Here are a couple items I purchased at the Country Living Fair. The wooden spoon was hand carved by E. Gregg Kristophel from http://www.riverwoodtradingco.com/. He had some really great stuff.

The plate on the right was made out of recycled pop cans. Each piece is hand-hammered from the recycled aluminum by experienced craftsmen. The first step is to have the design hand engraved in reverse into a block of steel using a hammer and chisel. They then place the piece of aluminum on the engraved steel and the craftsmen force the metal into the engraving, creating a forward design. After cutting the piece to the desired size, it is edged and then colored to detail. The art form is called, "repousse." I am giving this plate to my Mom for Christmas. You can see more of their items as www.AmericanForging.com

Country Living Fair 2011

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Country Living Fair at Stone Mountain in GA with my husband and daughter. We had a great time. It was filled with antiques, hand crafted items, demos and of course food. Below are just some of the items that we saw at the fair. I will post a few more pictures tomorrow of a couple items I purchased. I loved the chair that was redone and also the hand-carved horse that holds up to a 500-lb adult. It takes him 3 months to make one of these horses and it is made using real horse hair and horse shoes. You can read more about him at http://rockinghorsecarver.com. The cute little trailer was redone and the picture to the right was the inside. What a nice little retreat. The girl putting the necklaces on was from the show Cash and Cari (HGTV). Of course, I had to have one. It is really versatile. You can use it as a headband, necklace or bracelet and for only $15.00, it was a great deal also. I believe they are called Snake Necklaces.

It was a beautiful Fall day and what a great way to spend it.

Wild Thing Pattern

This has got to be my new favorite pattern. I have been looking at it for some time and decided to give it a try. It is so easy and fast. I have spent the last two days making a couple of baby quilts from the pattern. For the first quilt, I used mostly fabrics from My Little Pupply line by Blue Hill Fabrics. The red is from OZ by Moda and the green is from Playful Pups by Benartex.
I used four different prints for the pinwheels. I cut a 5 inch strip and was able to get all the blocks from the four different strips. Inner border was cut 2 inches and the outer border was cut 4-1/2 inches.

The second quilt is made from a layer cake by Moda. The line is by Bunny Hill Designs. I cut the 10 inch squres down to 5 inches. I then cut 2-1/2 inch strips by 8-1/2 inches for the outer borders.

A closer look at the blocks.

The quilt ended up using only about half of the layer cake, so I will spend the next few days coming up with another quilt to use up my scraps unless I decide to piece them for the backing.

Spencer makes a quilt!

My grandson, Spencer, was visiting before Christmas and was extremely bored! Hmm - what to do? He then stated he wanted to make a quilt. My daughter and I looked at each other and decided to let him try. He is six! The challenge begins!

We decided to go with Moda's precut triangles so we didn't have to get out the rotary cutter. We chose Mary Engelbreit's, The Caroler, turnovers. We used two packs. I added borders using a yellow and red from the Merry and Bright line by Moda. Spencer chose a cute Christmas themed backing with mice opening Christmas presents from the Christmas Joys and Toys line by Maywood Studios.

He had fun matching the fabrics together, loved ironing, and most of all I let him take over my long arm quilting machine at the end by himself---made me a bit nervous, but he did quite well at it. We followed a panto (all-over design) to make it a little easier. It was his favorite part. Although the design got a little wonky at times (my husband said it added to the charm), it turned out rather great! He presented it to his other Grandma, Paula, at Christmas! It was a great present for both of us. Although she got the finished quilt, I have memories to last a lifetime.

Spencer makes his first quilt!