A while ago, I decided to find a use for all my Spoonflower swatches. (For anyone who hasn't designed fabric at Spoonflower, the swatch is a small 8 inch by 8 inch test print of your fabric design to test colors and other elements on the fabric.) I had to abandon the project for a little while when some other things got in the way, but I'm back on track now. This time, I created a tutorial to make a tiny drawstring pouch from your swatch. It's actually so itty bitty you can get two per swatch. Have fun!

Materials:
Fabric (a Spoonflower swatch cut in half, or any 8" x 4" piece of fabric)
Thread
Ribbon or yarn

Tools:
Needle or sewing machine
Safety pin

Step 1:

Cut your swatch in half.

Step 2:

With right sides together, fold your fabric in half lengthwise and sew each side from the fold to approximately 1.5" from the top.

Step 3:

Flip your pouch right side out and press the seams. Stitch down the edges on both sides.

Step 4:

Press down the top edges and stitch down approximately 1/4".

Step 5:

Fold the top of the fabric all the way down the the sewn side seams. Press and stitch in place, as close to the folded edge as possible. This creates the channel for your drawstring.

Step 6:

Attach a safety pin to a ribbon or string. Feed the safety pin and ribbon through one of the channels.

Step 7:

Taking care not to twist the ribbon, feed the safety pin and ribbon back through the other channel.

Step 8:

Tie a knot in your drawstring ribbon to hold it in place.

Step 9:

Pull the drawstring to close the bag. Enjoy trying to find something small enough to fit into your new pouch.

I've created some new Blythe dresses that I'm excited to share. These are all made from custom-printed fabric from Spoonflower.com and sewn using this pattern. Comments, questions, critiques all welcome!

Black Widow:


Solar System:


Sailboat:


Thanks for looking!

Last Tuesday was my boyfriend's birthday, which means that I can finally share the birthday present I made for him. A hand-embroidered heart on a thrifted shirt, using stem stitch and running stitch. So as not to overdo the sappiness, of course it's an anatomical heart.

I embroider almost constantly, which is all well and good, except that I wind up with massive hoards of embroidered bits of fabric with no clue what to do with them. Well, I decided to learn how to do something with them, and, voila, embroidered pillows were born.

Snake: (stem stitch, satin stitch, backstitch, & straight stitch)







Balloon: (stem stitch, satin stitch, & running stitch)





Duchess: (stem stitch, satin stitch, & running stitch)





Ringleader: (stem stitch & running stitch)





Lion: (stem stitch, satin stitch, & running stitch)





I created all these embroideries over the past year from my own original designs. All the pillows measure 12" x 12", but I think I'm going to try some larger ones soon. I have a feeling I know what a lot of friends are getting for the holidays this year... Questions, comments, etc. welcomed!

Thanks for looking!

I've recently become pretty obsessed with Blythe fashions, so I decided to try my hand at sewing a dress. I wanted it to be something kind of different from what I'd seen out there already, so I had some custom fabric printed for this project at Spoonflower.com (love that place!). I'm really happy with how it turned out, and now I can't wait to try some new designs.



I think I need one in a me-size. I'm a pretty petite lady, but I just can't quite fit into this little dress.

Here's the dress with the printed fabric:



I found the pattern I used for the dress online and then altered it. I made a PDF of my version along with some instructions which you can download here. I'm new to creating sewing instructions, so any critiques there are totally welcome.

Thanks for looking!

I finished this little guy last night, but I had to wait an entire day for him to dry while the water-soluble marker washed out. Oh, the agony!

Now that he's done, I'm excited to see him finally finished. This is one of those pieces that lived quite contently in my sketchbook for months and months while waiting for me to figure out just the right medium for him. I hope he feels as good about it as I do.



He's made with a combination of stem stitch for the outlines and running stitch for the hair and cheeks. I also used just one long stitch straight stitch (Thanks, MonKay!) for each white line in the dandelion puff, but I'm not sure what the name of that would be. Anyone wiser than me care to enlighten?.

Comments and critiques are always welcome!

A very sweet friend of mine is having an undoubtedly very sweet baby next month, and I made her this dress as a baby shower present. It's a thrifted dress (of which I have quite a few indeed) with hand-embroidered details.



This photo is just to show off the fact that I can tie a bow that doesn't flip around in crazy directions, a very useful skill I picked up while working at a photofinishing store.

A new painting made from an old drawing I found in my studio. I'm rather fond of it, so I thought I'd share.

It's small (4.5" x 6"), and it's done with ink (Copic pens, my favorite) and watercolors on some unknown watercolor paper I bought from Hobby Lobby a bajillion years ago.

This is a set of hand-embroidered faces, or "facebroideries", that I made. They range in size from 6" to 4". It was a lot of fun coming up with the various faces and finding good fabric patterns to go with them. Comments and critiques are very welcome. Thanks!

Maybe someday I'll grow out of this mushroom phase, but I don't think that's a day I want to see. This time it's knitting needles, because, you know, who doesn't like knitting with mushrooms?



Once I got going, I made lots and lots...