Twas the week before....

The fantabulous "twas the night before..." blog hop started today and there are sew many great ideas to try!  I have been crafting like mad here trying to get ready for my bazaar which is NEXT WEEK!!!! AAAAAARGH!!!!! My office has been transformed into Santa's Workshop and me and my elves (oh wait I am the only elf in here) have been gluing and painting and spraying and tearing and printing and "oh Stink"ing when I realize that the paper I need for this project is at home. Of course, at home this elf has been cutting and stitching and gluing and "oh Stink"ing because the fabric for that project is at work. I am having a lot of fun and have actually got a lot finished for the little time I have spent crafting. Not having a vehicle is really stinky this time of year- I am so grateful for friends who do give me a ride even though it takes ForEVER to get me out of Hobby Lobby! One of my littles at church has learned (from her Dad) to say "Miss Bobbie likes Hobby Lobby." It is the cutest thing -with her little girl voice, she says W for her L and has a lisp too. I should record it!

I have been doing a lot of "From this to That"ing - people donate their gently used items and I make them purty again.
Yesterday, with just a bit of glue, paper and my new friend Glitter Blast Spray,

  I changed this poor angel in need of some love to

THAT beautiful sparkling angel.  The music is Hark the Herald Angels sing. It took 4 copies of the song to cover him, but now he's ready for the angel choir again!

Be sure to check out all my friends on the hop-
This hop is so much fun- we all received a gift from the blogger before us on the list! My gift is just perfect and I love it but can't show you yet! my day is the 19th- lotsa hopping to do before then!


Tuesday, Nov. 11

CeLynn’s Sunflower Patch 

Creativity Amongst Chaos

Stitchin’ By The Lake

Seams To Be Sew

Why Knot Kwilt

Quilting Quietly

Can I get half a Whoop Whoop?

From THIS
64 HSTs

I guess that would just be a Whoop. cause I made a Whoops!

I had my pillow all done and started to close it up, when I remembered I wanted to put a zipper and a label in the thing. So, I guess I will take it out and fix it tonight at MySweetMommie's while she works on a spinning star project- She doesn't yet know what we are doing with her stars, but I do :)

to THAT
This pillow is a Prayer Pillow for one of our Graduates

Sew, our Friday Night Sew In will be Mom's Surprise Spinning Stars and me fixing the pillow!



Traveling Stash Give Away

 Make sure you enter my GiveAway- its open until Monday June 18,  10AM. Click under the owl picture to get to the Giveaway post.

You can visit Nadine here

Speaking of GiveAways- I received the cutest little pouch from Nadine. I won it during the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day. Nadine let me choose the fabric and she made this pouch especially for me! I love it! I also received some stitch markers, that I left at home and forgot to photograph. I think I want to make some of these pouches for Christmas gifts- wouldn't they be cute hanging on a tree?

On Mystery Monday over at Annie's Ruby Slipperz, she asked where we get our inspiration from. I found some inspiration in some unusual places this week.

Colors from Emma's Moon

FMQ designs from Amy's blouse

FMQ designs from Pastor's Tie

Inspiration is everywhere!


Have a great Weekend!





I am linking up with

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Actuated by the Hop part 2

SPOILER ALERT!!!

 If your name is CAMom Please do not read any further!!! You have to wait for the mail (hopefully tomorrow's mail) before reading this post! CAMom received her package on thursday!

WORD Of THE DAYMain Entry -Actuate
Part of Speech- verb
Definition- to start a function or action, motivate, to set working
Notes: when something is activated, it is made active. When something is actuated it is moved to take action (or produce a consequence)






To celebrate CaMom's Birthday, SisterMine, MySweetMommie, Abbydoo and I were planning a surprise made by all of us. But as the best laid plans of mice and men seem to go, we were unable to complete said surprise. So I found myself with less than a week before the birthday and nothing to send my very dear CAMom. And then the Creeping Crud found me and I ended up with only 3 days to make something! But as usual- I work best under pressure and was actuated by the over 159 tabletoppers

pinterest page

in the blog hop and this little block from Christine to make my own table topper. I can't tell you how much fun I had hopping with Madame Samm on this table topper hop! So many great quilters and new friends to meet!

CAMom if you are still reading this you are in BIG Trouble! No Peeking! She did good and didn't peek!

From this

Years ago CaMom sent Sistermine and me a bunch of vest and jumpstart panels. I made most of them and put some away for gifts but saved these  to make *someday* for myself, but never did. I also had  fabrics from the same line that I thought about using for curtains in my sewing room but decided not to use. The designs on these panels were sew cute that I decided to make the improv log cabin block with them. It was a very fun block to make! No measuring allowed! In fact, it was so much fun, I made two!



to that!     This one is for My tabletopper



"Cut, Sew and Enjoy" 
I stole the title from the instructions fabric  I used in the quilt

I played around a bit with the quilting - these mini quilt's are great for practicing! I used the sewing basket from the vest as my label and some pink checked fabric from my "supplier" (AKA CaMom) for the backing. I really like the way both blocks turned out and had a hard time choosing which one to send!

I hope CaMom enjoys her mini quilt and knows how much I love her! Happy Belated Birthday!





