New Needle Felted Brooches

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I HAVE been stitching.  I just haven't had a lot of stitching time lately due to working on my little room and getting ready for my new computer.  Speaking of which, my new monitor arrived and so did my chair cover!  The chair cover, although bigger than my office chair, looks great!  Thankfully, the chair allows for a lot of tucking, which I did and now my ugly black leather (but comfy) office chair is a pretty pink floral print.  Yes, photos will be coming soon!

I did manage to make few new Needle Felted brooches:

I still have my 3 little purses to put together.  I'm planning on getting those sewn up next week.

In other news, my new refrigerator arrived today.  So, I had to take the time to deal with that.  It's a bit smaller than our old one but that's okay.  Scott and I don't eat a lot and it's easier to clean under and behind!  And inside!

So that's my news for today.  Oh, it was snowing all day today too.  Just flurries and it is pretty....wait, did I say that?  Trust me, I won't be saying that come January!!!

Needle Felted Halloween Brooches

I love needle felting.  But I just can't do those beautiful 3 dimensional animals that my sister Kathi does.  Instead, I like to play with the various types of roving and see what I come up with.  My favorite roving is the curly locks.

These are my latest Needle Felted Brooches, all for Halloween:

I listed some of these in my Etsy shop and I'm not planning on doing anymore for Halloween so order while you can!

Crazy Quilt Snowman Dolls

My cat dolls are all sewn up and ready to stuff.  I'll do the stuffing tomorrow and have photos of the finished dolls on Sunday.  I'm teaching a class on Saturday.

For now, I've starting stitching on my Snowman Dolls.  Here's the first:

Do you recognize the little face?  It's the same face I used to use on my snowman cross stitch designs!  These will get little stocking hats with pom pom's.  I think they'll be sweet!  My next one is white and pink!

And speaking of pink, I made a couple of Button Brooches:

The backgrounds are needle felted with a bit of crocheting for texture and added color.  I guess I'm already looking forward to Spring!

Snowman Ornament Needle Felted

I just had to share this sweet little needle felted snowman ornament that Kathi made:

Is he too cute or what?  And he's so soft and fuzzy!  She made him entirely of wool roving and he's all needle felted.  Not sewn together piece by piece.  He's needle felted together!  I've done some needle felting but I can't imagine doing anything as 3 dimensional as this little cutie!

Kathi also made some beautiful needle felted rose brooches:

Gorgeous!  Absolutely gorgeous and so creative and where she finds the time to make things with a full-time job, I don't know!

Anyway, I thought you would enjoy seeing Kathi's latest creations.  I'm still working on making more cat dolls.  I'll have more photos as soon as I get a few more stitched.

Autumn Decor

First, I would like to take a moment to say thank you to my sweet friend, Allison Aller for being my guest blogger yesterday.  I hope everyone enjoyed meeting Allie and seeing her gorgeous Place Quilts.  Allie is the queen of landscape crazy quilting and I so much appreciate her willingness to be my guest.

I've been quite busy with my projects lately.  I tend to start a bunch of different things in a bunch of different mediums, both here at my house as well as at Mom's!  So for today, I'll share my latest in Autumn Decor!

This is my Crow On A Pumpkin centerpiece:

And my Harvest Cornucopia centerpiece for Thanksgiving:

I've been experimenting with soft, muted and understated colors.  I love the bright colors of Autumn but am finding that soft colors are more soothing to me.  Definitely cottage in style and tone!

Kathi has been playing with her collection of roving and other needle-felting supplies.  We've been to 2 fiber shows this Summer and are going to another on Saturday.  Here are her latest Autumn Home Decor projects:

Check out her hand-felted leaves!  Those are gorgeous!!!!  And I love how she added a tiny black spider to them.  I have a 3rd one here but haven't done the photos yet.

My Autumn Cuff Bracelets are done so I'll try to have photos of those for you tomorrow.  I'm so pleased with how they came out!  I used elastic in them so not buttons or other fasteners to mess with!  Stop back to see them.

I'll leave you with a photo of a tiny visitor to my home last night.  I went out on the front porch for a few minutes before I went to bed and found this precious little creature sitting on my window frame:

If you've never seen one before, this is a Praying Mantis.  They're totally harmless and usually rather elusive.  I was so thrilled to see one that I had to grab my camera and capture his visit!

Busy As A Bumble Bee This Week!

I was planning on getting Part 2 of my Art Quilting 101 Tutorial up this week but it's been rather crazy here so that will be delayed until sometime next week.  I know that several of my readers are enjoying it so please don't worry, it is on it's way!

Well, I have DSL now and all I can say is WOW!  I can actually read my favorite blogs now instead of waiting for pages to load.  It's great!  My email program still isn't working but Kathi will get it figured out as soon as she can.  I can do email via the web but I am just a twinge behind.  If you're waiting to hear from me, not worry.  I'll be caught up over the weekend.

I took some photos yesterday of my garden, which is a bit of a mess because I wasn't able to do anything out there last year and this year, I'm honestly not into it much either.  But I do have some pretties to share with you:









I have no idea what those yellow flowers are.  I just can't remember.  I planted them years ago and I love them!

In other news, here are few more of mom's vintage hankie hanging pillows:





I've never used my vintage hankies in this way but it sure is a lovely way to enjoy them!  Mom added beads, charms and ribbons.  Amazing for someone with limited vision!

And then, I thought you'd enjoy seeing my sister's needle-felted kitties:





These are absolutely precious!  They're tiny!  Only about 2 inches high X 4 inches long from the front paws to the tip of the tails.  I don't know how she does anything so tiny!  Of course, I've never done needle felting and I don't intend to try one more thing! 

I do have 2 of these for myself.  She made me one and then made one for the shop but I mooched it.  And Kath, if you're reading this, I love the violet kitty!!!!

Ok, so what else am I doing?  Hmmmm....oh, I finished up my Marie Antoinette Brooches.  I'll have that photo for you tomorrow.  I made some Art Brooches and again, photos coming tomorrow.  And now I'm working on some whimsical brooches with polymer clay faces:



I made the poly clay faces a few years back.  I thought it would be fun to make brooches with fancy yarns, silk ribbon, beads and sequins.  You know, I gotta pile on the glitter!  I have another ready to stitch on.  I probably won't get that started until the morning.  I have laundry to fold and salad to put together and my Nightmare is telling me that it's time for his medication. 

I'm off to take care of those things!  Tomorrow I see my new Dr.  I'm looking forward to that.  I really think I'd feel better if I drop this medication just a twinge.  I'll keep you posted.