Peacock cat, Christmas is coming....

 This is the cat that was special-ordered a month ago. It's ready to be sent to its new home, and right on schedule!

When you start seeing Christmas ornaments for sale at Hobby Lobby, you know Christmas is............well, still months away, but that you'd better start thinking about it. The stockings I've been making have used all my tiny light charms, so I bought some more. You can buy some that are about twice as big as these that are tiny ornaments. The ones I like are strung on gold cord, meant to be used as garland for a small tree. And if you're as practical as I am, you will note that you can untie each little light charm and voila! You not only have 12 tiny light charms, you have a yard and a half of gold cord that is thin enough to be threaded in a chenille needle and used as embroidery thread in Fool's Gold work! Hey, it only took me about 15 minutes to untie all those little knots....yeah, I know, I need to get a life.

Brown color study, stockings, Corbin

 This is Doris's block in the brown color study RR I'm involved with on CQ4N. She printed an image of her dog, Maddie, as the center patch. I'm the second to work on this and my additions are the button heart motif, "Maddie", the wagon wheel seam, and the ribbon roses on the brown doily.

 When I did this motif, I first stitched down the button, thinking it would be my guide for placing the heart around it and the embellishing stitches. But when I had the heart stitched on, I could see that I'd done it a bit off center, so I had to remove the button and scooch it over a fraction of an inch. Next time I'll do the heart first.

 These are two of the Christmas stockings I'm working on for Cindy, a lady I work with. Parker is her grandson, and Brielle is his twin sister. I've been saving those tiny little Christmas light charms for forever, and as luck would have it, I had exactly 15 of them, enough for 5 for each of the kids' stockings (the twins have and older brother, Zachary).

 Corbin spent one week of his summer vacation at a science camp where they learned all about different types of creepy crawlies. One of their projects was making a fabric hand puppet that was like a frog, then when you turned it inside out, it was a tadpole. It was just glued together at the edges, so when he got back here with it, I threaded a needle for him and he set about stitching the edges where the glue had missed. Why he is wearing a paper snake skeleton on  his head while he does it, is anybody's guess.

What I've been up to....

 Here are some hearts I've made to have on hand for our CQ for Newbies Hearts and Flowers showers. I will embellish them as  I have time, or as need arises.

 This is the cat that was special ordered, with the peacock theme. I hand dyed my last peacock lace motif, and stitched the triskell-shaped feather design to match

 These are two little cats waiting to be embellished. They'll be about 6" tall when finished. The largest (lying down) cats are about 11" tall at the ears when finished.

Crazy cats

Remember these kitties? They were put up for sale in May in the bookstore where I work, and both have been sold, along with 2 others. And we've taken an order for one to be made. Woohoo! Crazy cats rule!

Outlander RR

We're still plugging away at this RR. It's met with obstacle after obstacle, but we persevere! This block was done by Lauri.

This one was done by Leslie.

This one was done by Maire.

These are the two blank ones that are left, and one block is still being worked on by Jacque.

Christmas in July?

Here's a progress report on the Christmas stockings I've been commissioned to make for my friend Cindy. There are 3 more to piece, for her grandchildren. Those will be the most fun, so I saved those for last!

Brown RR, cards, and a toad

I finished the scallops out to the corner of the patch on this block and it's ready to go to the next stitcher.

I've been collecting counted cross stitch card kits for years, and used to do a cross stitch piece for the insert (not always the one the kit came with). But I thought I'd give CQing a try. Turns out that works pretty well too!

A lady who came to view the quilts at the show we had at the store gave me about a dozen little spools of vintage silk button hole twist. To thank her, I made this card for her. The silk twist is a finer thread than I'm used to using. It's a little finer than size 8 perle; maybe closer to 12, and oh, so shiny! It's what I used on all the cards.

A recent visitor to our back yard.