I was so pleased with the way the embroidered gift bag in this post turned out that I decided I wanted to make some more. To that end, last month, I stitched up three more embroideries. The two done in redwork were turned into these gift bags which were completed late last night (or rather very early this morning): The…
One day last week, I was tracing some embroidery patterns onto muslin with the pattern and fabric taped to the window of the back door. I commented how much easier it would be to trace them if I had a light box and wished there was a way to make one that wouldn’t cost too much. A few minutes later,…
Heidi, one of the wonderful ladies who co-host the Friday Night Sew In, drew numbers of all those who signed up for last Friday’s Sew In and I won! The prize is a cute little FNSI pin cushion that Heidi made and a four pack of beautiful Verna fat quarters. I’m already thinking up things I can make with them.…
Last night during the FNSI, I didn’t get as far along with the Disappearing Nine Patch quilt blocks as I had hoped. Things came up during the week and I didn’t get all the blocks sewn together until late Friday afternoon. Most of Friday evening was then spent pressing and cutting apart the nine patch blocks. Here is what the…
One way to keep energy costs down is to make the most of your oven each time you use it. For example, I rarely bake just one loaf of bread. Five loaves will fit on my oven racks and so that’s how many I bake at a time. Another way to make the most efficient use of the heat in…
As you’ve probably gathered from previous posts, I’ve been doing a lot of sewing lately. Mostly on the Christmas gift bags, but also on some other projects that I had either purchased the fabric for and not gotten around to making them or had actually got the project half way done and then put it away. While taking a break…
When our daughters went off to college, I made sure that they each had a sewing basket stocked with the basics to take with them. But this past fall, when we were getting things ready for our son to go off to college, we searched but we couldn’t find any sewing baskets that didn’t have flowery prints or some other…
I’ve completed two more gift bags. These are bigger but again each a different variation on the basic tote style gift bag. The first uses two fat quarters in complimentary prints. Instead of handles, I chose which fabric I wanted for the front of the bag and then folded the back over the front by 4.5 inches, installed four grommets…
Several days ago, I was pressing the fabrics that I used in the gift bags shown in the previous post. As I finished each piece of fabric, I would bring it out and lay it over the back of one of the dining room chairs; being oh so careful to get them to hang so that they wouldn’t wrinkle. It…
It’s been months since I posted. Some major life changes have taken place in those months and most of my energy, creative and otherwise has been focused on absorbing and adjusting to those changes. But I do have some things I wanted to share so I’ll begin this first post of 2011 by showing you what I’ve been working on…