Teddy Bear Tea

Teddy bears & their friends gathered with much excitement.
Each one anxious to find their new favorite person.
Even one of the owls from Hogwarts flew over to join in the fun.
Quilters ooooed & awwwed.
Josetta's little wizard Pooh was the first chosen for a new home, by a young boy who was invited to come & choose one, by one of the adoption organizations here in Anchorage.

Gail's quilt had a disclaimer written on the back side, "There are no tigers in Africa".
I thought these guys were cute.
Lin always has a fun hat on, so her bear had to have one too.

Maggie brought this little postquard she made for her sister. She took my Threadplay class, & she wanted to show me what she did with what I taught her. Isn't her cardinal great?

I'm Having Another Grandbaby!

Here they are the new parents to be, on their wedding day nearly 2 years ago. Brandon & Laura.

He is my firstborn son, & now he's going to be a daddy in July. Guess I better get busy with my quilting, because another grandchild means more quilts to be quilted! This will be the first on Laura's side! 2nd for us.

To answer questions about my previous post, Michelle wanted to know how I made the pin. It was just hot glue actually. My friend Jackie had a tiny hot glue gun & these neat glittery glues that I wanted to try. I figured if I didn't like how it turned out I could just peel it apart, but it seems to hold pretty well, & I'm not sure I could peel it apart unless I warm it up with a heat gun or something. I think if I understood the other question correctly, the answer is the Teddy bear's coat is made from a crocheted from a chenille yarn.

What I've Been Doing With my Weekend

This 1st photo is the collage pin I made on Thursday at my Calendar Girls meeting.. The little Miss Teddy has had a bath & I crocheted a coat for her, as she was getting cold with nothing but a hat to wear. Now she's ready for next Thursday, & the Teddy Bear Tea, where she'll get sent to a local charity, to be given away for Christmas. I've enjoyed having her here.

I was up early this morning, to pack up & get ready for my TrunkShow/Lecture at the Museum.My studio is a mess now.
I did a pared down version of my trunk show, & a short demo on threadplay & fabric beads.
This was during a break, before my lecture for the Weavers & Spinners Guild. I think that all of us that are addicted to fibers of all kinds, must also be afflicted with ADHD. These people were knitting, or weaving, or tatting, or something... throught their whole business meeting. I'm the same way. I can't focus without keeping my hands occupied with needle & thread or beads or something.

This gal, Sally Schoenberg was making this amazing bobbin lace.

Those are straight pins that the fine thread is being woven around. It blew me away.

My lecture went well. I got lots of laughs, & lots of"thanks for being inspiring". They were a very nice bunch of people.

Warren & I went to the movies this evening. We saw "Stranger Than Fiction". I've never been a Will Ferrell fan. Most of the time his movies are a little too whacky for my taste, but this one he was more the straight man. It was a low key, sweet & funny (not hilarious) movie. Just a nice

film. I really liked it.

We saw the "Santa Clause #3" last night. That was cute too. Better than the 2nd Santa Clause. So if you loved Santa #1, you'll like this one too.

Calendar Girls Meeting

This is my friend Jackie. She is one of the neatest women I've ever known. We had our Calendar Girls meeting at her house today. Jackie & her hubby Gene are going to be snow birds & head south to Texas for the winter. I am going to miss her a lot. She has been a friend & a mentor for me . I'm trying to convince her she should blog from TX. so we can keep up on what she's up to.

Gene participated in our meeting today, because we were playing with jewelry, which is his specialty. He used to make silver & gold jewelry. He helped us with making jump-rings,
& drilling with a dremmel.

I've come to the conclusion that we're all a bunch of Magpies, because we all collect lots of stuff!

I'm not quite done with the things I worked on there, I'll post them later when I'm finished.
When I came home, I HAD to take some pictures of the wonderland of crystals we have outside right now. We've had over a week of low temps, & no breezes. Eveything is covered with the snow that fell before the temps dropped, & crystals of ice have grown all over everything.

I thought the Cowparsnip made a lovely crystal flower.

The blanket of crystals cover everything.

When I brushed them off of my car on Monday, they just floated like delicate feathers, & made a fine crackely noise like corn flakes being poured, as they landed on the ground .

The dishwasher man came to repair the fancy dishwasher. Now it needs a new motor! So another couple weeks of waiting, GRRRRR! I think Meile should give a whole new dishwasher!

We stopped by & saw Aunt Ethel this evening, she's doing well.

ART MEME

OK! I'm in on the Art Meme. The 1st 5 people to respond to this post will recieve a piece of my Art.

As I'm at work right now, I'll add the link to others later.

Ok, it's later now, here's the link from Debra's & Kim's & Linda's.
I think I goofed. Sorry folks.

Now what I was supposed to say was if you accept this challenge then you too must make 5 pieces of art & offer it up to the 1st 5 people who respond & they inturn do the same. This way it spreads the love, the art & the fun. If I got it right. Guess I better write to those who replyed already. & I should've stipulated NOT MINDY! You've got something coming already! & besides You have to have a BLOG! Come on Min, start blogging your glass! Mindy does beautiful fused glass. So if you want in on this Min, you have to make 5 pieces, to give away to the 1st 5 people to respond on your blog! Some of your Pins would be perfect for this!

So if you sign up on ...say 3 of these offers, does that mean you meust offer 15 pieces ?

