Make It Simple

Have you ever been afraid to try something new, worked up your nerve and found that the thing you were afraid of wasn't scary or difficult at all? Happens to me all the time so I suspected it happens to others as well. I hosted a craft class this weekend where everything we did was new for the ladies. Well, except for Julie who has done a bit of embroidery on her knitting, but the rest of the tasks were new to everyone. I heard it, I heard "I'm afraid" a few times, but we forged ahead with simple, easy instructions and the results were fabulous.

It was a simple Valentine's Banner in which I had cut out burlap hearts and letter stencils ahead of time. The ladies then stenciled the letters and embroidered small felt hearts for the ends. Each heart was then strung on twine for hanging. Simple.

My girlfriend trying her hand at embroidery.

While you can see Julie's banner here, this picture is actually an excuse to show off her first finished project for the new year. The Owl sweater. Awesome!

Ah, yes, and here we have my sister being assisted by Tim the cat. Crafting time could never be complete without a little help from him.

This one is mine, but I actually left the design of the embroidered hearts to each person's interpretation. There was such creativity in that room. Julie added little floating hearts, Regina added beads and my sister did this beautiful vine with random leaves containing satin stitches. Did I mention the embroidery was new to them? I saw running stitch, lazy daizy, starburst, satin, backstitch, french knot and stem stitch. Perhaps a couple more, but I was delighted with how everyone took to this.

The finished product. Just a little something to add some Valentine Love to our homes. Pretty cool, huh?

Inspiration is from here. The burlap hearts are 6" while the letters and small felt hearts are 3.5". Oh, and if you plan on cutting burlap with an Olfa cutter, also plan on getting a new blade because it will be shot.

Happy crafting!

Handmade Holidays

I'm pretty happy with what I've made this year for the holidays. When I look at the stack of handmade gifts it's pretty impressive, at least, it is to me. Here are the last of the projects I completed. The journal covers were hinted at in the post of my grandson where he is sitting in the window sewing. The littles each embroidered their handprints and I quilted them into the covers. My intent is that the journals will be used by the kids and their dad together, and then sent back and forth in the mail. I'm thinking that Dad will complete a page, send it to the child who then completes a page and sends it back to Daddy, etc., but it doesn't have to be writing. (Thanks Shannon) It can be pictures, collages, painting, found objects, really, anything they want. I made individual journals so Daddy can write personalized information to each child and they can feel more connected to each other.

It would be awesome if the journaling were about the everyday happenings in their lives while apart. See, I have a journal from 1865 that was written by one of my relatives and I love reading about what he was doing on a particular day and then trying to figure out where he went in town. He wrote about the everyday, whether he was working in the sugar shack, or went to a party, or how much he paid for a pair of pants, or the weather. He wrote about making fur mittens and selling them to make a little extra money. Simple, daily life that I find so fascinating and I'm hoping these journals turn into the same thing, that someday, someone will read these and get an idea of what life was like for these people who will be half a world apart for a time. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Hey, I made my first bound booklets for the inside. Have you ever looked at the bindings in books and tried to figure out how the heck they did that? No? Well, I did and I just knew it was some complicated process that would either frustrate me or make me buy fancy, expensive binding equipment. Nope, crazy easy and I found many, many posts online about how to do this. You need a needle, and some thread, and although the online posts tell you to punch holes using an awl, I didn't have one so I used a hammer and nail. Doesn't sound very difficult or expensive does it? I'm just tickled by the results.

Pockets were necessary on the inside to hold the signatures in place. (I learned that's what the bound pages are called) I only put a few pages (5 folded) inside because I didn't want it to seem overwhelming that a whole journal needed to be filled. This way, when one of the signatures gets full, I can take it out and replace it with another of the same size. When the journal is really complete (when Daddy is home for good), I'll bind all the signatures together to make a book for each child.  I think it's a brilliant idea and I can hardly wait to give these to my son.

The last project I finished was these cute little hats that were made up in less than an hour...aand I learned to make a blind hem using my presser foot. The process seemed complicated while reading about it, but when I actually sat down and did it step by step, well, it was sort of like magic because even though I couldn't puzzle out how it was working, it was working. Cool! So many new techniques this year, I wonder what next year will hold for me?

Happy holidays to you and I hope you're ready because it's here, ready or not.

P.S. I'm thrilled that the days will now start getting longer. So thrilled...

