Banner and Pillow Holiday Decorating

My holiday decorating is very simple and minimal; I generally just change the banner above the porch bench to reflect the season or holiday.  This time I added a matching patchwork pillow.  The fabric I used was purchased from Wal-mart.  It was two fat quarters at only $1.49 each, and there was enough fabric to complete the banner and the pillow (there is a solid black fabric used as the pillow backing.)  The fabric print is a holly berry print on a black background, and a mod snowman print on a mint green background.  Black is probably an odd choice for the season, but I always seem to insert it into my projects in some fashion.  The cord used for the banner is a length of red rick-rack trim.  The fabric pennants for the banner were made on a Cricut Maker machine (the 'Forever Fabric Banner' project; I removed the lettering to just use the pennant shapes.)   Though the detail is hard to see in the photo, I also sewed red buttons onto the tip of each pennant; I'm trying to use every bit of everything I have in my stash, and plus the tiny bit of added weight of the button helps the pennant stay hanging down. 

Cat Elf Ornament Cover

This beaded ornament cover features four different feline elves wearing striped hats and collars with bells; the tutorial is available at http://stores.lulu.com/busycrowstudio

Beaded Christmas Ornaments

Usually I don't think about projects that are only 'good' for part of the year (such as Christmas ornaments) -- after all, I figure if you put that much work into a project, you want to sanely display it all year long. But since I will be holding a Beaded Ornament class soon, I have become quite hooked on creating these beaded beauties, and trying to figure out new ways with different bead stitches to get them done. This photo shows just a basic "banner" style, but I've got some modern 'brick stitch', traditional netted, and square stitched types almost finished also...