StitchinByTheLake: pillow

After reading multiple blogs of clever people shopping yard sales and Goodwill and being completely jealous of their treasures I finally stopped in this week at Goodwill in my home town. And there I found this wood candle holder for 75¢! I brought it home, sprayed it with black paint and put in a candle I found hiding in my pajama drawer. Yes, my pajama drawer. Sometimes if I have a candle that smells really good, but that I'm not using right now, I put it in my pajama drawer, or my tee shirt drawer. The aroma when I open the drawer is delicious!

See this beautiful quilt hiding below the mess on top of it? This is called Forever Spring, because that's the way it looks to me. I made it in April, got it back from the longarm quilter last month, and put the binding on it this week. It is huge - king sized even though my bed is queen sized - and it is doubled there where you see it. We had a couple of cool nights this week, and I've been sleeping with the windows open, so it felt wonderful. The mess you see on the bed is a huge stack of photos I decided to go through today. I'm not sure why today. It shouldn't have been today. I had other things to do but I've been

stuck in the middle of this for several hours and I'm ready to stack it all in the corner and ignore it for a while!

Remember the Jacks O Lantern from last week? The back is on, the tongues are on, the final embroidery is done and it's on the hanger on the door post that separates my living room from my sun room. You can see it immediately when you enter from the kitchen into that room and it just lights up the room. I do love it!

I decided this week to make some placemats and napkins. I found the dark green placemats at WalMart and bought the fabric to match. The leaf is appliqued on and the tab on the left is big enough to put the napkin and the silverware. A fun thing to do and pretty fast - I used Steam A Seam II on the back of the leaf and then did a blanket (machine applique some call it) stitch around the outside.

I couldn't find the rick rack I wanted and even though I got a great tip on how to dye rick rack (who knew you could do that?) after I posted last week, I had already found this ribbon which exactly matched the thread in the embroidery. It looks right at home in that chair don't you think? That's all the sewing/crafty things I got done, though I am working on a couple of other things. I spent the rest of my time putting up some fall decorations.

I put some fall leaves, some bittersweet and a small fall stitchery on the television cabinet.

These pumpkins and orange candles brighten up the mantel in the sun room. I'll have to take those off the fireplace insert if we get cold enough to light a fire but for right now they'll be fine.

A few fall leaves for my angel to enjoy.

My grandmother's treadle sewing machine is in the living room. The cornucopia and fall vegetables work well there I think.

I took off the blue and white wedding ring quilt and replaced it with this brown and cream snail's trail.

The living room mantel got some candles and leaves and bittersweet and pumpkins.

This little corner is one of my favorite places in my house. The embroidered verse was made for my husband when he was born nearly 64 years ago. I collect crosses so they're all over my house. And the little basket quilt done in fall colors I made a few months ago. That "antique" clock by the way is about 4 feet tall and everyone who comes in thinks it's very old and worth lots of money but I found it at Fred's Dollar Store!

I made this pumpkin quilt two years ago. It's very large and it's hard to find a place to really display it. Even on this wall I had to pin up the bottom row because that's where my return air vent is. The applique I did completely by hand but I had it machine quilted.