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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Happiest of Holidays... Peace, Love, Hope





Christmas crafts abound right now in my sewing room. This little paper journal is one of the projects I've recently completed. It's got sewing, gluing, embellishing, stamping, painting- you name it. And it's an exploding book. I'll show you what that means in some of the following photos.



In addition to the book, I also joined in a group project to make tags. Here's one example of that effort on the right.




 An exploding book is one that has many surfaces inside to decorate with images and paint, stamps, tape, and ephemera. Those surfaces are the "pages" so to speak in this book. The fun part is that it folds this way, then that way, front and back, so that it opens out in a long line of colorful paper goodness. Here are the opening images- don't you love the little baker rolling out the cookie dough?



Since the book has so many angles and facets, it's not easy to photograph. I hope you get the idea from this picture. This is just the front side.




And here is the festive paper chaos our journal group shared on the way to making our tags. Paper crafters are like quilters in their willingness to share supplies. And choices proliferate- scraps make more scraps. But it's so enjoyable to dig in and see what everyone comes up with for a design. And, as I'm sure you know, other people's scraps are always more interesting than our own!


These whimsical elves and reindeer added some spark to my tag, along with that wonderful fiber tie.





And the project for a Christmas swap at the Fiber Bee was to make hand-made fiber or other beads. This is the wonderful assortment I got in the swap. In 2018 I plan to try out some jewelry making in order to use these in some kind of wearable. We'll see where that goes!

Merry Christmas to all!











Friday, December 1, 2017

Well, I Swan.... Christmas is Coming!





Somehow we've arrived in December already! Doesn't time just seem to fly by? Going along with the previous stitch-and-stuff post, I thought I'd show you this Christmas Swan I just finished. It's another pre-printed panel that simply requires sewing on the lines and filling with fiber-fill. But this one is practically vintage. I found it on the freebies table at quilt guild and scooped it up. Decades ago I made one of these for a friend's Christmas gift. All the while I was making it, I was thinking, "they are going to think this is a weird gift" and I lacked confidence about presenting it to them. I mean really, who gives a stuffed swan for Christmas? Turns out, the funny thing was, they had seen an expensive white swan displayed among Christmas greens in a gift shop and really wished they could afford it. But alas, they could not. So they were quite thrilled when my white swan showed up in time for Christmas! It just proves again, that hand-made gifts are often exactly the right ones. Anyway, when I saw this swan, it took me back to that Christmas story, so I was happy to have a chance to make a white swan of my own to remind me.




"Well, I Swan" popped into my head the minute I saw the panel, so I had to look up the origin of the expression. Have you heard it before? Turns out it is Old English and used as an alternate way of saying "I swear" or "I declare." More recently, it's become an expression of surprise, used particularly in the South. That's how I use it. At any rate, I was delighted to find this treasure among the cast offs! Now I must get more Christmas projects underway.