New Floss Cards

I made a little time to play. 

I have been on a mission to do something a little different 

with my Cosmo floss...

I originally wanted to order some fun Eiffel Tower floss cards

but then I thought I would ask for that as a souvenir when

my kids go to Paris this summer.

So then I decided to do a DIY project.

I ended up combining a few ideas.

One day on Pinterest I saw that someone

had made handmade tea bags filled with tea for gifts.

I am a tea drinker so the idea stayed with me.

I also remembered Happy Zombie taped the number

from the floss scan on to the embroidery cards.

So I used mini to/from tags and did the same thing.

The other side is cute paper. 

The tea bags were made from some left over scrap booking paper.

I used my never ending spool of baker's twine to

attach those to the "tea bags". 

You can easily take a tea bag apart and use it as an example.

I cut my paper 6" x 3 1/2".

Then folded the paper in half... lengthwise.

Next find the center and make the bottom "V" fold.

Fold in the top corners Like wrapping a package. T

Then fold over the top again to make the squared off top.

Loop your twine in the fold and staple top.

All you need to do next is make a cute little tag and attach it to the 

baker's twine.

These might be too cute to put away.

Mid Week Mosaic

(photos from pinterest: antique quilt, greengate, bordiere and more greengate)

 I have been doing some binding on a secret project...

and have embarked on an embroidery project.

Now, it's kind of manly, but I have a new vision for it.

It's Hook Line and Sinker by Crabapple Hill Studios.

I plan on making it girlie. The colors in the collage 

are my favorite kind of palate. So, hopefully I can pull it

off and do so without making the guys in my family

grumble too much!

Can you see my vision? The colors in the embroidery could easily 

work with pastel blocks.

I have plans to change the name from Blue Lake to (my local) Bass Lake.

Also, beer bottles... will be root beer! 

Maybe that creel should be pink?

In order to make sure I stay on track...

I have 2  reasons to give me incentive.

1. I have a friend now working on the embroidery with me.

(the same one who did Winter Wonderland with me)

(um, however, I confess... she finished and I did not)

2. I have been put on the waiting list for a Crabapple Hill retreat...

for 2015.

Have you seen the photo albums of Meg's retreats?

They just look like too much fun!

And they must be because the retreats fill up

within hours of registration.

The reason why I need those two incentives is:

1. I lose focus on embroidery.

2. It's probably going to take me that long to finish!

I have a growing collection of Cosmo floss and I have acquired 

a lot of DMC floss... the DMC is wound on clothespins.

I wanted to do something a little bit different with the Cosmo floss.

I have been gathering ideas. 

The plastic cards are just too boring.

Stay tuned to see what I come up with!

Now the question is...

who won the patterns from Monday's post?

The randomly chosen number was 18... 

Kimberly from my brown bag studio!

Yeah!

Easy As 1, 2, 3

I continued to clean out my sewing room over the weekend.
But during the cleaning I decided that this girl needed a new skirt...
and it's also a good way to "hide" fabric.
I can tell you that there is a lot of 1/4 and 1//2 yd, pieces in that skirt!

I did get done with Round 1 of the destashing but I now need to go on to Round 2...
which means
I got rid of all the things I really really didn't want anymore...
but now I need to
dig in a little deeper and turn loose of the things that I know
I will probably never get to.
I did go through my magazines... and now only have a reasonabe
stack left. But even with those I think I need a Round 2.


It's like exercising...
I got started, which is well and fine but now I need to feel the burn.
No pain, no gain!
(okay that is only an analogy... I have not started to exercise).
(although I should, it could be next)!

I haven't even started in on the pattern collection.
Seriously... what was I thinking?
Way too many patterns. But they are cute.
Even though I haven't started to destash
patterns yet...

I thought we could have a giveaway today for these 3 patterns.
Are you interested?

Wild Life and More

A friend of mine took these gorgeous photos...

I had to share the "wildlife" with you!

Fence hopper!

Hummer!

Family photo!

New parents... taken at Morro Bay.

I won't be seeing much of the great outdoors this weekend.

It actually might be a good weekend to stay inside!

How is the weather where you are?

Somehow, every project I am working on seems to have

an endless amount of HST trimming that needs to be done!

I wish I had someone to hand off some of the "grunt work" to.

Here is a very fun quilt that I am working on with my sewing bee group!

I actually haven't done any work on it yet... but the blocks are

coming back to me know, so I am getting ready to start working 

on the alternate block.

I love seeing it all come together! It's like Christmas when I get these

blocks in the mail!

Now, just for the fun of it I thought I would share 

a photo I took while I was cleaning my room!

It is an awful task... and I seem to get diverted...

so when I saw some of these items sitting near each

other amongst the mess... I thought I would 

place them on some background fabric and

snap a pic.

Trying to make some order in the 

kayos. 

I am afraid that there is still more to do in there too!