Stitching

The Ramsey County Fair starts July 15th and I have a few more things I want to finish up to enter.  I start working on fair projects in January because by then all my Christmas projects are over and done with and because I just can't wait for fair season.  A new category I'm going to enter this year is embroidered kitchen towels.  I've made quite a few of these as wedding shower gifts because it is tradition.  My mother says that a measure of prestige in her day was how many sets of embroidered flour sack towels you got as shower gifts.

Here are the two towels I stitched to enter.  Colonial Patterns put out these transfers in their Stitcher's Revolution line.  They also make the classic day-of-the-week-kittens-doing-ironing-and-laundry transfers, which are vintage and charming in and of themselves, but I just LOVE these new designs.  I have at least 20 envelopes of pattern transfers in a variety of designs.  The last time my nieces were here, we worked on these together.

I think the honey bear in this one kind of looks like TED the bear from the movie!  ;)   Sublime Stitching is another company that has some awesome transfer designs and supplies but I have never ordered from them.  I looked just tonight and they even have Moomin designs!

Colonial Patterns also puts out these colorful vintage inspired sturdy towels with these woven stripes.  I bought a whole slew of these with Joann coupons when I still lived in Iowa and they are a pleasure to work with.  I've bought up plain flour sack towels here and there when I see them and over time, they discolor.  These striped ones don't and look so crisp and sharp.

I really do enjoy stitching these because they are like coloring books for adults.  This is my box of flour sack crayons!  My mother bought this for me as a kit of floss/cards/case when I was around 12 or so kind of because I begged and pleaded for it.  She didn't want to buy it for me because she was just sure I'd use it for about 10 minutes and move on to something else.  At the time I wanted it for friendship bracelets and other small projects but I've continuously used it and added to it ever since.

This is a shoebox sized tote of floss grouped by color in snack size zip loc bags that a co-worker gave me.  It was his grandmother's and he gave it to me when they were dealing with her estate.

This is a literal shopping bag of floss that my aunt gave me left over from school projects.  I've taken this bag to girlfriend get togethers and my two nieces have dug through it looking for friendship bracelet colors and we haven't made a dent in it yet.  I have enough supplies to stitch flour sack towels til the end of time!

On the garden front, the peony bush my dad brought us is starting to bloom.  It is a good thing I took pictures of it when I did because we had heavy rain the next day which knocked all the petals off the blooms!

Here are the glorious pansies he planted around our tree in the front yard.  Pansies have always been one of my favorite flowers and I love seeing them every morning when Lopi and I go outside.