The Pincushion Exchange...

...and here is the one that I brought home. Isn't it adorable? I can keep my scissors and bobbins and extra needles in the pockets and put my thread clippings in the bag....or I guess I should say Kassidy can, because she fell in love with it when I brought it home and put it next to her machine!
Below are pictures of all the other pincushions there....(except the one I made from yesterdays post).....enjoy!

Isn't everyone so talented? It was really fun to see what everyone came up with.

I had another exchange 2 days later with my Yo-yo Mama's. We exchanged Hot Pads for our Christmas party .....

I'll show you the one that I made tomorrow.

Pincushion Tutorial......

....after my long break for the holidays. I didn't mean to be away so long but everything just piled up on me!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that you are still enjoying the holiday season.

I thought I would show you the things that I meant to post before Christmas....like the pincushion that I made for our "Clothesline Club" Christmas party. We decided to have an exchange and bring potluck.

....here are the pics of my pincushion that I made to exchange.....

I had about 2 hours to make one, so I grabbed my container of leftover 1" strips (I save the leftovers just for small projects like this) and stitched 12 of them together. I then trimmed my strips that I had sewn together to a 6 1/2" square.

Do you remember when I showed you how I have been making cake plates from vintage finds? Well....I decided to make a tiny cake plate for this pincushion....as we know....everything looks better on a cake plate!

I chose 3 ric-racs out of my stash....a large white chenille.....

a medium brown velvet (from Riley Blake).....

and a small green.
I topstitched the ric-rac onto the 6 1/2" square with matching thread...I stitched the white ric-rac about 1 1/2" from the edge...
then added the brown ....and last..... the green.

I really like how the three different textures, colors and sizes of the ric-rac went well together.

Remember this wool /felt that I showed you on a previous post? I bought it at Material Girls while shopping with my BFF Nanette. Don't you just love the luscious colors?

I wanted to add even more texture to my pincushion...so I cut a 6 1/2" square of the light brown for the back and stitched it to the front of the pincushion with a 1/4" seam...(right sides together)
....I left an opening to turn.

I used a funnel to fill the pincushin about half full with silica sand for weight. Silica sand is used in tilework and sandblasting and probably more...I just don't know what...(other than filling pincushions of course!) You can get it at the hardware store, although I get mine from Mr. Honey. He uses it at work for sandblasting.

I cut into more of the wool/felt to make a flower and leaves for the top corner of my pincushion. It's fast and easy...no fraying of the edges of the wool/felt.

I cut 3 circles....these are approximate measurements....red-3"....brown-1 3/4"....white-1 1/4".

I then cut a flower with curved edge petals out of the red circle and a flower with squared edge petals out of the white circle.
I cut 2 leaves out of the green. I stitched veins on the leaves with 3 strands of floss....then I layered everything and stitched them together from the back. I added a blue button in the center of the white flower.

I stitched the flower and leaves to the pincuchion top...hiding my stitches behind the flower.

I stuck a few of Kassidy's heart pins into the pincushion....they look cute in there!

Then I added some ribbon and tule around the pedestal of the mini cake stand after the glue had completely cured.

It's all complete and ready to wrap up for the exchange....

I added a homemade card to wish the recipient of my pincushion a Merry Christmas.

Stay tuned tomorrow for pics of the pincushion exchange.....

Kassidy's piano...

.... and her recital. Kassidy has been playing the piano since she was 5 so she is actually very good. I just love listening to her practice every day. I grew up in a house where someone was ALWAYS playing the piano....our parents required all of us kids to take 2 years and then continue on by our choice.
Two of my sisters, Debbie and Jennifer did continue on and both are excellent players. Debbie is my oldest sister and we spent many ours together at the piano. She would play and I would sing. Those were happy times for me and so I love that Kassidy enjoys playing and does it so well. Mr. Honey is a very talented musician and she inherited that from him.

Our home has been filled with the sound of her playing carols and it really brings the spirit of Christmas into my heart. My favorite that she plays is a gorgeous arrangment of Joy to the World...it just takes my breath away. Such a beautiful song and a joyeous message to the world.

I taught a new block yesterday at Material Girls. It's the newest addition to my Paper Doll quilt....and it goes right along with this weeks Piano Recital/Hair Dryer theme.

I had of course already drawn the block and chosen the fabric before I found the Hair Dryer Bonnet at Aunt Elsie's last week....it was so much fun to find it then...right when I was in the middle of appliqueing a hairdryer!

The one in my block is like my Grandma Cranes. Hers is teal and white and still works. She still uses it. She likes to have her hair rolled and combed out. My Grandma Crane is 93 and my Grandma Ewell is 96.....I know I'm really lucky to still have both of them.

I used the new scrumptious velvet ric-rac from Riley-Blake to trim the bottom of the robe. I love that ric-rac and it comes in lots of yummy colors...check it out here...

The real Kassidy paints her toenails once a week (but not under the dryer) .....she has used Grandma Cranes hair dryer while at our luncheons there and I know I took pictures...but I couldn't find them anywhere so I can't show you. You'll just have to imagine how cute she looked in BIG jumbo size pink rollers under the hair dryer. She has VERY curly hair, so she uses big rollers to relax the curl a bit....we all know that she obviously didn't get her curls from me, but also inhereted them from Mr. Honey.

I really had fun with this block...I hope you like it

Vintage Monday - Hair Dryer

Today's Vintage Monday is all about hair dryers....the above photo is one that my Dad took of me in 1966...under the hair dryer.

