Serendipitous Altruism. . . Wow! Thank you so much Bea! (holee)

Yesterday I came home to a package waiting on my doorstep. . . the contents of the package unfolded the most beautiful treasure box i've ever laid my eyes on! I think you'll agree!

My friend Bea of Bea's Hive made this and I am so grateful I cannot believe the detail and how textile it is! The carefully placed stitches and ribbons. . . silk ribbon embroidery. . . just beautiful! It goes perfectly on my table of treasures, doesn' t it?!

The star tea light candle holder was from my mom as a house warming gift 4 years ago

*the little lamp was an expensive purchase i made to hmm one of those expensive candle home party companies

*little kitty photo holder is from my sister

*tatted doily & little CQ/quilty mouse from Kathy S. (shawkl) isn't the quilty mouse so adorable?!

*little glass mouse was a purchase i made in LBI while on vacation last year

*the photo in the top left corner was me, my mother & sister in law & her sister in law while on that same vacation

*other photo is of Allan & I while at my nephew's 2nd birthday party

*the 4 glass perfume bottles are all i have left of a larger collection i had that mostly shattered during basically being homeless & many moves.

*The lighted primitive 'garland' is from my friend Rae

*The blue crocheted afghan i made while staying at my brother-in-law's when Allan & I were homeless

*the blue/purple glass plant spritzer was a purchase from Acme that i made when we got our apartment 4 years ago

*the small little tea light candle holder was a gift from my friend Sandee when i worked for the March of Dimes - i was a secretary that helped her with work requests and she is the sweetest thing in the world!

*The glass white "stem" was to another tea light 'lamp' but the top fell & shattered, there is a home-made sachet from my friend Jean (jayardi) that was given to me at our annual CoF retreat

*the coaster is from a set of 4 that my mother bought me several years ago

*lastly! the little fox on the right is from my mom & he's sitting on top of a covered mason jar that i throw change in. *The chair was from my mom's aunt's friend who was giving it away, it's a beautiful rocker with a floral print that i take most of my photos in

Look at little quilty mouse from Kathy of shawkl.com!!! Kathy knows how much i love mice & hamsters :) how adorable!? ♥

Thank you again so much! I am surrounded by such beauty, talent & passion for art, all I can do is smile :)

Wanted: Gifts for Breast Cancer Auction [please]

A friend of mine is doing a charity gift auction. Do you have something you'd be interested in donating? It could be a CQed block turned into a purse, a pair of earrings, home made stamped cards, quilts, crocheted items, cross stitch, the sky is the limit... YOU NAME IT! Any help would be greatly appreciated and I need to have it in my hands no later than July 27th.

Here's the letter from her:

"Hello all,
Do you have any unwanted gifts? Perhaps you really don't care for what you received during the holiday, your anniversary or last birthday. Maybe you don't have a gift receipt to return it or the moxie to ask for one. Don't let these items collect dust before you re-gift them, stow them away until their forgotten or worse yet, thrown out! I can, make good use of these items. My name is Gerrill Furda and I am walking 60 miles in the 2009 Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day Event. I must raise $2500 to be eligible to participate in the walk. Last year I was able to raise over $8300. On of the ways I did it was to hold a Charity Gift Auction. Please consider this request seriously. You likely have something you can donate. Even if it is gently used someone will likely bid on it."

Exciting update! Miranda Bags, Baby Quilts, Crocheted Sweaters, babysitting chinchillas and a Husqvarna Designer Diamond! WoW!

Happy Summer Solstice everyone! Apparently I suck at keeping up with my blog, but in my defense up until the past week or so, I haven't done a whole lot!

When I went to the Circle of Friends retreat in April, my friend Christine was teaching a class on the Miranda Day Bag by Lazy Girl Designs it is a marvelous bag and extremely easy to make. The full color, step-by-step instructions make even the dumbest of us dummies (yes, i am the epitome of the girl who needs those "for dummies" books, hehe!) able to understand and execute each step. This bag is very heavy duty and stands on its own. It is fused with fleece and fusible interfacing. It has 10 pockets that go around the entire inside of the purse. I'm telling you it's fabulous and the pattern is a "must have" for all of us because this bag makes for a lovely gift. It makes a great diaper bag, a great purse or a great business bag! I cannot rant enough about it, so I hope you get the point that I love it! I've made three. On each bag, I did all of the quilting on all of the fabrics before constructing the bags. Here they are:

This is the small version:

"Pockets in the Round" on the inside:

Luna approved hehe:

Wooden handles with seed beads, purchased from Joann:

This is the 2nd one I made, this is the large version that the pattern teaches. I got the fabric with the peacocks and ladies from a friend in Australia. I love the blue fabric, it reminds me of the peacocks and the purple reminds me of the dresses the ladies are wearing. I think this tote is going on etsy :)

Inside:

This is the 3rd one I made for a friend, I love muted colors!

