Last Minute Details

A cat pillow to accompany Cat.

Coffee dyed and grunged the fabric with cinnamon and vanilla,

pieced the strips, added batting, and some straight line quilting,

then made the awkward cat and appliqued him to the block.

On the back, a little quote I saw on a tee shirt.

Cat and pillow

were stuffed into 

a bag for a late birthday present.

I found the cat fabric in my stash.

Not sure why I bought it in the first place,

but several years later,

it made the perfect bag for Cat stuff.

And finally,

the third snowman.

Yesterday, I whipped up two more fabric bags for gifts
because
in a Christmas message from Naomi Bulger, she lists
some distressing facts about wrapping paper:

• The making of paper involves the harvesting of trees, the processing of wood fibers into pulp, and the disposal of the product
• According to Greenpeace, every kilogram of wrapping paper made emits 3.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide during production
• Most wrapping papers have very little in them that is recyclable or reusable: they are made with synthetic ink, plastic film, bleach, chlorine, and metal-based foil and glitter 
• Many rolls of wrapping paper also come wrapped in their own film of plastic, while others are made out of (non recyclable) foil
• Laid end-to-end, the wrapping paper thrown away each year from the UK alone would stretch around the equator nine times
• In the USA, the combination of wrapping paper and gift cards at Christmas time contribute to more than 100,000 trees being cut down 
• Another USA statistic I read was that every year, four million tons of wrapping paper and holiday shopping bags go into landfill 
• If you think you can at least put all that wrapping paper to a merry use by burning it in the fireplace, please hold back: decorative paper has been found to contain lead, synthetic inks, plastic film, chlorine, and metal-based foils, all of which release toxic and carcinogenic compounds into the air when burned

   
Whoa!  Had no idea!

I had already made the bag for Cat, 
and used two fabric gift bags from Michael's,
(wish I'd bought more since they were on sale).
After reading the above information, 
I decided to make more reusable fabric gift bags for the final two gifts.

My contribution is small this year,
but from now on, I plan to make fabric bags for most gifts.
I've been in a rush these last few days,
but the bags were a quick job.
Simple and easy--
and if they are reused, a benefit to the environment.

Today, relaxing and visiting with Suzie who is up from New Orleans.
I'm afraid the last project won't get finished,
but my creative energy has about run out.
I'm taking the day off... :)

The high today is supposed to be 28 degrees lower than yesterday!