Another new to me.

The Cotton Friend books are my new best friend. Well, let's just say I really like them, especially when I combine the projects with a little bit of embroidery work. haha....I just sort of whipped this up on Tuesday.




See, I was clearing out clothes for the March challenge of Reduce Clutter-Create Space when I found 2 t-shirts with advertising on them that had never been worn. They went straight to the donation pile with nary a thought from me until I started browsing through the Cotton Friend books again. I saw a hat that I thought would be fun to wear while paddling and I immediately thought of those perfectly good t-shirts. I wouldn't wear them because of the advertising, but the bottoms were in perfect condition to be remade into the hat. Yep, got out the scissors and went snip, snip, snip. But really, what's a paddling hat without a little embroidery?



So, a couple hours later....voila! Me, sporting a brand new hat....


and I consider it free because I didn't pay for the shirts. Woo Hoo! Goody, now wear it this Saturday when we go paddling.

Feeling smug and proud.

Alex sent me a package from Taiwan a while ago that contained two Cotton Friend books. I love the books and the project offerings in spite of the fact that they’re in Chinese and I can’t read a word of what they say. Still, the abundance and clarity of the illustrations is amazing and with a bit of studying, I can figure out what to do. This particular project intrigued me right away, but at first glance, I thought it had to do with cutting away fabric and sewing another color to the backside. Thinking that sounded difficult, I put the book away until this past weekend when I got the urge to try out a new crafting technique. Oh, this is much cooler than I thought because the fabric isn’t cut away at all. Heather, you may be intrigued as well as I believe it was you who nearly painted everything in your house not too long ago. *grins*



You transfer any design you wish onto fabric… (I used the Cotton Friend pattern because I’m learning something new and I’m funny like that.)



And using a fabric marker, you color in different areas…



And then embroider around the lines of the design. Oh my gosh, that’s it? What was I afraid of? This is too stinkin’ easy and cool.



Well, now that I had this beautiful piece of embroidery, I simply had to make something with it and another letter satchel seemed like an appropriate showcase. The purple seersucker fabric comes from a 1980’s dress I rescued from a heap destined for the trash and the green is a cotton sheet found at Goodwill. Oh, I sewed the embroidery patch on fabric from an old sheet as well.



The idea of the letter satchel is from Amanda, but the design is from me falling in love with so many different projects that I’ve seen online. The offset button? Yeah, I knew I was doing that from the moment I decided to make this, but I’ll tell you something, figuring out the dimensions and curves and seams and visualizing the final product really taxes my brain. In the end, it’s still not quite right, but I think I’ve got that figured out for next time. And there will be a next time because this gave me so many new ideas for future projects.

So, what do you think? The button also came out of my stash so if the only thing I actually bought recently is the green sheet, for which I paid $3 and I only used a tiny portion, my guess is this project cost me, what, all of .25? I would say it's okay to feel both smug and proud of this project.
(Rubbing hands together) So, I wonder what my next new technique shall be.

Is there anything they can't do?

Or that they aren't willing to try...if I ask them? You may remember that Maris learned to do simple embroidery back here. She was so proud of herself. What's interesting is that when I brought her home, her 11 y/o brother saw what she made and he seriously said, "I want to learn how to sew,"  and I'm thinking, "Darlin', you're speaking my language." Unfortunately, with the holidays being so crazy busy, we didn't get around to it right away. But then, oh yes...but then I saw this project on Sew Mama Sew and it fairly shouted at me to be used to teach all the kidlings how to do simple embroidery. They love doing things for their parents and they love doing crafts...perfect, right? Yes indeed! Each of them drew their message on tracing paper and then put the image onto the material using a transfer pencil. However, next time we'll draw directly onto the material with a water soluble pen because some of the transfer pencil shows through the embroidery. There was a lot of needle rethreading and getting knots out, but still, will you look at all this fun and concentration?

Spencer soon found that the light from the aquarium helped him see where his needle should come up.

Maris took to it like the old pro she is now.

I think the tongue sticking out helps Konner with his concentration.

Talk about persistance! We began the project Saturday evening and though I left them with instructions to help each other finish, I was fretting that it might be too difficult or frustrating to do by themselves. So, I called Sunday morning to see if the kids could come to my house to finish and my d-i-l said they were already parked in the upstairs hallway working away. Really? How cool is that?

