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Christmas Wishes embroidery patterns and quilt

Check out what I woke up to this morning… Oscar sitting under the
Christmas quilt I finished last night. He was flipping through one of
his toy catalogs. How appropriate is that! This little boy’s dream
bubbles didn’t make it into the quilt though. I’m not a talented enough
stitcher to embroider tiny little transformers or millenium falcons.

So this is the Christmas quilt I made from the Christmas Wishes
embroideries. I’ll need to wait for a brighter day to take some better
photos but here you get the jist. I was really struggling with how to
incorporate these embroideries into a quilt. After all that
embroidering I didn’t want to spend too much time piecing so I wanted
something simple. I was thinking a traditional square patchwork of embroideries and prints but
realized the embroideries were too small and was also feeling that was
too boring. I had the embroideries all laid out in a row with printed strips
between them and wasn’t digging that and then realized what I wanted
was to piece them right together with all the little dreamers all
laying in a row. I cut the embroideries into 8″ x 8″ squares and sewed
them together to form a strip of sleeping cuties and then did one big
print on top, another 8″ of a different print on the bottom and there you
go. I quilted it with a bubble pattern and overall it was a pretty easy
quilt to put together. I can get all the measurements and details along
with the fabrics I used together in the next couple days and post it
with some better photos.

So the Christmas wishes embroidery patterns are now in the shop. 8 designs in PDF format, 4 boys (robot, sock monkey, books & train) and 4 girls (tea set, dolly, scooter & sweets) for $8. We’re
offering them as PDFs for a few reasons. One, to keep costs down, two,
so you can started on them right away and three, so you can easily
customize them. Oh, and you can resize them this way too if you want, four. The
designs will need to be traced with a transfer pencil and then ironed
onto your fabric. There are a lot of little details in each design and
this way, since you’re doing the tracing and they are not iron on
transfers, you can decide to cut out details or switch them with other
designs, the one that looks the most like your wisher with what he/she is wishing for, whatever will work best for your project.

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Don’t you know you’re going to sew the Monkey.

Sorry. Do you know how many bad monkey songs there are? Work on a monkey pattern for a few weeks and you’ll feel my pain.

Okay, Fleecy Monkey is in the shop today! He’s a Christmas gift making special for only $6. So my quick calculations at the fabric store this weekend have pattern and materials coming in under $20 for what I hope will be a really fun, quick and satisfying cutie for gift giving. I mention in the pattern but let me say again here, I do not recommend using any other fabric than the recommended polar fleece. This is the only fabric I used to test the monkey and it’s just the right blend of stretchy but not too stretchy and I’d hate to have anyone cursing me out because they’re trying to turn a 30″ monkey tail out of stiff wool felt.

I’ve made about half dozen of these guys now and once you’ve got one under your belt they go really fast. Fleece is very forgiving. It can also seem to sometimes have a mind of its own but I think that makes them turn out all the cuter, like my one-leg-lower-than-the-other guy above. A little wonky in a monkey is a good thing. If you’re hoping for a little more symmetrical just be sure to pin. I’ve found fleece doesn’t sit nicely together waiting to be sewn up like nice flat cotton will. Okay, enough rambling. If anyone has any questions I’ll start a flickr group and please feel free to email me!

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seasonally appropriate decorating

I know I seem like a holiday jumper with my already-on-to-christmas crafts but be assured things are fall festive/halloweeny around here. We’ve got our bats up and our plastic pumpkins out and even our ironed between waxed paper leaves up in the window.

Here’s my favorite new Halloween decor item, my new witch doll by Mimi Kirchner that is taking a break from her spot on my cherished items shelf to come out here and help me hand out candy.

And speaking of seasonally appropriate, I even baked us an apple pie! I finally figured out the apple peeler/corer/slicer that my mom got me for Christmas *and* finally remembered to pick up pre-made pie crusts and voila, a pie!! It wasn’t all that good but I’m encouraged. Maybe I’ll try a crumble next. I love a crumble.