Kegerator beer cap backsplash

 Since opening my own non-crafty business my creative soul aches for any way to be creative. I've been saving bottle caps for an unknown project, unknown until now... what husband doesn't need his kegerator decorated?

We had some extra fencing that I've also been wanting to use, I just love when an idea just comes together when you least expect it. As you can see, there was not much to this project. I used some tiny nails and secured the caps. Done! Just a simple little project but it made me happy, cheers!

Jumping on the hexagon bandwagon

I keep seeing all of the beautiful hexagon quilts on crafty blogs and pinterest and automatically fell in love and felt so overwhelmed by the thought of ever making one. I mean, come on, it is all hand stitched! So, I read and read, looked at all the pretty pictures a bunch of times before I said "what the heck do I have to lose?"
I knew that I wanted to have the center hexagon be an embroidered piece so I searched through my patterns for designs under 4 inches... I had way more than I thought! Here is the start of my embroidered work:


embroidery for hexagon centers

 I just ironed them on a solid piece of white muslin, very randomly with no theme or thought of color scheme. Then I made a hexagon template. At first I used a 4" template but realized it was too big for my 5" charm squares that I am hoping to use up, so I just cut 1/4" off each side and had the perfect size. I cut out a bunch from freezer paper, ironed them on to some squares, whip stitched them together and this is what I have:


my first completed hexagon!

Is it perfect? Absolutely not!! Do I love it? Oh my gosh, YES! I love this project. It is perfect for nights when we want to see what is growing in the dvr. I get into a rythm with the hand stitching and it actually becomes addictive. If you too felt intimidated by hexagons, try it, it is so much fun. 

serial stitching

I just can't stop! Between Beyonce Bowl (which was amazing) and Blizzard Nemo (not so much), I have had lots of time embroidering. I am determined to stitch something from every pattern packet that I have, hopefully I will live a nice long arthritis free life.

Here is one of my favorite vintage Vogart designs, "Bee" Smart #293. Look at the packet...19 cents!

next is Baby Birds #3247. I bought this from Pattern Bee but just noticed that Aunt Martha's has brought it back. Good call Aunt Martha.

I love this guy. The pattern is #268 Day of The Week Apron Bib patterns with cute little animals for babies. I made the animal print towel from a piece of home dec weight cotton that I found in the remnant bin. I love buying up cute prints like that and make towels and/or potholders for gifts.

This is one of my all time favorites from Aunt Martha; #3929 Happy Gadgets. I am such a sucker for animated kitchen things.

this last towel is a combination of my favorite fabric and patterns. So cute! Sometimes I like to add a patch to a towel I love rather than stitch on a plain towel.My towel, my rules.

lastly, here is a picture of my driveway yesterday

not nearly as sweet as vintage embroidery.









stitching along

Not a whole lot going on these days. I started a minimum wage job this week that I don't love, but I am happy to be able to earn some money until I find a big girl job. Enough of that talk...embroidery makes things all better. I finished a few towels this week:

This was a freebie from Patternbee.com, it came with my order. Love it!

A cute little squirrel to go along with my squirrel obsession these days.

And apparently I like Monday! I added some crochet trim to these guys.

A stitchy kitty

and lastly, a lemon patch added to my gingham towel. 

Saving the earth with fabric scraps

Well, that may be an exaggeration but I do like to do my part, especially when it's easy and involves sewing. I got this idea a few years ago while subbing in Pre-K. One of the moms (who is also a friend) would send her kids with cloth napkins in their little lunch boxes, they weren't actually cloth napkins as much as they were old, cut-up, worn-out, dishtowels that most of us would have tossed in the trash. She really, really believes in recycling! I was so impressed with this that I gifted her 3 sets of cute handmade napkins for each of her children and decided I would steal her idea. I started selling sets at the farmer's market with my handmade lunch bags and also started using them in Julia's lunch, as well as our kitchen.

Whenever I have a 13-16" square scrap of fabric, I set it aside for a day when I just want to clear my head and sew something mindless for a few minutes and ta-da... new napkins! I just make a simple hemmed edge and mitered corners. I even allowed myself not to care that they don't match anything or even each other. In fact, I rather like the unmatchy-ness of it all! My favorite part of saving the earth with scraps is that I get to look at and use my favorite pieces of fabric every single day... win, win.

oh my

Hello, my name is Carol and I am an embroidery pattern addict.

I had a free day yesterday and decided to tackle my craft supplies that have gone wild; baskets and baskets of mixed up supplies and bags from craft stores that I never put away. Wow, did I learn a lot about myself. I know that I love all things embroidery and of course I know that I love to buy patterns...vintage (original and reproduced), modern ones, corny ones, I LOVE THEM ALL! It wasn't until I decided to file them that I realized that I have HUNDREDS of patterns.

I have a special affection for produce and household items with faces and days-of-the-week; in fact I could probably produce 700 of just those towels easily. So, what the heck am I to do with them? It is nearly impossible to make money from embroidered dishtowels...I know, I've tried, so I think I will just be gifting them to every single person I know.
If you love vintage patterns you really need to visit Vicki at www.patternbee.com , she has an amazing collection and is such a sweet person.

 I love all of the cheesy Aunt Martha's that I find at www.colonialpatterns.com, the prices are great.

 Of course there is www.sublimestitching for all of your hip and modern patterns, they are so cute.

 A lot of times I just sketch a simple line drawing right on a towel or paper
for a quick gift...because I never could find a pattern before I organized them!