They did come over for a while and managed to get all the embroidery completed before they went back home. I worked on the envelopes, but each of them worked diligently to finish their letters.

I couldn't resist this one. Do you think she's had enough embroidery for the night? That's exactly how I feel some days when I've spent too much time sewing on difficult projects.

Konner kept saying, "this is so cool! This is so cool!" Shoot, even Spencer stuck with it in spite of it being pretty tedious for him.

I have to attach buttons and make buttonholes, but otherwise, the Valentines are ready for the parents. Mom and Dad are going to be so surprised. I ask myself, why didn't my mom do projects like this with my kids? Drat!
Isn't this just the coolest thing?

She said what?

Girl's Night Out. That's one of my many favorite things to do with the clever and precocious Miss M. Just the two of us, all dressed up and searching out marvelous adventure downtown. Dessert at a fancy restaurant is a must and the more decadent the dessert, the better it is for us. This brownie with fruit sauce is just what we were craving. See that ziggy little stripe down the right side? Yep, that's the first thing she did when the plate was put before us. She dragged her finger through the chocolate, tasted it, gave an 'mmmmm' of approval and said, "I had to do that."

Later this night we experienced a little of our own fairy tale when we saw Cinderella at the Civic Theatre. It was beautiful and felt sort of magical in the theater with the rich sets and beautiful costumes. We were perched right at the front of the balcony, which gave Miss M a fabulous view of the play. It wasn't long before this little girl was completely smitten with.....the prince? But, I thought this was about Cinderella? Oh no, her royal highness Miss M fell completely head-over-heels in love with the prince. I'm not sure she even realized the story was about Cinderella.

As we gathered our coats after the play a very kind woman mentioned to Miss M that she would be able to meet Cinderella and the prince if she walked down the stairs to the lower level. You should have seen that little girls eyes light up. We had a tiny wait before it was our turn to meet the characters and Miss M spent that time craning and straining to see around the crowd to get glimpses. She was funny, I tell ya. Finally, after what seemed like hours to her, she was able to meet them. She was glowing....and grinning.....and giddy. Look at this picture!

Is she not in love? She hugged him and chatted for a bit while I took pictures. Oh, my gosh, he even let her try on his crown.

Then we had to look at the pictures right! now! As we were leaving she ran over to give the prince one last hug...she told him she loved him...he said he loved her and now, in Miss M's world, his fate is forever sealed with hers. She skipped along the sidewalk all the way back to the car and didn't stop talking about her prince until she fell asleep.

The next morning, as we were making breakfast together, I started singing a song from the play, "do I love you because you're wonderful, or are you wonderful, because I love you?" Now get this, and I'm not kidding here, she annouced with complete wonder in her voice, "that's the song the prince was singing....to me!" How did this happen? How did she go to this play and have an entire audience and the cast disappear except for her and the prince? Maybe I was still there with her, but I dunno. The only thing I can think of is that as he's singing he's projecting to the back of the theater and there's little Miss M, perched on the edge of the balcony thinking he's looking right at her? I find it truly amazing and I have no idea how this happened, but I'm thinking the little girl is entitled to her own fairy tale. I did say it was magical in the theater. Stay tuned for more fairy tale updates through the years to come.

Here's a quick photo of another favored tradition between us...baking up yummies. This is a cranberry bread made with flax meal. Pretty delicious too.

Later, I asked Miss M if she would like to learn how to embroider. I thought it might be hard for her and I said as much since this would be her first time using a needle. Right? Difficult for Miss M? No, it was a piece of cake for her. I showed her how to draw a simple pine tree shape and once she drew hers, I copied it to a piece of muslin using a transfer pencil. I sat behind her on the stool for two stitches just to show her how to come up and go back down through the fabric as she followed the line and then she took over. One time I pointed out to her that she was poking willy nilly and that would make it difficult if she found the right spot. For the rest of her time she would say, "poking willy nilly" to reminder herself or "ouch, poked myself". Yeah, we all do that. Still, I'm blown away by how well she did with her first time stitching. Will you look at this?

While she stitched I kept myself busy (and away from her stitching) by cutting out fabric to turn her first embroidery into a pretty little pillow she could keep.

Later, she set the pillow on my bed with my other pillows and said, "ohhh, what a pretty pillow family."

What's not to love about spending time alone with this girl?