may I suggest handmade ornaments?

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to meeee...a partridge in a pear treeeee!

It's a great time of year for cozy hand making. Partridge & Pear is the first pattern in my Twelve Days series of Christmas ornaments.

All the ornaments in the series are hand sewn and made from wool or wool-blend felt. And they are way easier to make than they look, thanks to a magical Sulky adhesive stabilizer.

Using the stabilizer (shown in action above) means no tedious pattern transferring or tracing. If you can do basic hand stitches and work with small pieces, you can nail these ornaments.

I have also curated wool-blend felt and floss color bundles which are sold by Benzie Design to go with the digital patterns!

All available Twelve Days ornaments are in my Etsy and Craftsy shops, sold singly and also in discounted bundles. It's an ongoing series, so stay tuned for new patterns coming!

another set of literal quilt blocks

This time the set is for my friendy friend, Robyn, and the third color is coral instead of blue green. 

I packaged up this block set to her along with a paper HST birthday card and a guide sheet showing many of the possible combinations for the blocks. 

(If you are wondering about that excellent acorn/squirrel ribbon, it's designed by the ever willowy and affable  Jessica Jones  for  Renaissance Ribbons.)

The blocks are very relaxing to make, if you enjoy repetitive preciseness. You can totally zone out while painting and binge watching Gilmore Girls. (Unfortunately I've found I can't watch a Korean drama while painting – too hard to keep looking up at the subtitles.)

Beware: These just-for-fun quilty display pieces are real time suckers. It's addictive. 

And, as I mentioned before, if you are careful to paint each block the same way you will get two designs each time, one on the front and a different one on the back side. I like flipping the set over to see what I got. It's a surprise!

If you'd like to try making your own Literal Quilt Blocks I've included construction tips with the earlier post. 

another paper HST card

This paper HST card is for my beautiful mom! She's a September baby too. Have you guys seen a picture of my Mom?

Here she is with my super cute nephew and her grandbaby, my oldest. I think her inner beauty shines from her face. This lovely, godly and clever lady loves feeding her big family, sewing, soul stirring music, peanut butter and sparkly things. She does not love technology. Or things with motors. I adore you, Moms! Happy birthday from Atlanta!

(HST cards are easy to make with a square punch. See this post for more info.)

quilt blocks. like actual blocks.

Literal Quilt Blocks for my big sister Leigh for her birthday! I have had the idea for this gift (and also the supplies) for at least two years. Sorry, Leigh. Sometimes it takes a while for me to get to things. Your birthday rolled around again and it finally lit the fire under me. (But still too late for your actual day. Doh!)

I sent this block set to her along with the HST card I made and a handy chart with block layout suggestions:

The 4x4 set of painted blocks is just meant to be a fun, quilty coffee table display or to stand upright on a bookshelf. Leigh's a very talented quilter so I thought she'd have fun switching the designs of the blocks around to suit her mood.

I spent a very looooong time playing with this set. It's fun! See:

You get the idea! So many possible combos. You can make each design in only one color, two colors, or use all three. And if you are methodical when you paint the blocks and do each one the exact same way, each time you build a design on the front there's a different symmetrical design on the flip side.

I bought the precut 1.5 inch wood blocks on Etsy. Six sides to each block = three solid colors and three HSTs in the same colors. Any sides with unusually dark or flawed woodgrains got covered with a solid. I was pretty happy with the nice quality of the unfinished blocks. (Tip: Make sure your blocks are all nice and square before you paint.)

I debated greatly on the best way to get the color on the blocks. I thought about cut paper and Mod Podge first, but scrapped that idea (haha, quilt pun) and decided to paint them by hand with acrylic artist paint. Important: Use a good quality flat brush and a careful stroke to paint on the color if you don't want to drive yourself crazy getting paint over the edges. Mine aren't perfect but I decided that lends them handmade charm.

I used a spray clear sealant to finish the blocks. As a project bonus, the fumes gave me visions of heffalumps and woozles. Strong stuff. Definitely use it outside and don't bring the blocks in until they are dry.

And yes, the overspray got on my glass table^. Didn't realize that until I took away the cardboard and noticed it had a nice frosted glass effect around the edges. Soap, water and steel wool took care of the problem. Rookie mistake.

These blocks were a fun project! I'm planning to make at least one more set.

hst card for Leigh

Handmade happy birthday card for my sister Leigh! It's made of half square triangles because
1) she's a fantastic quilter
2) my gift to her is also quilt themed
3) this just seemed like a fun thing to try in paper, right?

But I found it is totally not fun to make a card like this unless you go buy one of these:

Having a square paper punch makes this card a cinch. I picked this up at Michaels. Don't be fooled by the 1 1/2 inch label there. It punches squares slightly over an inch in size, but the size noted on the punch is measured on the diagonal from corner to corner. Weird. Maybe that's standard but it seems goofy to me. I measure squares along the sides.
So the finished card is 5 x 5 inches.

I planned my colors and then assembled the squares like this: whole square on bottom topped by a triangle, which I cut from the punched squares with scissors, just eyeballing it. Then the assembled HSTs were all glued together on a piece of paper by just lining them up end to end.

I used a Tacky Glue pen for the assembly and it was perfect to put just the right tiny amount of glue on the triangles.

Here's the card with the wrapped gift. It's winging its way to her now so I'll wait a few days to post what's inside the wrapping.

In a completely unrelated K-Drama note, guess what's now streaming on Netflix?

