Christmas Crackers and Steampunk Block

Did you all have a nice Christmas? (Or a nice Whateveryoucelebrate?) Ours was an almost textbook perfect day, with the exception of one daughter who lives with her family in another state and could not make it to Utah. Personally, now that Christmas is past, I am grateful for a few days to relax and take a few deep breaths. Now I just have to psyche up to begin taking down the decorations and tree.

In the meantime, I’d like to share the Christmas Crackers I received from our Crazy Quilting International swap, as well as some other personal gifties.

Ely sent me a Christmas Cracker wrapped in this lovely crazy-pieced block! The fabrics she used are all very beautiful, and she really put a lot of effort into making a divine gift!

And here are the goodies that dear Ely included INSIDE the cracker. More beautiful fabrics (and I mean BEAUTIFUL), buttons, lace, trims ... WOW.  Thank you so much, Ely!

My second cracker was from Lorrie R in Canada, and her cracker, too was wrapped up in a lovely block she had pieced. She also included a wonderful (and thoughtful) note.  Lorrie is masterful with details - the cracker was tied up with red glitzy rick-rack and had little purple jingle bells on the bows!

Her gorgeous fabrics were all beautiful fancy solids and incredible Christmas sheers to coordinate and overlay. I love Christmas sheers and have used them quite a bit in my Christmas stitching in the past.  But it’s been hard to find any lately, and these just made me weak in the knees!! Thank you, Lorrie!  You can also see how generous Lorrie was with threads, beads, buttons and more!

And Stacie B., who is a new CQ’er with whom I’ve become friends, was so sweet to surprise me with these lovely tatted flowers. Or snowflakes. I can use them as either, and definitely WILL be using them.  Aren’t they darling? I love tatting, but can’t do it myself. However, I know the effort that goes into making tatted motifs. By the way, Stacie, any time you want to come over and teach me to tat, mi casa es su casa, OK?? Thanks you for your generosity, my friend! And what a cute envelope, too!

And last, but certainly not least, were these glamourous goodies that my friend Diane M from Canada sent to me. You may remember that Diane stayed with me for a few days here in Utah before we drove together to our CQI retreat in Colorado last September/October. The fabrics are lovely embroidered fabrics. The two charms, which are both sea-themed, will go onto my Seashore Valance, which is on a back burner for now (but is on my New Year’s list of projects to be completed the first half of 2011).

Look at those lovely white things! Are they shade pulls? I guess I should ask if they WERE shade pulls, because I can definitely see them as treetops, peacock tails, partial snowflakes, fans, etc. Oh my! I am planning to have a contest or drawing sometime in early 2011, and ONE of those will be in there. I reserve the right to be greedy and keep the rest for myself, LOL!!  :-) Thank you, dear Diane!!

Below is the CQ-ed heart ornament that I made for my friend Leslie.  The picture is of Sheba, her sweet furchild who lost her battle with cancer this past fall.   Sheba was a great pooch, and had been a part of our CQI Retreats in 2008 and 2009.  Just a great companion!  I have felt so badly for Leslie, knowing what a close bond they had.

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This is the block I pieced for our Steampunk Round Robin at Crazy Quilting International.  It’s a 12” block and will be worked on by four other ladies before it returns home to me.

If you aren’t familiar with the steampunk style, it is basically described as Victorian (or romantic Victorian) meets technology and science fiction. Think of steam-powered computers with heavy brass keys, black lace Goth-inspired Victorian clothing, monocle-wearing men with pocket watches.  Gears and ornamentation and clocks and time machines ...  If this confuses more than clarifies, just Google the term “steampunk”.

And so, five us of crazy ladies will attempt to translate the look and feel of Steampunk into crazy quilting.  Now that ought to be fun!