We were living in Sun Prairie, WI when I first learned to quilt. After a few years of making quilts I decided selling them in craft fairs might be fun. At one of these fairs I met Jeannie. She loved quilts, but had no desire to make them, so we worked out a deal. It turned out – she and her husband made original design Santas and I already had a Santa collection 🙂 . Jeannie’s husband did the carving and she did the painting. We worked out a barter. She ended up with a number of my handmade quilts,
while I was thrilled to acquire 5 of their unique Santas (the tallest is 10″) .
Fast forward to last month when I was teaching in North Dakota. Amy was in my free motion quilting class. She caught on fast and did very well, but she admitted to me her first love was knitting. The next day she stopped by my classroom and handed me a small box with a thank you note attached. Inside was a hand-knit Santa!
Amazing! And now he’s part of the family. They may not be jolly, but I love them all!
What a wonderful gift. Thank you so much Amy!
By the way – Amy has patterns available on-line, and her work in lovely! You can see for yourself at: https://www.knitpicks.com/cfPatterns/IDP/IDP_Pattern_List.cfm?ID=K00509
************************
Also – if you’re looking for a unique, last minute Christmas gift, my daughter-in-law, Betsy, has an Etsy shop where she sells her macramé and animal sketches: https://www.etsy.com/shop/KnotsAndNubs?section_id=24967124
Her macramé is lovely:
and she has many adorable animal sketches available (each one is 8″ x 10″):
If you’d like a sketch or painting of your own pet or favorite animal, Betsy would be happy to work with you. You can contact her at: .
And, for those of you who live in Southeastern Wisconsin, Betsy also has her work available at “There’s No Place Like Home” in Oconomowoc (25 S. Main St.). She’s very talented (I’d say that even if we weren’t related, LOL)
I think hand-made gifts are the best!
SAlly says
Chris,
I agree about the hand made gifts. I was going to make reusable shopping bags for the gals in my family but so far only have collected the fabrics–next year will be different! One year I made all the gals cute little “zippy strippy” bags and put a gift card in each one. They were a real hit and I did not spend hours on each one.