I love corduroy.  I found some yummy chocolate brown corduroy at a thrift store.  I paired it with some gorgeous gold printed fabric by Free Spirit to make some patchwork balls.  I made two versions.  I think these are my fave fabric balls I've ever made.  And that is my daughter holding each one. 

edit:  I got the pattern from Patchwork Puzzle Balls by Jinny Beyer.

Ball 1:






Ball 2:

I made some patchwork balls for my friend's kids.  She had twin girls this summer and she also has a 3 yr. old girl.  I made one for each of them but didn't assign any one ball to any one child.  I figured the 3 yr. old would want to have her pick.  I love making these patchwork balls - I've made several for my daughter.  I got the patterns from Jinny Beyer's book Patchwork Puzzle Balls.  Here they are:

Ball 1:



Ball 2:



Ball 3:  I only got one decent shot of this one.  I gave it away before I realized it.

Get it?

At pretty much the last minute, here's my entry.  It's a quote from the movie Carrie.  Carrie's mom says it to her, to which Carrie replies, "Breasts, Mama.  They're called breasts, and every woman has them."  I love it.

I went crazy on the stitching, I know.  I've been wanting to do some blackwork, so I did whole hella lotta blackwork.  I just started doing it and it just got denser and denser...and I kept thinking I was crazy the whole time.  I could have made it so much simpler    I started filling in the "D", then realized that I really didn't need to.  But I thought that taking all those little backstitches out would be really tough and would screw up the "D".  I used cross stitch and back stitch, and I mostly got the stitches from Erica Wilson's Embroidery Book.

My temari balls, that is.  I've been making these on and off for the past couple years.  I've made close to 30 of them.  Temari is a traditional Japanese craft.  Some fabric is wadded up and thread is wound around it a bunch of times until you have a nice round ball.  Then it's divided into sections and a pattern is embroidered on the surface.  Here's my most recent two:

I joined a while ago but got busy doing lots of things and never really became part of this community.  So now I want to introduce myself and start participating!

I started crafting after my daughter was born almost 4 years ago.  Before that I thought of myself as strictly a drawing/painting person (I have a BA in art).  But the birth of my daughter changed my life...I found it really difficult to get messy with charcoal and paint and be able to stop what I'm doing at the drop of a hat to tend to her.  So, I began crafting...not just because it's less messy, I really got interested in it when my husband's grandmother gave us a quilt.  It was really cool and random and used fabrics she obviously had since the 60's.  So I started making a quilt, then that interest led to making other patchwork thingies, which gave way to interest in embroidery and other sewing projects.  Now the thing I do the most is make temari balls (Japanese embroidered thread balls).  I hope to share all this stuff with you all soon!