Hairpin Tin

A spiffied-up Altoids mints case to hold my daughter's bobby pins and hairpins for ballet. This will make my life so much easier! This will go in her Christmas stocking, so shhhhhh!

I free-handed the embroidery on felt. Other tools: my good ol' pinking shears and trusty E-6000 glue.

Autumn Leaves

Happy last day of Autumn! This project (like many of my projects lately) was inspired by this blog.



I made these Autumn leaves from wool felt I had on hand for various projects. I was surprised and pleased I had so many Fall colors! The embroidery floss also came from my stash (thanks to helping my mom cleaning out her sewing room when she moved a handful of years back!).



As you can see I wasn't quite finished with the embroidery when I took the pictures, but I was quickly running out of daylight, so I took the picture anyway. What I mean to say is, I purposefully didn't finish the project so that you could see what the embroidery floss looks like on my needle!



I hot-glued a brooch pin or hair clip to the back so I could wear them. Like so:



And so:



Do they look cute with my growing baby bump?



I hope you had a wonderful September, October, and November (and First of Octember)! Tomorrow Winter and the Christmas Season may officially begin! (According to my own personal almanac, and despite the eight inches of snow I shoveled from my walk today.)

Cowboy Quilt in the Works

Let me introduce you to an unfinished project that's been hanging around my house for almost a year. It's a cowboy quilt that my oldest son and I have been making. It has large squares embroidered with my his cowboy drawings (that he did last year) that will be sprinkled amongst the smaller squares. I do love all the various cowboy fabric.



Here's Monkey One laying out the triangle pieces that will eventually go around the edge of the diamonds.



The embroidered muslin squares are my favorite part of the quilt. I love the drawings my little artist made. (I still need to clean and iron these, in case you were wondering)



I did most of the embroidery, but as you can see I had some help! The areas he did are so sweet and special to me. I'm glad his stitches are not as uniform as mine because they will always be recognizable as his.



Here are the embroidery portraits of my little cowboys. There will be another one of my husband and me, but it's still in the embroidery hoop right now.



I originally intended the quilt to be queen size, but I'm considering splitting it into two smaller quilts. That way there will be one for each of my boys and I won't have to try to quilt such a large area. How on earth do people quilt a queen size blanket, anyway?