wednesday = books

Today I've got a children’s book with really simple, charming illustrations that I recently thrifted for 25 cents to share:


Title: The Cat Who Thought He Was a Tiger
Written & illustrated by: Polly Cameron
Copyright: 1956
Publisher: Coward-McCann, Inc.





See you tomorrow for embroidery day!

tuesday = fabric

Thanks for all the nice comments about my new treasures. I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again – the best part about finding cool stuff is sharing it with people who can truly appreciate it! And trust me, not everyone appreciates a wooden mushroom or plastic flower loom…thanks for being there for me.

While out and about at the sales this weekend I also picked up two scraps of fabric that I thought I’d share today:

{it is not right how much I love this bunny one!}

Also, I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about the knick knacks & ric rac blog, but its one of my favorites. I had to share this post on how to make ric rac dahlias that she did because they are so cool!

I didn’t get much at all done on my new embroidery project last night, so I need to work on that tonight – hope you have a nice evening!

monday = thrifted

I had a nice weekend, hope you did too!

I went to several estate & rummage sales over the weekend & had very good luck:







{This couple cracks me up, he’s holding gardening shears and she has a nervous look on her face!}

I’m all ready to start a new embroidery project this evening so I’m off...

surprises

A good surprise is always fun...here's one I got today:


{I'm so flattered to be mentioned on such a cool blog - thank you!}

While there, I found a link to this very cool robot softie tutorial by Revoluzza - another thing to add to my crafty to do list!

friday = misc.

Happy Friday & thank you for all the nice comments about the baby quilt!

I don’t have much to share today…I’ve got a long list of things to do this weekend & so I’m sort of preoccupied with that. The list has some not so fun things like cleaning & laundry. However, some fun things like rummage sales & embroidery balance that out so I can’t complain too much!

Here are a couple photos at least…




Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

thursday = embroidery

What a coincidence that my interview on Feeling Stitchy is posted on a Thursday which is my day to talk about embroidery here!

{if you’ve come here via that interview & my blog is new to you I hope you enjoy it, come back again soon & leave a little comment to say hi!}

Right now I’m in between embroidery projects so I thought I’d share something I did awhile ago:


When my friend became pregnant I decided I really wanted to make a crib quilt even though my sewing skills were basic at best & I had never before taken on such a big project. It actually went pretty well & I was very happy with the way it came out.

I used this pattern for the embroidery & added the numbers myself. {counting sheep to fall asleep…get it?!}




The fabrics were mostly from my vintage stash, although I bought a big piece of the blue & white dot for the back & that strip on the front. Oh, and that little piece of red fabric under the first sheep is from Joann’s.

wednesday = books

Today, in addition to my regular book post, I wanted to mention a couple interesting things I found recently:

inspired ideas

wooden hanger pals

ondori embroidery for children book on ebay

Really cute kid’s stuff {via mamanjack}

I love the constant gatherer’s wreaths so much…especially these with the birds on branches, so lovely – sigh.

This curios shelf

Okay, now onto the book of the day:


Title: Easy Embroidery
Publisher: Ondori
Copyright: 1971




I find the title a little deceptive since, like with all the Ondori embroidery books, the stitching is amazingly detailed & far from easy to achieve!


Someone commented recently that they saw the $200 Ondori books on Amazon, as have I – crazy! Needless to say I have never paid anything close to that for any of my Ondori books – I swear honey!




Thanks for all your comments about fabric day – I’m glad you enjoy it! I’m not sure what I’m going to do but for now I’ll keep things as they are & if I’m having an especially busy time in life I might substitute "neat things" links for fabrics now & again.

tuesday = fabric

So I've been thinking...what if I change Tuesday's subject & stopped posting fabric swatches? Would you be sad? What would you rather see happen here on Tuesday? Just curious...

Until further notice though its still about the fabric, so here you go!








p.s. I'm glad so many of you enjoyed the bird photo!

monday = thrifted

{This photo makes me very happy...I hope it brings a smile to your face too.}

The little row of birds where a gift from my guy - sweet huh?! The mail sorter was $1 from an estate sale. The earrings are more of the collection I've got going for rings. And the pillows were $2 each from an estate sale.

We had gold finches at the thistle feeder today which made me insanely happy...so in honor I thought birds were in order!

friday = misc.

Are you as happy its Friday as I am?!

I went to Michaels recently for something else but then found some fun wood letters and created this project around that.


I didn’t do a tutorial – sorry, but I will direct you to this wonderful one by danielle. The only difference is that I paint the wood plaque prior to adding the paper {or fabric in danielle’s case}.

I created the brown shape on the computer, then printed it out on a heavy matte paper. The green polka dot ribbon is just stapled to the back. And the flower I bought a long time ago, at a scrapbooking store I think, and provided it to be placed on top of the nail head to sort of finish the whole thing off.

Okay – that’s all I’ve got for today…hope you have a wonderful weekend!

{On a side note: I’m not good with the whole tutorial thing…I can barely get projects done around here, let alone thinking far enough ahead to photograph each step. It takes quite a bit of time to scan & photograph the things I do post so I’m afraid that I do not plan on adding tutorials to the mix anytime soon – so sorry, but hope you understand! If you have a specific question about something feel free to email me & I will try to answer your question though.}

thursday = embroidery

Happy Embroidery Day! Today I’ve got a Vogart pattern as well as a finished project to share…

First the finished project!

I used Badbird’s free January pattern for this wall-hanging gift for a sweet baby boy I know.


{I ironed it after taking the photo so it doesn’t hang so funny anymore}

I added the color & name on the computer, printed it on transfer paper from bestblanks, transferred it to the fabric then finally outlined stitched everything.


That was the easy part…the sewing, as always, gave me some trouble because I’m just not comfortable using a sewing machine yet. I added the orange dot fabric, which is actually a vintage napkin cut in half & the ric rac pretty easily. It was putting that binding on that just about killed me! I faked it at the corners, which I think gives it a very handmade look – that’s my story & I’m sticking to it! The other side is a very cute little orange dot on red fabric I got at Joann’s as a fat quarter & in between is a piece of quilt filler.

I didn’t come up with a good hanging solution but the sweet parents of the sweet baby boy were clever enough to think to add a dowel to make it hang nice – I wish I’d thought of that! Overall I’m very happy with how this came out & really enjoyed seeing how much the recipients liked it.

wednesday = books

Okay – sorry about that! We took a little unplanned vacation {thank you for the emails & comments of concern, they were very sweet & I really appreciate you thinking of me!}…but I’m back now and am going to pick up my schedule today with a book. Another vintage Ondori embroidery book in fact!


Title: Ondori Embroidery No. 2
Publisher: Ondori Publishing Co.
Copyright: 1974







The day we left I got a wonderful surprise in the mail from sweet jessie but didn’t have time to post it before leaving...


Aren’t these just the, well, just the sweetest things she sent me?! I was so excited opening each individually wrapped present!
It was beyond generous & spontaneous – thank you so much sweet, sweet jessie!

away

went out of town unexpectedly...will be back soon!

wednesday = books

Just a quick post today to share this recently acquired book:


Title: Embroidery for Fun
Publisher: Ondori
Copyright: 1974





I grew tired of waiting for Ondori books to find me and went out in search of them. All I can say is that I don't know how people functioned before the internet...

tuesday = fabric

I've little to share today except these swatches...hope that's okay!