Actuated by the Hop

WORD Of THE DAY
Main Entry -Actuate
Part of Speech- verb
Definition- to start a function or action, motivate, to set working
Notes: when something is activated, it is made active. When something is actuated it is moved to take action (or produce a consequence)

I have been "bolting" my fabric and in the midst of going through totes, I have rediscovered fabric I had forgotten about. PHD's, UFO's and WIP's have been lurking in these boxes for so long that I do not remember what Iwas making, or in some cases what in the world I was thinking. I unearthed a chain of 4 inch squares, stitched to become HST's - I thought " Cool, I can just cut them and woo hoo! half square triangles." I grabbed my handy dandy cutter and WHOA Nellie- I realized why this chain had been relegated to the bottom of the tote- The person (ahem that would be me) who stitched these cute squares together did a beautiful straight stitch 1/4 inch from each line. Unfortunately she stitched them wrong sides together and since I *know* she didn't possess the knowledge to make a raggy edge quilt at the time- they were not supposed to be that way! I was able to unstitch them and will be restitching them in the near future. I had thought that I might use them for a table topper but wasn't really "feeling" it. I also discovered a few Daisy Kingdom panels that I had always *planned* to make but never did.  The other day, I found this block that Christine over at Quilt Monster in my Closet did and she was so kind to send me the link to the tutorial. As I had the bee block and all these lovely table toppers floating in my noggin, I started playing.... (insert dramatic music here)    I *was* going to show you what I did with my Daisy Kingdom vest and jumpstart, but since my camera battery has decided it needs recharged, and somebody left the charger at home- I can't take pictures!  Grrr Snarl Spit! I will tell you that I ended up making a tabletopper ( hence the title of this post) and if you check back on Wednesday- I will have pictures of my tabletopper quilt!



Until then enjoy the tabletoppers that the Hop Participants have shared!






click here to see all the toppers
in one spot

Thank you for all the get well wishes! I can talk again- my voice came back Saturday afternoon. I am still not feeling up to par, but hopefully the antibiotic will help soon!



a closer look

Last friday I gave you a sneak peek of Abby's Birthday Gift. This Friday, not only do you get to see the whole thing, but I also have Miah's Christmas gift finished too!  I am so pleased at the way they turned out. Sometimes the idea in my head does not translate to the paper the way I envisioned it. but this time it did!

I am a big fan of Susan Branch- (her stickers are my favorites, & I just snagged some of her fabric) her blog is so much fun and her newsletter "Willard" always makes my day. So between Susan and the Treble Clef that I showed you here  I was inspired to make this-   

 and


















I did make the sun's rays a bit darker so they show up better




















Have you read the book Oceans Apart by Karen Kingsbury? It is one of my all time favorites. In the book there is a little boy and his mom is a stewardess. Since she often has to leave him overnight, she sings a song that she made up just for him. Well, that song inspired me to have a special song for each of my kidlets that would remind them that their Aunt Bobbie loves them no matter what.  That is what I used for each of these pictures/sketches whatever they are. Lijey and Ace will also be getting their songs for Christmas. Lijey and Ace's will be a little more difficult in the drawing aspect because Ladybugs and Suns are easier to draw than Dinosaurs and Kangaroos.  You could use any song that is special and anyones name. The only difficult part was getting the song to fit right on the name- good thing Miah has two songs- even then I had to add a lengthy "from" message. Elijah has two songs as well, but they are both rather wordy and his name is short so I had his mama find out which one he liked best.
           Last Friday I was unable to finish Abby's because I didn't have a pink colored pencil. So on Saturday, I "kidletnapped" Miah and we Had to go to Hobby Lobby! We wandered the aisles for 3 hours! When Lou texted to see if we were on our way home, Miah said "yeah right- its just the two of us at Hobby Lobby and she thinks we are on our way home?!"  We had a ball and got some good sales on Valentine's Day and believe it or not -Christmas stuff!  

while I was at work...

From this.....

I work at the local grocery store- and one of my duties is to face the shelves. I like to work on the candy shelves on Saturdays because they are closest to my register. This past Saturday, I was not very busy and was facing the gum shelf. There were only two packs of Orbit gum left in the box so I took them out of the box and proceeded to break the box down to throw it away. Orbit gum has really cool packaging lately and the box that they come in is cool as well. I saw a garland made out of up-cycled boxes here and uh- oh the wheels started turning. I started looking at the other gum boxes and noticed all the colors were very springy. Hmm, what can I use these for?  

So I found a circle  (my coffee cup) and started tracing circles. Some of the boxes had very short sides so I had to search for more circles to trace.

My co- worker saw me searching and said

 "there she goes again, what are you making now?" I really didn't know at this point. I was just cutting out circles. and fingers... I didn't have my wonderful cutter-bee scissors with me so I was using full size paper scissors and well, my finger got in the way. 

(I can now say I have suffered for my art. It really hurt- especially after I forgot and put Hand Sanitizer on my hands... YEE-OUch! ) I just kept cutting circles until I ran out of boxes. I took the gum packages out of all the boxes I could. There were a few I really wanted to use but they weren't close to being empty, so I refrained. They will be emptied soon enough. :) In between customers, I played around with the circles and decided to make an wreath out of them.

I had a glue stick in my purse and we had a three pack of foam double stick tape on the shelf. So I bought some tape and found a piece of brown paper (my co- workers save it off the top of the newspapers for me, its like a thin brown paper bag)  I cut out a wreath shape. Decided it was too big and reshaped it.  I laid the circles out in a pleasing manner, glued the larger background circles on with the glue stick and used the foam tape for others. I double stacked the tape on the smaller circles to give a bit of depth.

 For the bow and the boingy things,  I used the plastic straps that tie the newspapers together- I had to staple those to the paper.  I hot- glued the whole thing to a piece of cardboard to give it some stability.

Voila! a bubble gum wreath!





...to that!

This would be alot easier with circle punches and really fun with some glitter and fancy scissors but you haveta use what you have on hand! :)

My project from friday is still under construction

...maybe this friday I will unveil it!

PS. they are having a giveaway over at My Brown Bag Studio! She's giving away a Fat Eighth bundle of yumminess!