400 Followers Drawing!!!

I'm thrilled to announce that I now have 400 blog Followers!  Yay!  I hope everyone is enjoying my chatter on crazy quilting, crafting and baking and everything else I ramble on about!

As promised, to celebrate this milestone, I'm having a drawing for one of my Crazy Quilt Cat Dolls!

 To enter, just leave a comment on this blog post and I'll put your name in a basket.  The drawing will take place on Tuesday, April 26th!

Good luck everyone and feel free to mention this drawing on your own blogs if you like!

Shabby Lane Shops

If you've been following my blog for awhile now, you may know that Kitty & Me Designs is a member of Shabby Lane Shops Online Shopping Mall.  Not only does SLS offer wonderful benefits to their shop owners, but they offer an awesome service to shoppers as well!  Over 60 beautiful shops with gorgeous handmade products, vintage & antique finds, bridal and baby items, candles, soaps, cookbooks, home decor, gifts and more!  All in one convenient online shopping mall.

Recently, Catherine Monceaux, who operates the Shabby Lane Shops Mall, appeared on a local TV show in Tennessee.  Catherine talked about the Nashville Southern Women's Show, which took place this past week.

I will a link to Catherine's TV appearance as soon as it's available.

One of the fun things that Catherine offers at Shabby Lane Shops are Boutique Bags.  Boutique Bags are beautiful grab bags filled with a variety of items from many of the Shabby Lane Shops shop owners.  The Boutique Bags are a lovely way for customers to discover the beautiful shops at SLS.  The BB items are wonderful to use for little gifts when you just want to let someone know that you're thinking of them!

Mom and I have been contributing to the Boutique Bags since we joined Shabby Lane Shops.  Each month, we make a different item to send to Catherine for inclusion in the BB's.  Mom and I have done handmade greeting cards, sachets, magnets and more!  This month, mom made some beautiful Victorian style Gift Tags:

 Our gift tags are all packaged and boxed up and ready to send to Catherine this weekend!  I cannot tell you how much fun mom and I have with our Boutique Bag items!  It's fun to come up with a theme (June will be strawberries) and it's fun to decide on an item, to make that item and then to package them up!

Please visit the Shabby Lanes Shops website and all of the beautiful shops there!

Stitched, Beaded, Embellished! Enjoy!

Questions And Answers

I've been sitting here, with my printer running for quite awhile now so to keep myself from falling asleep, or going insane, I've been bouncing around all over the place reading blogs, looking at photos, Facebooking, Tweeting and anything else I can find to do to keep myself busy!

It occurred to me to ask if anyone has any questions for me?  You can ask me anything you want.  If anyone has questions about needlework, crazy quilting, crafts, how to keep your cat out of your craft supplies (LOL), even depression or anxiety, please feel free to ask!  How about baking questions?  or ADD questions?  Ya'll know I'm an expert on that one!  Anything at all!

I would like to have some more interaction with my readers here.  I have quite a few followers and not too many comments so I'm trying to encourage ya'll to talk to me.  Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm writing to the monitor but I know there's great people out there who like what I do and what I have to say so please everyone, ask me questions!  It'll be fun!  When I have a few questions come in, I'll do one blog post and answer them all!  That should be interesting!!!

Feel free to download this pretty Fractal Art Wallpaper image for your desktop!  That's another thing I was doing while the printer was running, playing with my graphic software!  You're also welcome to post this on your blog to share with your readers!  Please leave my web address on there and link back to my blog or my website.

I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone!

Tutorial - How To Make Button Clusters

Now that you've all seen my Crazy Button Quilt:

I thought I would share a tutorial on how to create Button Clusters.

Button Clusters are not only for Crazy Quilting.  They can be added to fabric bracelets, art quilts, art dolls, really anything that buttons can be sewn onto!

Step 1:  Gather some buttons!

I store my buttons in old mason jars.  They're separated by color and the jars look so pretty on a shelf in my craft storage room!

Step 2:  Determine where you want your button cluster on your piece.  In this case, I want my buttons to cascade down from the dark green patch on this Cat Doll:

Step 3:  Choose some buttons:

I like to start with a few larger buttons and buttons that are "interesting" to look at.  They will be the "focal point" buttons.

Step 4:  After choosing those "focal point" buttons, sew them down with bead thread or dental floss.  I use dental floss to attach all of my beads, buttons, charms and vintage jewelry pieces.

Once those focal point buttons are attached, start adding smaller buttons.  Overlap the buttons and be sure to use a variety of color shades.  If all the buttons are dark pink, it'll just look like a dark pink blob.  By varying the shades of pink, the buttons look more like a little flower garden.

 Step 5:  Once the buttons are attached, I like to add seed beads to cover up the threads in buttons:

3, 4 or 5 seed beads in the center of each button will add sparkle, dimension, interest and it'll cover up the thread holding the buttons on.

For the flower petals on the big purple 4 hole button, I picked up 12 seed beads for each hole and brought the thread back down in the same hole.  I added a large pink bead to the center.

Step 6:  Once you have all the buttons attached and the seed beads in the center, you can add a few little do-dads here and there like leaf charms, crystals, large beads and so on.

There's no rules here!  Just a few basics to add interest to your stitching!

You can see more of my Crazy Quilt pieces at my Boutique!

And be sure to check out my other tutorials!