quilt or for you cross stitchers they would be great fabrics for the back of ornaments. I'm following the giveaway model I've seen on other blogs. If you leave a comment on this entry I'll put your name in the hat once, if you are a follower or become a follower I'll put your name in twice and if you mention it on your blog (and let me know) I'll put your name in three times. I'll pick a winner and post it next Sunday. Good luck!

As for stitching and decorating here is the mantle in our family room.



I have a little Debbie Mumm Santa quilt, peppermint candles and our needlepoint stockings. Before cross stitching, before quilting, I was into needlepoint. My first son was born in January and I got a wild hormonal fueled idea that I wanted needlepoint stockings to hang on the mantle for his first Christmas. And not only did I want one for him I wanted one for each of us. Now a more sensible person would have chosen less complex and smaller stockings but sensibility has never been one of my strong points.



This is the first one I stitched. I figured I would try out my ideas on one for my husband. Now these are really BIG stockings. They measure about 10" across the top and they are 22" long on 18count canvas. My mathematically inclined son estimates that there are over 75,000 stitches in each stocking - oh my goodness - I'm glad I didn't know that before I started. I used lots of different fibers and decorative stitches.

This one has blending filament combined with the wool for a sparkly snow effect. The tails on all the rodentia shown here is a 3 dimensional loopy stitch that you shear and contour with your scissors. I'll show another stocking each week until Christmas. The ones I made for the boys are the most elaborate and the one I made for myself is simplest. I stitched these over 20 years ago. They are handpainted canvases from a company called Strictly Christmas. Back then I think I paid about $75 to $80 for each stocking. I have no idea how much investment I had in the fibers but I know it was a sizeable amount. However I checked out these stockings the other day and found out that the handpainted canvas like these goes for $250 to over $350 -OMG - there is no way I could justify needlepoint at those prices. I still have a sizeable stash of hand painted needlepoint canvas from some well known designers. Hmmmmm...maybe I should figure out how to put them on ebay. Oh another job for another day...

Hope your holiday preparations are going well. I still have a tree to get decorated and lots of errands and shopping that need to be done but I am deluding myself that I still have lots of time to get everything done - hey its my reality not true reality.

Happy stitching -

carol fun

Oh I did it again.....

I made another 22.5 Degree Shawl. This is my third one and I think there will be more of these in my future. They are addictive.



I did this one with that Amazing yarn by Lion Brand. I used all of 2 balls, about 300yds. The colorway is Acadia. The only place I've seen it is the Joanns in Centerville, OH. I love love love those scallops on the edge.



I spent time today cutting 5" squares of my Christmas fabrics. There is a great mix of colors and styles. Red, forest green, limey green, gold, hot pink, turquoise, aqua,orange. And there are some great contemporary prints - Riley Blake, Kate Spain, and some retro looking prints. Notice I said retro not vintage or antique - the prints remind me of wrapping paper from my childhood and I'm not old, I'm retro! LOL --so much more hip, dontcha think?

And you have to see this wonderful chicken fabric I found at Fabric Shack. I practically squealed when I found it -- ok maybe I did actually squeal - but come on it is wonderful!



It is from Timeless Treasures. Now there is a border stripe too in the red, black and yellow that would make great valances for a kitchen. Unfortunately my kitchen can't handle it. I have a peach ceramic tile floor which is looking pretty dated but the powers that be in this house would never even contemplate replacing it, so I work with it and continue to entertain visions of my dream kitchen which would be black, white and yellow - maybe some day.

Happy stitching -
carol fun