Yaaaaaaaaaay! In the middle of it now!

giving my first talk

Putting together a display board for my Twelve Days series of ornaments. It's a good thing I'm only up to number 7 or I'd have to make another board. I'm thinking when the series is complete I'll need an actual white Christmas tree especially for them (instead of foam core).

The display (and these bags of samples) are for a talk I'm giving at the Madison Station Quilt Guild meeting next week and I don't mind telling you I'm a little (VERY) nervous about it. Talking. Out loud. About my stuff. In front of actual people. My sister is currently serving as guild president so she'll be there for moral support or perhaps to heckle me from the front row.

curated color collection/felt & floss color guides for Goose a-Laying

Photo courtesy of Benzie Design

Tada! It's the official Goose a-Laying color collection featuring Benzie Design's lovely wool felt! If you'd like to make ornaments like mine shown above, Benzie makes it easy by providing this bundle for you. Sorry sorry sorry this took so long for me to put together! Better late than never, right? See below for the specific colors and floss numbers.

Benzie felt colors in this collection are:
Aqua
Icicle
Blue
Cyan
Periwinkle
Coral
Fuchsia
Cotton Candy
Copper
Orange

You can also add matching floss to your felt bundle when you purchase, via the drop down menu. Matching floss comes in very handy when you sew the ornament pieces together.

This color collection is the final one in the series of six different wool felt color collections for my Twelve Days series of ornaments, curated by me and put together for you by Benzie Design! Six color collections means two ornament patterns per color collection:

1) Partridge & Pear + Swan a-Swimming

2) Turtle Dove + Maid a-Milking

3) French Hen + Drummer Drumming

4) Colly Bird + Piper Piping

5) Gold Ring + Lady Dancing

6) Goose a-Laying + Lord a-Leaping

You can go to my Twelve Days resource page if you'd like to see and read more. Now for the color guides:

Benzie Felt Color and DMC Floss Color Guide for Goose a-Laying CORAL/PINK sample:

Goose: 

Wing and body back: Cotton Candy

Body front: Coral

Beak, wing inset and nest: Copper

Neck band: Fuchsia

Straw: Orange

Flower and tail feathers: Periwinkle

Egg:

Front: Cotton Candy

Front inset: Copper

Back: Coral

DMC floss colors for the decorative embroidery: 

Goose:

DMC white

DMC black (eye)

DMC 154 very dark plum

DMC 156 periwinkle

DMC 718 fuchsia

DMC 818 very light pink

DMC 892 coral 

DMC 919 copper

Egg:

DMC 818 very light pink

DMC 154 very dark plum

DMC 947 orange

DMC 156 periwinkle

DMC 718 fuchsia

And then of course you'll need the matching flosses to sew the ornament parts together.

Benzie Felt Color and DMC Floss Color Guide for Goose a-Laying AQUA/BLUE sample:

Goose:

Wing: Icicle

Body front and back: Aqua

Beak, flower, and straw: Periwinkle

Neck band and tail feathers: Cyan

Wing inset and nest: Blue

Egg:

Front: Periwinkle

Front inset: Blue

Back: Aqua

DMC floss colors for the decorative embroidery: 

Goose:

DMC black (eye)

DMC 823 very dark blue

DMC 793 periwinkle

DMC 919 copper

DMC 946 orange

DMC 783 golden yellow

DMC 3846 light turquoise

DMC 3844 turquoise

DMC 3807 dark periwinkle

Egg:

DMC white

DMC 3846 light turquoise

DMC 946 orange

DMC 783 golden yellow

DMC 3844 turquoise (number on back)

DMC 823 very dark blue (word on back)

And then of course you'll need the matching flosses to sew the ornament parts together.

Spongebob softies by Thing 2

Summer making has been in full swing recently for my youngest daughter. She's 12. I'm in awe of her creative drive. Once she gets an idea in her head she powers forward and it's amazing how fast she designs and makes these softies.

This is the first Plankton she made. He is now MIA. I suspect the vacuum cleaner might know something.

She hand sewed them from felt, fleece, embroidery floss, and pipe cleaners. She just makes up her own patterns.

I despair of her craft organization skills though. She never keeps her patterns or supplies in any kind of order and the OCD portion of my brain goes into a tailspin as I'm constantly finding tiny pattern pieces on the carpet, her seam ripper in the couch cushions, her needles laying on the kitchen counter and fretting to myself 'this is an important piece, she is going to lose it'.

(Look at Mr Krab's nose!)

It doesn't seem to bother her at all to lose pattern pieces or parts. At least not enough to mend her ways. She just whips out another one. She's kind of like a crafting version of Pigpen. Only instead of a cloud of dirt around her it's a tangle of floss ends and bits of stuffing and tiny scraps of felt. She literally leaves a trail through the house.

(In fairness I have to add this is exactly why I was banned from the house as a preteen by my long suffering mother. She finally got smart and set up a crafting studio for me in our garage to save our living room carpet. So right now she's probably nodding and saying something like 'yes, it's exasperating, isn't it, dearest?' followed by the lighthearted chuckle of someone who no longer lives with Pigpen Sr.)

And lastly, some accessories to go with the softies: a spatula for Spongebob, a ray gun for Plankton (slightly angrier version 2.0 seen here), and of course Patrick's secret box that contains a picture of Spongebob at the office Christmas party.

A portrait of the artist with her big sister in the background there. I was looking at her earlier versions of Spongebob softies and she's come pretty far in three years.

I hope you are having some summer crafting fun! We are cherishing the days. How can it be almost August?