Wallet

I love this magazine Molly Makes .  Each month they enclose a small project with the supplies to complete it in the magazine.  It only took maybe 20 minutes to make this little card wallet.  A quick and easy little project.

Personalized Wedding Gift

My daughter was attending a friends wedding and wanted to give the couple a personalized gift.  She knew the bride liked birds and personalized things.  A garden flag seemed like a sweet gift along with a flag pole and a bird feeder she had on her registry.  I had purchased this machine embroidery design from Embroidery Library a few years ago and never used it.  This flag took way longer to stitch out than I had anticipated.  When I first stitched it out I realized that the design was for a much larger flag than what I wanted.  So I re sized it.  The birds nest alone took a hour and a half to stitch out.  I had to re hoop several times even using my largest hoop.  The names are letters that came on my machine but I thought they matched the twig letters pretty well.

I like this project overall but I think I need to make some changes if I make another one.  First thing is I think I needed more or different stabilizer.  My flag has many wrinkles which could have been prevented maybe if I had stabilized better.  I am not sure that would have cleared it all up because the design is very stitch intensive.  But I am challenged to try again.  I have another wedding gift to make so maybe.  I think the wrinkles will not be seen  when the flag is in the yard blowing in the wind.

Baby Reindeer Hat

I know this is a bit late to post now but I wanted to share this Reindeer hat I made for baby Dustin.  I saw some pictures of baby's with similar hats on pinterest.  I thought they were so cute so I whipped one up for this sweet boy.  His mom loved it and even got his picture wearing it for their Christmas cards.

I used yarn from my stash and lined the ears with red felt.  I hand sewed the antlers out of brown felted wool.  Then I added a big red button nose and two brown button eyes.

Bachelorett Accessories

This is my daughter modeling the accessories I made for her friends bachelorett party. I already had everything I needed in my stash except for the $2.00 plastic ti era. The veil is made by simply sewing a gathered piece of tulle the ti era. I suppose I could have glued it on but I had thread and needle handy and that seemed easier to me at the time. Hand sewing was the way to go here and it only took a few minutes.

For the sash I embroidered the words "Bride To Be" on a piece of white polyester using my trusty Bernina 200E. I haven't used the embroidery unit in a long time. So it was kind of nice to use that feature again. Made me want to think up something else to embroider. Then I just cut two long strips the width of the fabric, one with the embroidery and one plain. I sewed some gathered lace all around the edge and finished it off with a large snap at the end.

This is the kind of sewing I call down and dirty. Meaning it is not fussy and doesn't have to be perfect. It is just for fun, fun to sew and fun to wear for a fun night with the girls. I won't be going to the party but my daughter will tell me all about it.

A trio of chickens

My good friend Mary gave me this Crochet Pot Holder book for my birthday. It has a copyright from 1939. And it is just full of adorable pot holders. Each one has very simple instructions. When I spotted the chicken pot holders I knew I had to make some for Mary. She likes to collect whimsical chickens to decorate her kitchen. Maybe that was her motive in gifting me the book. LOL I don't mind as I love vintage crochet books and I plan to make myself some too.

I went through my yarn stash and found some red, yellow and orange Sugar and Cream cotton yarn. Perfect for some chickens. I also needed some felt for the combs and beaks as well as the underside of the chicken body. I had been holding on to this hideous orange wool coat for a while. I knew it would come in handy at some point. I had already felted it by throwing it into the washing machine in hot water. So now it is a nice heavy felt. I must have used some of it for another project because parts of it had already been used. I just don't remember what project. After adding some turquoise button eyes my chickens were complete. I love things that are practical as well as cute. Next maybe I will try the Three Little Maids pot holders on page 8. They are three multicultural faces with a holder. I am not sure if I feel right about putting a hot pot on a face. But they sure are cute.

I am sharing at this Link party Sunday Showcase

Monogram Napkins

My daughter has a few friends who have been getting married lately. She is a recent college graduate who hasn't found a real job yet, so she is on a tight budget. She still wants to give her friend a nice gift. She wasn't able to attend the wedding so she needs to mail the gift. She picked out this set of four Melamine Plates and a set of four matching Cocktail Spreaders at a Tuesday Morning. These would not break during shipping and even though they were not the dishes on her registry they matched nicely. We felt like it needed something else.

I had these nice restaurant style white napkins in my stash. I had picked several packages of twelve a few years ago when I first bought my sewing embroidery machine. I knew they would make great gifts. We picked out a monogram that was close to the one on the plates and a close embroidery thread color. The napkins still needed something to make them more modern. So I added the black jumbo Ric-Rack around the edge. I sewed the Ric-Rack on in a zig-zag that I had to turn manually at every point. I could have just sewed right down the middle but the points of the Ric-Rack would have curled up every time they were washed. They would have to be carefully pressed each time they were used. I know I would hate doing that so I sewed from point to point to keep all the Ric-Rack from curling. This took a lot more time to sew that way but I think it is worth saving much frustration in the future. I wanted the bride to be able to use these napkins. I know I would never use them if I had to press all those points. I think they turned out nice I hope the bride and groom like them.