Craft Night - Crashed.

Since I'm quite behind in posting, this is from a couple weeks ago...

We wouldn't even be able to refer to that night as a craft night if not for the super craftiness that Julie brought over. She toted in some metal art pieces that were recently poured, then finished them up with some paint. Very cool!

So.. Julie saved the integrity of craft night :) - and John, Tim, Ben, Jim, Casey and Ditchell crashed it. Haha. And we're oh, so happy they did! :D As if one needs a reason to drink and be merry with friends... John was back in town for a week, nearly a month after his move to Cincinnati - he has been missed and his visit prompted a gathering. (I know - shocker.)

Aside from Julie's metal art, the celebrated craft of the night was definitely of the brewing variety. John made a beer run on his way back to Bham, so we dedicated the night to craft-y brews. An impressive Belgian selection was hit pretty hard by the boys the night before, so we mostly enjoyed the harder to come by (in Bham anyway) American craft brews. I think my favorite was the super-crafty (hehe) Two-Hearted Ale from Bell's. Also from Bell's, the Expedition Stout was a close 2nd - that beer rocks! We always try to pick up some of their beer when we're up north - usually visiting my family in Wisconsin.. it's nice to know that it can be found in the Cincinnati area so the boys can pick it up any time they head up to visit Sir Springer.

Since this night, a number of special craft projects have been started. Some of those will have to remain a mystery for a little while, but there are several sewing projects in progress that will deserve posting when they're finished, or at least further along. :) So, more soon...

Cheers - to crafting of all sorts!!!

Embroidery Obsessed.

So much has been going on! Not surprisingly really, since it's been a month since the last post. I'll have to break up the craftiness into a couple of posts, so will start with an embroidery update.


For a couple of weeks, I was totally mad for embroidery! Finally finished this tea towel for myself that was started several months ago and then moved on to a huge project for my grandmother's 88th birthday. By huge, I mean literally huge. I ordered some of the flour sack towels from P.O.S.H., and they are enormous compared to the tea towels from Sublime Stitching. I ended up liking them really well, but it kinda freaked me out at first - a very expansive embroidery landscape. ha. So, I folded it in quarters and ironed on patterns all over the dang thing. It took a couple weeks of seriously focused craft time to finish the embroidery, but it was well worth the effort. I was thrilled with the end result and truly enjoyed the whole process - picking the colors and just sitting wherever to chill and stitch - back patio, front porch swing, bed, sofa, ... it was relaxing and satisfying to just hang out while making progress and feeling increasingly excited to finish and send my work to grandma.

Speaking of my grandma, she is quite the crafty lady herself - painting and cross-stitching in her prime, plus she crocheted lord knows how many afghans and sewed enough clothing and costumes for my sisters and me to fill a closet. I think it's obvious where I got the crafting gene - and maybe even the too-many-hobbies-at-once gene - I'll have to see what she has to say about that. ;-)

Another exciting endeavor that was mixed into the embroidered towel project was homemade binding - so fun! I followed the tutorials for folding bias tape without a tool and binding towels (plus general binding/bias tape discussion). Pretty sure I've linked to these before, but this was the first time I tried either. I was mostly pleased with the outcome - the corner mitering didn't work out exactly as intended and the binding folding was a little sloppy from time to time (it was a whole lotta binding to fold), but overall I was pleased with the first go. Since I was edging a towel, I just cut the fabric straight on the perpendicular to the selvage edge, so not really making bias tape. One of my next projects will be binding the edges of what I'm calling the 'alien invasion towel' with some cotton linen fabric, so will try cutting the fabric for that one on the bias. After cutting all those strips for the enormous flour sack towel, there was some major coveting of quilting mats and rotary cutters going on... this tea towel should certainly be a snap after that undertaking.

Also on the sewing front are the nearly finished sewing machine cover and hanging organizer. Whew, this project has been major in every way. I should be ready for the final stage by Sunday when the next sewing lesson is scheduled.

Aside from that, I'll be purchasing a zipper this evening for the cat tuffet and plan to have the outer piece sewed to the that point before Sunday, so Peggy Sue can give some zipper tips while she's here. Or who knows, maybe I'll be able to swing this one on my own after some reading and re-reading of this tutorial. There are actually a ton of cool tutorial links down on the right where the zipper tute came from - so neato that all those crafty people out there take the time to teach others, complete with great step-by-step instructions and photographs - love it!

Ok. So, will post more pics of finished projects one day. :-)

Oh, and before I forget - one more embroidery note.. I followed this tutorial to finally figure out french knots and now I love them - my newfound skill is definitely well-represented on grandma's towel. :) It was the only stitch I just couldn't seem to figure out from the little booklet in the Sublime Stitching starter kit - I needed a little somethin' extra and got it from The Purl Bee.