Craft

While everybody was around for Thanksgiving dinner, some of the family sat around and played games while others... 

 

 made prayer flags. These are roughly 6" X 8".

Craft night again, mail and that white stuff...

With Christmas fast approaching we got out our supplies of nuts, walnut shells, felt, embroidery floss, batting, fabric and markers to make these little mice.

This is the only one that ended up with a teeny tiny pom pom nose.

Here we are, diligently working away.

Maili made twins - with reverse felt ears.

Just two of the many that got made that night.

And in keeping with the Christmas theme, we have snow - finally.

It is just a light dusting but it should keep up till at least tomorrow.

 Santa Claus popped in via the mailman all the way from New Brunswick. Isn't he just adorable and Linda also sent me the gorgeous green fat quarter that is acting as his backdrop. I love the dresden plate note card.

Here's a close-up. Santa is cross-stitched and beaded on perforated paper. I was the second winner of Linda's giveaway and I am so happy that I can add him to my Christmas tree this year. Many thanks, Linda.

Go visit Linda and take a look at all the wonderful things she is creating.

Craft night

On Friday we had craft night again. This time Maili's friend Tanya, her son Michael and Casey joined us. On the menu we had paper, paint, pens, glue, and a whole lot of imagination. Inchies were made and also a painting.

 

These are Maili's veggies. I love them and wished I had found them in the magazine before she got to them. Oh well, I guess I'll just keep on looking for interesting things to cut up. Maili said she wanted to make magnets out of them.

Here's Casey's. I think he was going for puzzle tiles...

These are mine. I didn't seem to accomplish all that many but then again, I was the one cutting all the one inch pieces of cardboard. I may just continue to make more on my own. They can become a bit addictive. You start to look at things with an eye to scale to see if they would fit in an inchie. I'd also like to make twinchies (those, of course, would be two inch pieces of art) or work on a 1 1/2 inch scale. Sometimes inchies can be very limiting if you find a nice image.

  

These are Tanya's. The one in the lower left is a 3-D spiral. One of the inchies even has coloured stones on it. Another one is covered with glitter and still another one has painted tissue paper for texture - very creative. When she wanted to mount them, I suggested she buy a canvas and glue them on and that way they can stick out from the wall a little.

I just loved the colours.

Here's Michael with the canvas that he helped Maili with. You may remember this painting from a previous post. He was involved in it also. This painting was done at the same time as the rest of us slaved away doing our inchies and after, Maili managed to get some inchies done as well. She sure does work quickly.

And lastly, a group shot. 

How can you tell tax time is coming? - Papers, papers everywhere... 

Craft night and Emma's Tree

My daughter, Maili, has wanted to do a regular craft night. We were supposed to get together to make Christmas ornaments but that never happened. So, in order to keep to some sort of commitment she gave me 12 "coupons" so that we could have craft night (or afternoon) once a month. Last month she wanted to make a floor pillow. I had no need for one but I did help with the drawing of the pattern, the measuring of the fabric and I was the consultant when it came to sewing it together. The top and bottom fabrics came from my stash and looked like they may have been curtains at one time. The side fabric is an old curtain that she bought from Value Village or Goodwill and decided to recycle because she liked the colours.        

This is some of the fabric she was going to use but the top yellow fabric was discarded in favour of the more neutral colour that I had in my stash.

                                         
Clever idea. Since we didn't know initially how big or how small or even what shape to make the floor pillow, Maili decided to use Christmas wrapping paper from the roll. I just folded over one corner and cut it into a square and we went from there. We ended up with a round pillow that was made by folding the square into quarters and using a pencil with a string attached to draw a quarter of a circle. (you hold the end of the string in the middle and then draw a line with the pencil - like you've learned way back when)

This is the end result all sewn by my daughter. she double stitched all the seams since it will most likely get a lot of use and wear. She does wonderful hand stitching so that is what I told her to do to close off the side. I just measured the paper pattern and it is 27.5 inches and I am pretty sure that she used half inch seams and the sides are 15 inches since I used my 15 inch square to cut the fabric. Quick and error-free. It is stuffed with scraps of fabric and batting and it also has an old winter coat that my husband donated. She thinks it's too big and it did take a lot of stuff to stuff it with. There was even enough fabric that she cut a rectangular shape to make another floor cushion BUT we don't have enough stuff to fill it yet.

Other things:
I have been busy doing other things. My two other daughters come home this weekend (one from London, England and one from British Columbia) so I have been trying to get the house in order. It will be nice to have the whole family together since they didn't come for Christmas. 
I have also managed to make another Emma's Tree. I plan on giving it to my mom and replacing it with the one I made her at Christmas. This one is more of a generic colour and can stay up in her room all year round if she wants. 

I photographed it sitting on the new floor pillow before it left my home.  I love the colours and will be making more in just various greens. It has a flat batting (I don't know the type or the name - could be a piece of pellon) and I machine quilted it just to hold everything in place. I also sewed a ring in the back so it can hang on the wall.

Oh, one more thing. I really don't like hexagons and would never make a grandmother's flower garden quilt BUT just maybe I would put a couple together to make a wall hanging like this one -
http://laplandyellow.blogspot.com/2010/02/zo-af-en-toe.html
Click on the photo to see it in all its glory. Simply beautiful!!! Marja does wonderful work. Use google translator.