Sunday Afternoon Quilting

I took one of those red & white not so perfect star blocks, & turned it into a little quilt to go with a little teddy bear, for the ALCQ Teddy & Friends Tea coming up in 2 weeks.
The back side shows the quilting design. I think the teddy likes it, but she needs a little sweater too, so I'll get out the crochet hook, & whip one up for her, then she'll be ready to find her new home & new friend for Christmas. This was a fun little quilt, From start to finish (not including the star block piecing) it only took me a couple hours.

Here are the fabrics, & my design for my friend Christy's Irish Dance dress.
Sketch colors =fabric color:
Black=black
Silver=light blue
blue=dark blue
white= the holographic white squares

Mindy stopped by with Christy & Hope to drop off the fabric, & sketch, & Mindy wanted snowflake lessons. She's going to try to use some of them in her fused glass designs.

Guess I better go get ready for bed. "Sigh" , back to work in the early morning. I'm really hating my job these days.

A Winter Saturday

Here's a quick post about what I did yesterday.

This little quilt top was made by Bonnie Walker, a member of our quilt guild, ALCQ . She donated it, & I took it home to finish for the Teddy Bear & Friends Tea that happens in November. We make little quilts to go with teddy bears or other stuffed animals, & they get donated to local organizations to be given out to kids in need for Christmas. I thought the flying geese top would be perfect for the little gray goose/ugly duckling that I had. So in just a few hours I had it quilted & bound. I have to say, I felt really rusty when I first started quilting on it. It's been a while since I'd quilted anything larger than my Journal quilts!

Broccoli was setting in our bedroom, bird watching again. The bird feeder is on the upper level above this window, so the birds frequently spend time on the ground here, by this window. When we start our landscaping, I want to put a little water feature outside this window. Moon rise was beautiful last night. The photo is a little blurred, but it gives you an idea of how pretty it was.

Experimental Felting & Lampshade

Yesterday I did a little playing & some experimenting in the studio. I also just now found out, that in using Beta blogger I can post more than 7 pictures in one blog! I have 8 here. The 1st is just a few fabric beads I made, in prep for part of my lecture & demo next weekend at the Anchorage Museum.

The 2nd is a piece of cheese cloth right after I painted it with fabric paint.

Then I layered on bits of silk rovings & a little bit of Angelina Copper Flash (not heat bondable type). I've never done regular felting, & don't know if this is even how it's supposed to be done, but I was experimenting, & this is what I did.
I used some Orvis soap in a little warm water, drizzled it over the whole mess, rolled it up in a plastic bag, then kneaded & rolled it for about 15 minutes.

It was something of a matty mess when I finished, but I liked the texture & color. Note I had to repaint some of the cheese cloth, because I hadn't waited for the paint to dry, & it washed out!

I dried it out, formed it over some copper mesh, & stitched it around the edge on my sewing machine to keep it on the metal. Made a couple of little beads from some of my painted & burned dryer sheet, & stuck them in between the fibers.

& turned it into a lampshade for my little Fenton glass lamp, whose glass shade was broken in our last move!

The little bowl, next to the lamp is one of my threadplay bowls that I made a while ago.

Winter Day in Alaska

You know winter is really here in Alaska when the bird feeder can go back up. We HAVE to take them down in spring time because of the bears.
My Brocolli cat loves bird watching.


It was such a pretty day yesterday. I spent most of the day near the fire watching tv & just vegetating. I found the Beta button last night & switched to Beta. It does seem to be easier, & I don't seem to have lost anything by switching. I had saved my template just in case, but when I logged on this morning, it looked the same on the surface, & loading pictures was much faster.
This last image is a set of 7 antique copper stamps thatI got from Ebay. There were 2 sets that I wanted, but somebody else wanted them too, & after I bid high enough to get this one, I decided I didn't want to spend that kind of money to get both sets.

ChEMo & WIP Wed on Thur

My sister Em, gets her 1st Chemo today. Please whisper a little prayer for her that all goes well.
Sorry I didn't get my WIP Wednesday posted on Wednesday. I worked the past 3 days, then we went to the Moose's Tooth for soup & breadsticks for supper. The gAHrlic-tomato soup was good, & so were the warm cheezy bread sticks.
When we got home, we went out & soaked in the hot tub under a lovely moon. It was a chilly 18 degrees Farenheight (what's that in centigrade? about -10?, I used to know the calculations). Needless to say, by the time we got in the house I was so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I'm posting it today.
I'm staying home today, even though it's a Quilt Guild day. I'd rather hibernate. I've started a fire in the wood stove & will enjoy every minute of staying home!

For my WIP (works in progress), I don't have much exciting to show. The white paper on the wall has some pencil sketching on it. Can you see it? Not done yet.

The green thing will be a small lamp shade when I'm done. It may stay in the shape it's in until next weekend when I do my lecture at the Anchorage Museum. I'm talking for the local Weavers & Spinners Guild. They were interested in some of my threadplay & embellishment techniques, so I'll be doing a trunk show & Demo for them.
The last 2 pictures are my young friend Christy, (from my last posting), wearing her friend's Irish Dance Dress. She borrowed it to show me an example of one, so I could see how they're constructed. I've drawn up a design for her, & last Sunday we went & bought the fabrics. She has them all, right now. I let her take the drawing home so she could study it, while she fondles her fabric for a while. Christy is a quilter too. I taught her & both of her sisters how to quilt years ago, so she appreciates a good fondling of fabric.

So that's all that's happening here. I had decided I would switch to Beta Blogger this weekend, & the button is no longer on my blog! It's been there for weeks, when I didn't have time to mess around with it! Oh well, such is life.