It's Christmas!

First of all, I made these towers of Christmas goodness:

 using these:

Then I made another.  They're outside my front door now, looking very happy.

Then it was time to tackle the angel costumes for St. Thomas Christmas Eve Pageant.

The beginnings looked promising.

When they got put on the angel costumes Lou made, they looked adorable.  I hope the powers that be at Church like them too!

Pillows Pillows

Oh, I haven't blogged in a long time.  So much has been going on.  But in between there have been PILLOWS.

I did this quite ordinary one, pretty though, for my sister-in-law.  The embroidery alone took a long time to do.

  

Then I had to get a little crazy of course, because I do call my pillows Crazy Pillows.  

D had warped his loom with some lovely linen and I had some gold thread, so I started with this:

I made a kind of grid.   Some time ago, from Paris, I received a vintage cloth with birds on it in a lovely blue.  The grid just kind of found its way on top of one of the birds.  

The snapshot doesn't show the real color.  It's a vibrant blue.  Because the bird was behind bars, I added some free standing birds...

Only I cut them out more substantially and then glued them in place where they could look in.  I don't have a picture of the finished project.  It seems a little oppressive to me.  Usually I gift my crazy pillows, but because of the nature of this one, it didn't seem appropriate.  It is lovely though, in the study.

The current Crazy Pillow is for my granddaughter and is not oppressive at all.

I started with this:

It's a design from Austria from a book that my daughter and I got on our Memory trip there.

I added a calico that I'm french-knotting the heck out of:

And then, again from Paris, I had vintage laundry tape with her initials on it.  Wow.  Does that pop against the blue!  I only have 10 more rows of initials to put on.

I like the blue and the red and the freshness of it all.  

This is when the fun begins.  I have to have it ready in a couple of weeks.  Then I'm beginning a CP with all roses on it.  Already excited.  That is, after I finish a huge sweater project for my grown nephew.  Ahhhh.