Crafty Day with friends

The night before my Crafty Day I made a few preparations....mainly mangling some clean fat quarters. Here's a photo of me in my messy laundry /craft room with the old, trusty mangler my mother-in-law gave me a few years ago. (One of my favorite gifts from her!) It's wonderful! Much easier than ironing large pieces of materials, works quickly and quietly too! (for those of you who knew me in my younger days...maybe you recognize the purple G for 4 years of swim team in High School! GO CANES!) Saturday....at last CRAFTY day begins! My best buddy, Kelly Sue, in Sweden joined me along with 3 other ladies from our American Women's Club of Malmö for a day of creativity! We were quite productive despite a late start after lunch. Although we talked a lot about our children, we weren't missing them as our fingers were busy creating! Two ladies worked on scrapbooking and one was painting wooden plaques, and another did a plastic bead photo. I made a seafood soup with salad and bread for lunch. Everyone brought something for us to nibble or drink while we were crafting. It was a WONDERFUL day!

Here are the things I worked on...
1- Polar Bear quilt block, to be donated to the FAWCO Friendship Charity quilt...theme this year "Save our Planet"...I did the Polar Bear to represent its decreasing habitat due to global warming, Orcas for the need for healthy seas....
2- finished two more items for the Stitcher's Angel swap...will show better photos of that later
3- made a flannel pj neck pillow for Maya to use in the car (I saw this idea on someone's blog but can't remember whose so if it's your idea, let me know so I can give you credit!)
4- ALMOST finished a UFO...my multi-cultural Santas (need to embellish to hide mistakes and slip stitch binding and add hanging gear)
My friend, Kelly Sue worked on so many great things and I'm so proud of her that I will include her creative projects on my blog for you to see:
1- a pretty, pinky snuggle blanket for her little daughter
2- jeans, jeans, jeans...she patched her older daughter's hand-me-down worn-out knees with snazzy, dazzy patches
3- and she made a cute, cute, cute iPod holder complete with hooky thing! (I was going to make that too but ran out of time)

Someone in our group made a cool-o project with plastic beads...she made her children's photo into a beaded work of art (see above) with the help of a computer program that tells you where to put what color beads. I was skeptical about the project at first but it really turned out neat looking...she's not quite finished with it. But you can see part of it.

Another member brought some delicious Indonesian rice cakes to share with us while we created....she's going to give us the recipe later. And maybe I'll pass it along to you!

Kelly Sue and I spent the night at the summer house so we played until 1:30 am then went to bed....in the morning after breakfast we continued our projects until lunch time then packed up the little yellow wagon to go home. (My dad made this wagon to carry things out to the car...cute, huh?) Our husbands survived the night without us and our children did, too! Can't wait until the next CRAFTY DAY!