Short Term Visitor

We had a short visit from a weeble-wobble type friend before school let out.  My 5th grader said to me at four in the afternoon, "And, Mom, my last bit of homework is a gift for the exchange at school tomorrow."

Argh!

I did a few quick calculations and decided that if I worked quickly and figured driving time as "free time", then I could probably needle felt a gift within the price range of the class gift exchange.

So I got to work.  First I consulted with the 5th grader.  We talked ideas.  We made plans.  Then I set to work.  There are details--like the blue eyes and very red (cherry red, mom!) nose that were definitely beyond my liberty to change--but overall I thought he was cute.  And the felted friends in the cupboard enjoyed their visit from Santa very much!

Art in Icing

These are a couple of scoops of buttercream frosting with gel dyes in them (we were getting ready for decorating Christmas cookies! :)

Blue and red for purple:

Blue and yellow for green:

Yellow and red for orange:

I used a lot of dye this year and the colors blended beautifully!  They look streaky here, which I love, but they did mix well and made great cookie icing!  Hooray for beautiful colors in life!

Finished Christmas Quilt #1

The quilt is done!  Those are the new owner's toes at the top of the quilt.  She has used it two mornings now as we have read from our Christmas story book.  Each morning she has carefully folded it so a different block was visible.  

I love it when a gift is loved!

Here is a photo of the back.  I ended up purchasing wide flannel from Fabric.com.  I tried to find flannel that worked at some more local places, but those that had flannel didn't have the right color or prints.  This cream flannel is nice and shows enough of the quilting to be pretty!

Christmas Quilt

Remember how I made all those quilt blocks in 2012?  The first group has been made into a quilt top and is now on the quilting frame!  Whee!  Mom came over to help with the quilting.  The quilting frame we are using is one that Mom picked up at auction years ago.  It's old, but it works great for this job!