In an Instagram

It's time for another installment of In an Instagram! This week is all about Halloween and stitchery! Check out all the other wonderful Instagram pics over at Life Rearranged.

Clockwise from top left

Hubby dressed as B. F. Skinner for his department Halloween party (he teaches psychology).

My Halloween Bunting O' Greetings is up in the living room and will be changed out to Thanksgiving soon.

Stacks of Java Jackets all stitched up for a little Handmade Goods fair this weekend. 

My newest little shabby chic style Java Jacket just for me!

Sew4Home feature #2!

I had intended to post about the fabulous purse I picked up while in NOLA a few days ago, however our wonderful North Shore weather and string of gray days is not giving me good light to take pictures of the beauty to really do it justice. So, on to other happy news! The wonderful women over at Sew4Home have been kind enough to feature me on their wonderful blog once again. You can pop over their today and grab my pattern for the Dual Duty coasters I've created.

The coasters I stitched up for them use linen and  my Family Forever fabric at Spoonflower. I tatted all around the edges to add even more vintage feel to them. I'm thinking of stitching up some more in the next couple of days using my Bottoms Up fabric to make up some quick hostess gifts for all the fetes this season!

In other fun news, check out the Where Women Create for another day of giveaways in their 12 Days of Holiday Traditions event!

Special delivery in waiting

Just look at the pretty stack of java jackets just waiting to go to their new home! Once payment arrives, they'll be on their way! I just love playing with fabrics and embellishments and trying all sorts of color combos when I'm stitching them up.

To get them ready for shipping I grabbed some of those cute red buttons I discovered at the antique store, punched some circles out of discarded cardboard coffee cuffs and secured them together with red and white bakers twine and wrapped 'em up. The final tough was sliding my business card in the back.

Now, once you've got your morning coffee or tea in hand, head over to Sew4Home. They've put together a pillow project featuring my Family Forever fabrics.

You've still got time to get entered in the contest to win a yard of my fabric from Spoonflower. Just click on to my post from earlier this week and leave your comment answering the question in the post before noon Central time on Sunday, November 14. The prize will be awarded on Monday. Have a great weekend!

The Butler did it!

I will have so much more to say about this in the coming days, but for right now I just wanted to share one pic from my magnificent trip to The Creative Connection Event in Minneapolis over the last few days. One of the absolute highlights, if not the best moment, for me was getting to meet Amy Butler!!!!! This is the moment I got to meet her and have her sign the books she's authored. This amazing autograph party was jam-packed with nearly 30 amazing women creatives and authors. I did not get books signed by all of them, but suffice it to say I did have to pack a whole extra bag just for all the books of my "she"roes!!!!!

The autograph party was followed by the opening dinner and keynote addresses given by Amy as well as Mary Jane Butters, farmgirl extraordinaire! It was the best way to wrap up an exciting first day of this amazing event. I loved Amy's presentation which included a slide show of the evolution of her life and business. She also shared the influences in her life that inspired her love of stitching and design. Probably most inspiring to me was her message of being your genuine, authentic self and following your passion - something I must remind myself of everyday and the message I will strive to pass on to every one I meet.

That's all I can manage for tonight - unpacking and ooohing and aaahing over all of the gifts we were given during the conference just absolutely took it all out of me!!!! More to come tomorrow and in the following days (along with some giveaways to share my stash of artistic booty with my faithful followers!!!!!)

So excited!!!!!!!!!

I can hardly stand the excitement!!!!! I am not very patiently waiting to hit the road for The Creative Connection event in Minneapolis!!!!! The actual event begins next Thursday but there is a Handmade Market preview on Wednesday evening. I'll be heading down on Wednesday morning on board the Rocket Rider to get checked in at my hotel and get all checked in at the conference. I can't wait to pick up my goodie bag and start meeting face-to-face all the wonderful people that I've only "met" online so far!!! I keep looking over my class choices and panel selections and all the special events like the Pajama Party and the Cupcake Farewell (though I shouldn't be excited for the farewell when it hasn't even begun yet!) and getting more giddy! I've already started packing for the event - I thought I was the only person doing that when it's still about a week away, but then I got an email from one of my new friends that I'll be swapping with at the event and she was packing, too! Now I don't feel like such a dork but I really don't care about feeling so dorkily (is that a word? I just made it one!) excited for the conference!