Sitting under the hair dryer was a Sunday morning ritual for me. I do NOT have naturally curly hair so my mom would roll my hair in curlers early Sunday morning (and other special occasions) in preparation for church.
I really don't know how she did it...I had 3 older sisters and also 2 younger brothers at the time of this photo and we were all put together (most of the time in dresses sewn by mom...I mean the girls LOL) and sparkly clean for Sunday services.

There are a couple of reasons that I'm showing this photo on Vintage Monday....
from the very beginning of my blog just this last February, I have put this picture at the bottom of every page because I think that the hair dryer bonnet (yes, that's what they're called!) looked like a pink beehive and of course both the beehive and bonnet go right along with my company name...Bee in my Bonnet.

I thought I would give you a visual of all those " creative ideas buzzing around in my head, just trying to get out"......the reason for the name of my company.

I have had several comments and questions regarding the picture....most popular one being "who is that and what is she doing?"....so I thought I would answer, just in case anyone of you are wondering....
yes it's really me (wearing quite attractive underwear LOL) and as for what I am doing....I am reading while waiting for my hair to dry so my Mom can take those scratchy pink curlers out of my hair....I'm sure alot of you remember those!
The hairdryer worked by hooking the hose onto our vacuum and switching the vacuum to blow OUT air....instead of in.

Any whooo...long story NOT so short...are you still with me ladies?....Looky what I found last week at Aunt Elsie's right before our Dear Jane luncheon.....

Oh yes....mint condition....still in the box! A vintage hair dryer bonnet (or Airjet Hood) as this one says.
Of course I didn't even hesitate about bringing it home:) When I showed it to my Dear Janiac friends...they thought that I should do a reinactment of the origanal photo with me wearing my new/old purchase and put it on my blog....LOL!....I said, "Do I have to wear my underwear?"

Okay...you really have to click on these instructions that were included in the box and read the last paragragh that begins with..."Be sure to..." really? Dishes, babies, pets and/or frozen food? Each one is quite entertaining to visualize....don't you think?

I really get a kick out of reading old ads or instructions....they make me giggle.

Speaking of visuals.....I think it's only fitting that I display this in my studio to remind me of the buzz of ideas that come out of my head and into the quilts that I create....and to remind me of Sunday mornings under the hair dryer long ago. You know... I'm getting close to being vintage myself!

Leave a comment and tell me what you think about today's Vintage Monday....Did you sit under the hair dryer waiting to take out the curlers? If so, what did you do while waiting? I'd LOVE to hear from you.....happy Vintage Monday everyone!

Work/Play Day

Yesterday....I spent the day playing with these fabrics and ric-racs to make a new block for my Paper Doll Quilt/Applique Club. So I guess you could say I worked.... but to me, drawing and cutting out fabric is play.

Kassidy's home every day with me now starting this week until after the New Year because she is off track from her year round school. Now that Sterling's in Jr. High, he no longer has time off because his school is traditional schedule...so it's just me and Kass in the day.


So as per her request....we made sugar cookies.

While I worked/played with my fabric, Kass decorated the cookies with frosting and sprinkles.....she layered them between wax paper and stacked them in Tupperware to keep them fresh (preparing for Sterling and his friends came home from school and eat them all!) Of course, she saved some for her Dad.

This was the view outside my window....still VERY cold here...about 12 degrees.

And still more snow throughout the day....on and off.

This was the amount of NEW snowfall that we woke up to in the morning....about 6 inches. I measure it on the top of the railing on my back deck.

It's been snowing here since Saturday night and that's about how long it's been since I've seen Mr. Honey...poor Mr. Honey has the task of putting snowplows on 18 trucks.....and putting salters (for slick roads) on 4 more trucks, maintaining ALL of those trucks, plows and salters whenever they break down...PLUS...he also has to plow snow. Mr. Honey has a very busy schedule when it snows.

So Mr.Honey works in the snow while we play in it.....no fair.

This is how we played in it yesterday......SNO-FLINGS!!!! I found them on Monday while out doing a little shopping. YAY! When I saw them I yelled SNO-FLINGS!!!! and threw 4 of them in my cart. Kassidy just looked at me and said "what are sno-flings?"

Trust me, she knows what they are now and so did Sterling when he got home from school.

Does anybody out there remember sno-flings?

My brothers and sisters and I along with my cousins and every other kid in the neighborhood, used to have a total blast in the snow with sno-flings.

I have looked for these for several years for my own kids and never found them....until now.

You can find them here and here...

First you pack snow into them by tamping them down into good crunchy snow....

Like this......

... then you fling it ....aiming at the most annoying kid that you know! lol (that's what we did as kids)....yesterdays snow was a little too fluffy to make really good snowballs but was still fun to fling!

I noticed one thing they have added to the sno-fling now is a little squeaker that goes off every time the snowball is released from the fling....it sounds cute but I'm glad they didn't have those on the original flings in the 70's....after all, there is something to be said for the element of suprise when you're throwing a snowball at your brother.

When we were kids, our favorite thing to do was race to be the first one out onto the freshly fallen snow that hadn't been walked on yet (by the sheep, cows or horses)......and plop down backwards to make snow angels, roll BIG balls for snowmen and make little circles all over the snow with our sno-flings.

We had PLENTY of land on our farm to stay out as long as we wanted to keep looking for undisturbed snowfall.

When Mr. Honey came home yesterday about lunchtime for a few hours of sleep before going out again....Kassidy ran outside and "flung" snow at him as soon as he got out of his truck....he looked at what was in her hand (he didn't know I had bought them)....his eyes lit up and with a big grin on his face, he yelled..."SNO-FLINGS!!!!".....I love that man.