Every year, my friends and I exchange gifts at our annual retreat, which we call “happies” because it makes us happy to give gifts. This year a few people went overboard in making their happies.
- Cindy made us the 1 hour basket with the cool license plate fabric, which we all used to throw our scraps in over the weekend.
- Rene’ gave us a custom coffee mug with the logo I designed for our quilting bee, a stack of 2-1/2″ squares of fabric and a patchwork mug rug/mini quilt.
- Michelle made us a catch-all fabric basket.
- Amanda Jean made us her work in progress bag, included the pattern and gave us a stack of 2-1/2″ squares from her upcoming fabric collection, Good Neighbors. She also gave me an autographed postcard from Sarah Watts, since I love her illustrations and fabric.
- Doris gave us charm packs and a cute scissors key chain.
- Mary gave us a pin cushion with the tiniest hexagon flower. Sew cute!
- We’re all in the same quilting bee together so Stephanie used the logo I designed to create custom embroidered totes for us. She threw in a jar of honey from her very own bee hives.
Shelly made us perpetual calendars, with each index card date-stamped, as a way for us to track happy moments.
I made a dresden color wheel mug rug for everyone. Click here to see my tutorial on how to make your own.
It was better than gift-exchanging at Christmas!
Terri
Terri's Notebook 
Hello Terri,
What a great post, just love the happies that were given out, Each and every item is so useful. Love the logo that is put on the gifts too.
happy days.
Bev.
I know we talked about scaling back, but seriously I hope we just keep this tradition going. SUCH amazing work.
I don’t really feel like scaling back either! I have a couple ideas brewing for next year, but they are not scaled back. I don’t usually do assembly-line sewing but this was fun.
Thank you for my lovely Dresden color wheel mug rug Terri!! It’s almost too pretty to use….but I’m using it anyway because it makes me happy ;-))
So happy to hear you liked the dresden color wheels I made for mug rugs. And happy to hear you’re using it! I’m already dreaming up ideas for next year’s exchange.