How can I not be excited about getting to hear and meet so many of my arts and crafts and women entrepreneurial sheroes! Amy Butler, Mary Jane Butters, Ree Drummond, and Kaari Meng are but a few of the incredible women that will share their amazing stories and wisdom with us. The pile of books that I have to be signed by them nearly necessitates it's very own suitcase for the trip! As wonderful and thrilling as it is to meet all of them, I can't wait to be among all the other attendees and form new friendships with all the other creative and artistic souls out there!

I have to be at least a bit patient as I haven't finished all of my items for swapping with others at the event. The main job for this weekend (in addition to making sure there are enough frozen meals for my husband so he doesn't just go out and get McDonald's salads and Subway to eat) is to finish a cigar box traveling art kit (which I'll share when it's all finished).

One project I did finish up early this week is a set of my Dual Duty Coasters. I stitched them up using my most recent fabric designs at Spoonflower called Family Forever (that's a baby pic of my mom you see in the close-up photo) and vintage linen. Once they were all stitched up, I wanted to make them even more vintage-y feeling so I tatted a little edge around each of them. It was a nice little task to keep me busy on the car trip to Iowa last weekend. Once they were all finished, I knew I didn't want to just hand these coasters over to Nan (my new online buddy and I hope face-to-face friend very soon). I discovered that these coasters fit perfectly inside those little rounds Laughing Cow Cheese boxes. I grabbed the box that I knew I had been keeping for some special reason and added vintage scrapbook paper, a coffee filter ruffle, sage raffia and little coffee cuff corrugated flowers. I topped with more corrugated cardboard and an orange juice can lid embellishment with my Family Forever design and mini Scrabble tiles. I can't wait to meet Nan in person and share this little gift and I'm so excited to see what she's created for me!

Spoonflower Sharing

I was so excited to get back home from our visit back to North Dakota to find that my recent order from Spoonflower had arrived! A bunch of proofs of my latest designs which feature family. The designs include vintage photos of my ancestors in four colorways; I've always loved looking at these pics over the years and now I can't wait to use these designs in my sewing, quilting and art quilting projects. The first project I'll be using them in are some coasters for a swap at The Creative Connection Event in a few short weeks!

It was also very exciting to check out the Spoonflower blog today and find that they are doing a giveaway again in a few short days and hours. I was lucky enough to discover Spoonflower a year ago when they were doing a swatch giveaway so I got my first couple of designs together and shortly after, my very own fabric designs arrived at my doorstep. I was completely hooked!!!

Spoonflower is doing another swatch giveaway to celebrate the move to their new facilities. You can give a small donation in lieu of the cost of a swatch or just get your free swatch. You'll need to set up a Spoonflower account if you want a swatch of your own design or you can get a free swatch of an existing Spoonflower designer (like me!). I've now got over 100 designs - hard to believe that in the space of a year!!!! I get no money for swatch orders, just so you know. The giveaway is for 24 hours only, between noon Eastern time on Thursday, August 26 until noon the following day.

I've been in more laps than a napkin...

So that's not me, merely a quote from Mae West! It only suits my post for today as I finally finished a set of napkins using my Set the Table fabrics. I combined my fabric as the border with some white linen on the front and gray linen on the back. Once they were all stitched up, I added some hand stitching in green floss to accent the green flatware in the border fabric. I love how they turned out and can't wait to have a dinner party to use them - how geeky am I!? I'm planning to stitch up some more and offer them for sale in my Etsy shop as soon as I can order some more of my fabric!

Anniversaries and Aprons!

Today is the fourth anniversary of the day that I got to marry this wonderful man - my best friend, biggest fan, the only one who's always in my corner, my cheerleader, the one who is there for me when I'm lower than low, the one who makes me laugh when he dances,and the one person that I know I can count on. I am so happy to be your wife and I love you honey!!!

Today is also the opening of another Spoonflower contest. The challenge for this week was to design an apron that fits completely on one yard of fabric. I took the challenge and and put this pattern together using my Set the Table fabrics and stitched up my sample to work all the kinks out! If you want to participate in the voting, click here, and feel free to vote for my entry! It has a fabulous prize that I would love to win!

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!

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!