Dual Duty Coasters

I had a brainstorm for dual duty coasters so I stitched them up using my Set the Table fabrics that I had printed up by Spoonflower. One side can be used for regular glassware and when you flip them over, you can slip in your stemware! If you stitch them up in all kinds of different fabrics, they're also great drink identifiers for your next party and you're tabletops will always be protected from water rings!

Jot Thoughts Box

My office/studio space is always a work in progress, mostly in terms of trying to stay organized and keep items in their place when they're not immediately needed. I always need a place to jot a quick note for an idea or a shopping list, but can't always locate my note paper when I'm in the midst of a project. This lovely jot thoughts box began as a candle box for a beautiful and wonderful smelling candle that I received for Christmas. The box was too elegant to just toss and I found it perfectly housed a 4-inch memo cube! I took out my container of corrugated cardboard coffee sleeves, added some silver ink, trimmed up some old paint chips that coordinated with the box colors and trimmed them in silver too and lettered "Jot Thoughts" in silver paint pen on a couple of them and attached to the box. Now I can always easily find my notepaper!

Printable weekly menu planner

My husband and I are trying to improve planning out the meals for the week so we're not making constant trips to the supermarket, making better use of what we already have in the house and be kinder to the environment! So, to make the process a bit more fun (for me, anyway!) I whipped up these cute menu planner sheets that coordinate with my Set the Table fabric designs available at Spoonflower. You can fit two on one letter sized sheet of paper, and to be even more environmentally friendly you can print on both sides of the paper and just flip it over for the next week. You can download the file for the menu planner here.

Ribbon Rose Necklace

Completing this ribbon rose necklace has taken longer than expected (as usual) but I'm so excited it's finally finished. I think it turned out beautifully and can't wait to wear it out on date night this weekend! The finishing touch was the cording which I picked up while my husband and I were in Savannah, Georgia. I stumbled upon this fantastic little shop called The Paris Market and though I would have loved everything in the store, I had to limit my purchases, but one of the items that intrigued me was a little spot filled with grab bags for $5. The bags contained all sorts of old jewelry and beads and I spied this one with some other fantastic beaded cords and a fabulous bag of tiny turquoise beads!

Placemats

Finishing up placemats was a bit more difficult task than I had hoped but eventually got all stitched up late last night in the midst of watching the Golden Globes - all the movies I have yet to see!!!

Stitching them up was put on hiatus for a couple of trips - the first was searching out Christmas dishes that mom fell in love with that are now on clearance, so she called up my sister and I who live in two different states across the country to head out to the department stores and search for Johnson Brothers Friendly Village dishware of which I managed to find four place settings; then I was off to pick up a few office supplies!

Once those errands were taken care of, I could finally focus on sewing the placemats from my own fabric design and printed by Spoonflower! After cutting out all the elements, I got to stitching. I'm thinking that I'm still going to add a bit more hand embellishment as I did around the circle applique once I get to the craft store and pick up some greenish perle cotton - I think they still need a hand-stitched border around the whole thing...

Full Yards of Set The Table

My grand plans for the weekend are to finally begin transforming the full yards of my Set the Table fabric in green into actual placemats and other fun kitchen stuff, since the fabric finally arrived from Spoonflower!!! Although I would like to get all of my sketches for the fabric into wonderful objects, I'm trying to be more reasonable in setting my goals! You can also see the blue and yellow versions of the design. I hope to get the red version all sorted out this weekend, but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

My very first fabrics....

I was visiting my mom and dad back in August and was lucky enough to discover Spoonflower! I was lucky for many reasons, but that August day, in particular was Free Swatch Day! Everyone was able to receive two free swatches on that day, and they also gave everyone the opportunity to make a donation to Heifer International in exchange. So they received a bunch of donations and all of us Spoonflower fans got a couple of free swatches!

So, I quickly got the ideas in my head worked out on my computer and sent away to Spoonflower! The first and third swatches in the top pic were my very first two designs and eventually came to life on the Sideways Satchel from a previous post. The circle designs came next and then I worked them out in a pink and brown color combo.

Hope

Today's fabric is called Hope and was designed with a very special and specific purpose. Since discovering Spoonflower, I've been continually amazed by the talented designers out there and have "met" some wonderful people out there in cyberspace. In the days before Christmas I was exploring the Spoonflower group in Flickr and stumbled upon a request for a designer. A woman named Linda was searching for a volunteer with design software to put together a fabric she could use for her church quilting group that was to meet for a retreat in January. She was short on time as her original designer fell through and I was happy to do it. I was even happier to have agreed to help out the more I got to know Linda and her groups work and learned that she was from central Iowa where I lived for a few years and where I still frequently visit to see my husband's family and my Iowa friends! You can read more about her group and see the project that the fabric was used for at her blog, Flourishing Palms. My best to the Lutheran Church of Hope at their retreat this weekend in the frigid Iowa winter!

Colors

Our travels over the holidays have left me with a cold the worst part of which is the sore throat - I hate that part!!! It also make me very fuzzy in the head and prone to staring off into space. Perhaps that it is why I am so easily transfixed by my color chart which finally arrived from Spoonflower! I really needed this so I could tell with some certainty how the designs on my computer screen would turn out on fabric. It's designed to fit perfectly on one yard of quilting weight fabric.

Just prior to Christmas I was recalling holidays spent at Grandma and Grandpa's house and the dining room table covered in sugar cookies. From there, my thoughts drifted to our Sunday dinners at that large table and my sister and I being charged with setting the table. I always had to remind myself which side the silverware went on and I was thinking about how cool it would have been to have a tablecloth with the instructions right there......so, my Set The Table designs were born! The first version of the fabrics were created with orange as the complementary color. Green was my next version as that is the color for our dining set. I've come up with three other versions as well which I'll post a bit later. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of full yardages of the green version to stitch up the placemats and napkins and aprons I have drawn up in my sketchbooks! So excited!!!!!

Woodcarving Inspired Fabrics

We've finally arrived back home after many hours spent driving through the snow-covered Midwest for the holidays! I am thrilled to be off the road for more than a couple of days at a time as this most recent journey to Iowa resulted in my catching a cold which drastically decreases my energy for unpacking....

The first pic is from our holiday travels to North Dakota and the snow mountain that appeared outside of my parents' house during the Christmas Day Blizzard! The blowing and drifting created this fantastic piece.

This next set of fabrics were created after observing some woodcarving patterns at an office in our downtown area. I sketched them out so they would not be forgotten and eventually began playing with ways to fit the patterns together in complementary and coordinating ways.

Earthy and Eyelet swatches...

The Earthy inspired fabrics were some of the first designs I put together once I discovered Spoonflower. The next two shots are of my Eyelet designs. All my life, I have been absolutely enamored with all things eyelet, I even toyed with the idea of an eyelet wedding cake design, but didn't think my husband would appreciate it nearly as much as myself!

Spoonflower Swatches Assembled...

I was finally able to get my 60 or so swatches of my fabric designs printed by Spoonflower into some sense of order! I wanted to make sure I had them all put together before the holiday travels were underway and mission accomplished! Over the next couple of weeks I'm hoping to get pics of all my swatches to this point posted here.