The inside:
I have to put 'bottoms' in each bag to stabilize them even more. My friend Christine was kind enough to have her husband cut out some small and large for me! Speaking of that, it reminds me that I have to make the sleeve for them. I'll get to work on that after I'm done blogging!

Next up I had crocheted a baby sweater and made a baby quilt for my mom to give her friend at work whose daughter had a baby. [-WHEW! Side note: Google Chrome just crashed as i was typing this out GOOD THING blogger save drafts! i would have been so absolutely discouraged to retype everything. Not that i've done a whole lot of typing so far, but it's taken me over a month to even blog so i probably would've been like eh, screw it! LOL THANK YOU BLOGGER FOR SAVING DRAFTS!!!]

Here is the baby quilt. I have said it before and i'll say it again! I LOVE putting eyelet and minkee in my baby quilts. Eyelet gives it an heirloomish, timeless feel and the minkee makes it 'baby' This was given to a little girl. Yep, it has blue in it. I'm not afraid to use colors that move me at the time. I don't believe colors should be gender specific. It only limits you and with sewing and well, every other hobby in the world where the possibilities are endless why limit yourself? So yeah :) This is my interpretation of this little girl's baby quilt:

Close up of the eyelet and gingham, I line the eyelet with white cotton so that the batting does start to pull through the holes:

And minkee almost always is on the back of all my baby quilts unless the customer requests something else. This particular minkee has hearts imprinted on it:

Next, the crocheted baby sweater. This pattern used a cable stitch and I love this particular pattern. My aunt made this same exact sweater with the matching booties and bonnet for my son when he was born. I didn't have the time to do a bonnet and booties, but honestly I don't know many people who go all out and use those these days. Hell, i've heard many people who receive crocheted sets don't even use them either because they "don't want to ruin them" or because they think they're very pretty but aren't 'into that kind of stuff' I, on the other hand, used every single one of the crocheted sets (multiple times) that were gifted to me for Sebastian and if I used the sweater, the bonnet and booties were always on to match! Ok enough of my ranting lol! This is actually a very happy blog entry!

Here is the sweater with a close up in the bottom right corner of the Beatrix Potter buttons I used on it!

cute eh?!

On Thursday, June 18th my sister dropped off her 2 chinchillas: Hugs & Petey for me to babysit for 10 days while she is on vacation #1! I always look forward to babysitting these 2 adorable little guys, because well, they're adorable, comical and silly! I've had a blast babysitting so far. I have let them out at 9am and have been letting them stay out for 12 hours at a time! They're so mischievous! The white one is Petey, named after the bird in the movie Dumb & Dumber (haha! my sister Jess and I love that movie!) the dark grey one is Hugs.

Petey deciding which fabric he'll use hehe!

This was hysterical because they had been out for about 11 hours and decided to stop in their cage, grab a bite to eat and then they both sat there in the front of the cage resting for about 10 minutes! As if they were sitting there relaxing & talking haha! They're too cute!

Hugs climbed all the way to the top of my jewelry case pile... and it's pretty high!

Hugs inspecting the serger

My little chinese dwarf hamster Luna riding Petey for fun

weeeeeee!!!!!

Petey managed to get up on my sewing table and was hopping around up there lol!

Lastly and most exciting for me! I am pretty sure within the next 2-3 weeks i'll be the proud new owner of a Husqvarna Designer Diamond Sewing & Embroidery machine! I also hope to purchase the 4D™ Professional Software! I mean... really! Can you even stand it? The excitement had me so crazy today I paced the floors in my apartment on the phone with my mom for almost 2 hours! LOL! I am looking forward to being able to embroider labels for quilts for charity and do anything I can charity related with this machine. I am so thrilled the machine will be a sort of vehicle for me to be able to participate on different levels and in different aspects in more charity work. Oh! I'll also be purchasing a MacBook Pro Laptop! Finally! I won't ever have to leave home without my computer again!! When I go on the next CoF retreat and other places I'll be able to have my computer with me and post my pictures to my flickr account immediately! I am over and quite frankly have BEEN so over with PC. PC technology & software sucks. I'll say it again, it sucks. It's not efficient and I am so sick of errors and blue screens, I'll be thrilled to be on Mac technology never having to worry about the bs that is PC again! Well... actually I can't fully say that because this computer will be right next to my new Husqvarna and it will be wiped clean except for EQ6 and will be devoted 100% to my sewing machine. I don't want to have to worry about walking back and forth having to USB in and out of a computer for my sewing machine. It'll be nice to have a computer dedicated only to the machine. Convienient, efficient, nice!

Well! I guess that is all for now! Who knows! Maybe the next time I blog i'll have pictures of my new sewing machine too hehe! I'm off for a nap! Happy Wednesday everyone!