Christmas in July and a Weekend Quilt Show

We celebrated Christmas in July on my
Homespun Holidays list and had fun exchanging Christmas cards and gifts. My partner was Joni and she sent me these presents. I wish you could smell the simmering potpourri and those orange spice candle tarts! I tried to take a close up photo of the beautiful Jim Shore Santa ornament (he's holding Noah's Ark), but no matter what I did it kept coming out fuzzy. I'll have to give it another try later.






Today I spent a few hours at a quilt show in a nearby town. I love walking from aisle to aisle looking at all the beautiful quilts. This time I only took a few photos and shopped at just one booth...







I just loved this pumpkin quilt!












This is a close up of the stitching design done on a quilt using autumn shades. I loved the way the leaves cover the quilt as the "vines" wind their way around.









I can never resist blue and white quilts. I think they're perfect in both summer and winter since they can represent the sea, sky and snowflakes :)










My friend Linda and I were just "talking" about redwork and embroidery, so I had to take a picture of this antique quilt top that someone had found.













This one has the blue design done in cross stitch. I wasn't able to get the complete design in one photo (and there was no way to back up to get a better angle), so I took a second picture of the side...
















This is what the design looks like along the edges of the quilt.














This quilt is made up of redwork Santas. Unfortunately my camera was on the wrong setting for the first batch of pictures so it's a teensy bit dark :(












I was so happy when I saw this quilt featuring embroidery AND Walking in a Winter Wonderland (which is my favorite winter song!!). This quilt won a blue ribbon...














... and this one has the same design. I think it won Honorable Mention. The funniest thing is that just last night I was looking at this particular pattern when I was emailing Linda. It's from Crab-Apple Hill. I wondered what it would look like finished, and today I had the chance to find out :)





And finally, here's the quilt show brochure and my purchases from a favorite local shop called Country Gatherings. She carries many primitive items (which I love!!), as well as wools for rug hooking and other wool crafts. As I was paying she mentioned that if I didn't already do rug hooking, she holds classes. Hmmmm.... tempting, but right now I'm having trouble just keeping up with my stitching, crocheting, quilting, sewing, knitting, needlepoint, etc. Oh, and she sells the BEST homemade fudge :) :)