Thanks for the blog love and encouragement. And the funny spider tales! It's nice to know I'm not alone in that. Well, 500 posts is an accomplishment! (You have no idea.) Grace made me this giant "commemorative peanut butter cup" to celebrate. She's totally got my number. It's the size of a cupcake! And not a miniature doll house sized one either. I nearly died laughing when I saw it. I haven't eaten it yet, I don't think I can! Not alone anyway. That might be tragic.
Here's one of the half-a-dozen things I've been doing lately. Did we really need another dishtowel? Not really. Did we need some fun stitching. Why yes, we did. This folksy redwork pheasant is just one of the free-with-purchase bonus designs for November. And surprise! Blog pals can download it for FREE and print it out. You'll need to trace it of course. Or you can get it as an iron-on transfer with any printed-pattern purchase from the PatternBee website this month.
I used almost a full skein of DMC #3801, a bright rosy red. For some reason, I'm sometimes asked to show the backside of my embroidered work. So here you have it. I'm also frequently asked about cotton dish towels. Found this one at a department store in our area. It came in a four-pack of different colors for about $5. The fabric border is a jelly-roll strip (I forget from what collection now) . If you've been reading this blog a while you already know my penchant for jelly-roll strips. I find them handy for all sorts of things, such as dressing up plain towels like this, for instance. There wasn't a hem, just the selvage end, so it served another purpose besides looking cute. Applying them is simple. Cut strip a few inches longer than the width of your towel, and fold in the ends so they are even with the sides. Pin strip right-side down to the wrong side of the towel. Stitch strip to towel with a 1/2" seam allowance.
Open it and press seam allowance toward strip. Fold the raw edge of the strip over about 1/4-inch and press. Fold strip over again onto the right-side of the towel, with the seam along the bottom edge.
Press it flat, pin, and top-stitch along the folded edge.
The back should look neat and tidy like this.
See? That wasn't so hard.
