Round Two

Since I made my first attempt at cross stitching last week with the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's dessert of the month club, I've officially become addicted! It's the perfect way for me to keep my hands busy while I'm on break at work, or when we're driving around town or crashing on the sofa at night. I've become slightly obsessed, so I might have picked up a few more patterns from their shop recently - Toast Jump (the one pictured above) and the Leaning Tower or Macaroons.

I finished the Jump Toast one last night, and it's going to my sister in Memphis. She started law school last fall and has a new apartment in Memphis, so I thought I'd make something cute for her walls. I finished the stitching last night and plan on picking up a cute frame for it sometime this week- yay!

Not gonna lie, it's really satisfying to be able to finish a project a few days after starting (rather than weeks or months later like quilts!)

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Huzzah for presents!

Remember the pillow I made for my friend Dana as part of our annual craft swap? Well lookit what she sent me in return! She's taking a book-making class, and she made me a letterpress sketchbook for all my designs (fancy ribbon placeholder and all!). And she was even sweet enough to throw in some fancy-pants colored pencils....definitely better than the Crayolas I'm currently rockin! I heart you Dana-nator :)

The best part? It's lined with my favorite - houndstooth!

I wish you could feel how nice the paper is! Unfortunately, cameras can't capture that (yet)...maybe they will some day when we're living in Jetson houses and eating food capsules, lol

It's so lovely and fresh that I'm a little scared to mark in it. Maybe I'll be inspired to draw some fun new designs worthy of this book while I'm on the retreat this weekend :)

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Hair Bow Love

I see so many things now-a-days that I wish I'd had as a kid. Like super cute hair bow holders. I didn't know such things existed until a coworker asked me to make one for her little girl's 5th birthday....my bows were always shoved in the top drawer of my dresser. Functional, but hardly fun. Especially since the drawer would always come off the track when I opened it and I'd have to spend 5 minutes (which equals eternity in child time) wrangling it back in.

Anywho, I didn't know what such a thing as a "hair bow holder" would look like, so after 30 minutes of googling, I stumbled across some that looked like princessy dresses. However, they were made of solid wood and hand-painted, and since I don't have a woodshop tucked away in my apartment, I had to come up with a fabric-friendly alternative. Below is a picture of my spin on things :)

I used two layers of heavy weight, fusible interfacing to make the body. I folded one piece of interfacing in half and hand-drew an outline on one side. Then I cut along the lines and opened it up to have a symmetrical dress. I traced the dress onto the second piece of interfacing, cut it out, and then hot glued them together. The interfacing was fusible on one side, so I pressed the fabrics onto the top, cut the excess, folded the raw edges over the back, and hot glued in place.

The strap is linen tape. I sewed it onto the top of each side and made fabric flowers to cover the stitching.

I used a cow hitch knot to tie the strips of tulle onto another piece of linen tape. Then I sewed the 3 ribbons (on top of the tulle) directly onto the linen tape. I folded the ends of the linen tape over the back and stitched them in place. Then I hot glued the purple sequined ribbon directly over the linen tape to hide all the knots and stitching.

To finish, I hot glued a piece of pink felt over the back to hide my mess :)

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