Fidget remedy

I like to relax with my family; however, I am super fidgety. I always feel the need to accomplish something during waking hours, it really is no fun!
Enter crochet dishcloths:

Cotton yarn is cheap, crocheting a square is mindless, making this a perfect remedy for fidgety fingers. I am slowly giving away dishcloths to everyone I know because my cotton yarn/dirty dishes ratio is not balanced. To those of you with ants in your pants like me...learn basic crochet and make some dishcloths, it's a win, win!
Have a happy day.
Carol

I love a quick fix

Sometimes you just need to make something and I am all about quick little sewing projects. I am also all about coffee and fabric so it was only natural that I jumped on the coffee sleeve bandwagon! These are super easy to make. I opened up a cardboard sleeve and traced it on cardstock with a 3/4" seam allowance. From there I cut out a piece of fabric, muslin for interior, and a piece of insulated batting, pinned in a hair elastic, sewed around leaving an opening to turn rightside out, topstitch, sew on a button and DONE! I made 5 in 30 minutes total. The hardest part was making sure the fabric wasn't upside down! See, easy peasy!

Ridiculously cute *updated* 04/14

I know that dishsoap bottle aprons are a little cheesy but they are just so cute in oilcloth and all hung up together!

Thank you for your nice comments. I have licked my wounds and am over it now. I tried to email the editorial assistant and it seems that she may have blocked me because it kept coming back undeliverable. Oh well.
I saw an interesting comment from Tracy at fabric.com saying that she has a gift for me and my readers...I'd better go email her!
****UPDATE*****
Tracy from fabric.com would like to offer my readers $5.00 off their orders this week only The coupon code is "blogwork" and expires 04/21/09. You should check them out, I always shop their clearance first and find amazing deals and the service is always excellent.

More new stuff!

What else can you do with oilcloth, you wonder?
How about reusable sandwich/snack bags?



Here is what my listing says:
This idea was kicking around my head for a while and then a customer asked if I could make them for her and here they are. I wanted to wait until we used them for a while before putting them up for sale and they seem to work just great. I tested them with sandwiches (the bread stayed soft), cracker-type snacks (stayed crisp), and even grapes (stayed grapey). My customer had this to say:

“I was waiting to leave feedback until I had used them enough...but honestly...I LOVE THEM! They make life so easy, are so adorable and everyone who sees them, loves them! Thanks so much, I am over the moon about a snack bag.”
Caring for the bags is simple: wash in your sink with warm soapy water and hang to dry. The sewn seam is on the outside to prevent any bits of food from getting stuck anywhere.
They have a nice, strong Velcro closure and double stitching. These bags will last a long time.
No need to limit their use for food; these bags are useful for so many things!
Appr. 7” square, just like a plastic ziptop sandwich baggie.

the ever-evolving lunchbag

A year ago, I bought my Singer Futura for the sole purpose of doing monogrammed things. What a pain! First of all, I don't have a laptop so it involves dragging my sewing machine and all of its parts into the living room atop a shakey card table. Second of all...well, that's it but it's a huge pain. Everytime I tried it out, I ended up SO frustrated that the Futura almost went out the window so I didn't try again until recently. Now, I have the hang of it and it's kinda fun! I still wish I had a laptop but at least I have it working.
I am now offering monogramming on my oilcloth items, check out these custom bags that are also insulated-



Thanks for all of the nice comments about Julia's Halloween costume! She even got a mention on Craftzine.com blog
woohoo!

I love Halloween!

How cute is this? I'm not sure how exactly we came up with the idea but we always get a good one in mid-summer. So, how come if we get the idea in the summer, I am sewing the darn thing as we are walking out the door to a party?? I didn't actually sew much; a simple skirt, half apron, rickrack on a t-shirt and lace on socks. The bonnet was a purchase from a wonderful seamstress at GrandmasGirl on Etsy. I could have never made it even half as nice as Julianne did...this woman can sew!
I tied some fake grapes in a basket and we threw in some raisins just in case no one could figure out who she was supposed to be. As if!

We already have next year's costume planned but it's a secret.

fall favors

We are celebrating the upcoming wedding of one of my coworkers on Friday so I got to play at work all day yesterday. I stayed behind to man the fort while the entire office went to NYC for advertising week festivities. It was fine by me because I got to make fun stuff for the surprise "shower" we are having Friday.

I dipped small pretzel rods in white chocolate, decorated with fall sprinkles and bagged them. Then I added a fake leaf and velvet ribbon and TA DA! We have pretty fall shower favors!
Did I show you my new Oilcloth Halloween Banner?

The rest of my life is just general busyness, oilcloth and the pursuit of not being dirt poor.
How about you?

Oh my!

What happened to my baby? She's growing up, that's what...I guess. I'm dealing.

Last night was a birthday party for one of her friends. This friend (not pictured) is a cancer survivor and her parents have the means to celebrate BIG every year for her birthday so you can only imagine how big her sweet 16 was!

It was at a fancy country club and all the girls were asked to dress in pink to party. I have never seen so many little pink dresses in one place ever, it was like pepto club.

While the girls were partying it up, the bumble and I actually went out. Without kids. Just 2 of us. Like adults.

We went to the theater and saw "Late Nite Catechism". I laughed so hard that my face hurt and my throat was sore. If it comes to your local theater, GO! Even if you aren't Catholic, you will laugh your ass off, I promise.
Other than that I have been trying to get some Halloween stuff made for the old Etsy shop.

I really have some catching up to do on your blogs, I feel like I've been gone for a while...
have a great week!

and they're off...

School's back for all 3 girls now. Talk about getting slammed back into life, sheesh! I feel like a hamster on a wheel, just running for my life and never going anywhere. It's hotter than hell here in CT, but the effects of Hurricane Hanna should blow all that away tomorrow. Luckily we aren't getting the full storm.
I'll be sitting in my leaky sewing room, sewing away again this weekend. I whipped up this cute little pincushion last week when I couldn't find mine.


Naturally, I found mine 30 seconds after finishing this one but a girl can never have too many!

What's everyone else doing this weekend?