A Little Bit Of Stitching

I started on the "simple" cellphone pouch that my mom asked me for:



I expect to have some stitching time tomorrow so I'll add some beads to it and hopefully, get it assembled during the week.

Marilyn asked about how I attach jewelry, brooches and shank buttons to my CQ's. For brooches and small pins, if they are in excellent condition, I pin them on and whip stitch over the pin on the back to keep them in place. Sometimes I buy pieces that have a damaged pinback so then I cut the pinback off with wire cutters and just sew them down. If there is no way to sew them down, I sew on a few small plain buttons and glue the piece to the buttons using E-6000 Jewelry Glue. This is a good way to use tack pins as well.

For shank buttons, I usually just sew them on. Since I usually do clusters of buttons, the others will keep the shank button from flopping around.

A good option if you want to cut the shank off so that it doesn't flop around, would be to do that, then sew down a plain button and glue the other button to the plain button using the jewelry glue. I've done this with antique buttons where the shank is missing.

Another Tag

Not much new to share at the moment so I worked up another tag to share with you:

Card Tags & Gift Tags

Things are a bit slow on the stitching front here. I'll admit, I'm a bit tired and I'm still working on clearing out my closets when I'm not helping out my parents.

I have no intention of turning my blog into a paper-crafts blog but I do like to make my own cards and at the moment, that's where my little bit of creative energy is ending up. I think it's just because I make one 15 minutes or so and that's all I have the time and energy for right now.

Anyway, after reading my favorite blogs last night, I decided to make a few of my own original tags using some of the fancy filters in my graphic software:









Since many of my readers are needleworkers who make their own gifts, I thought I would share these with you. You can use them as package tags or if you're a card maker, you could use them for that.

Print them on cardstock, cut them out, punch a hole at the top and add a pretty ribbon. You probably already know that I'll be adding glitter to the edges of mine!

Father's Day Cards

I haven't done any stitching. But I did promise my mom a new cellphone pouch and I am planning on starting that tomorrow.

Today I kind of felt like just playing so I made some cards:



These are the cards I made for Father's Day. The baseball man is for my dad and the car is for Scott's dad. I don't know where the images came from. They've been on my computer for years! Both were in B/W and I changed them to brown. That gave them a vintage look.

I made some others today too but will save those for another day.

I also hand-dyed some millinery flowers that I took off of a vintage hat. I bought the hat at a flea market back on Mother's Day! Anyway, I finally got around to dying the flowers. I'll try to get a photo for you. They are so pretty!

Take It Further Challenge - June

Sharon B. has posted the concept and color palette for the June Take It Further Challenge. I must admit, I'm going to have to stretch my imagination again for this one!

The concept is stash and stories that are and the stories that are possible regarding stash.

Does my stash have a story? You betcha! And I was recently reminded of it while reorganizing it. To be honest, I have way more than I will ever use. But I won't go into too many personal details. I seem to be on a path of self-actualization here and am discovering all sorts of interesting things about myself. Many of them, I don't care for. But it is what it is and all I can do is accept it and move on.

With that said, I have no idea how to execute the story of my stash. The only thing I can think of is to load up my block with everything I have but the kitchen sink! There is a pun in that statement that you'll get if you hop over to Sharon's blog and read her post on this months challenge.

In the meantime, I've matched the DMC floss colors up to Sharon's palette:



This one was a tough! That last gray color is not exact. It's the closest I could get based on DMC's floss colors. This is really just a guide to help other's who joined in on the challenge.

As always, my medium is crazy quilting and my block will be 9 inches square. At the end of the year, I intend to sew my blocks into a wall quilt. I doubt I'll have time to sew this block up right away. I expect it may have to wait until next week.

My father is still doing very well. He's walking only with a cane now. He asked me to take him up to WalMart today so I did. It'll still be a few more weeks before he can drive so I'll continue to do errands for my parents as well as my own and I'm still in the process of cleaning out closets and cupboards.