Thursday, September 30, 2010

It's too early to think up something clever!

LOL!!!

Yesterday when I photographed and edited the picture for today's post, I was singing a song in my head with the "fabric" substituted for the actual lyric....but it is early and I didn't write it down.  lol!  My sarcasm just comes to me, I guess I can't preplan it.  Would that make me a "stand up sarcastic blog poster????"  Probably not, even stand up comediens preplan, huh?  Oh well.....we will move on anyway.

I have been playing around with our new fabric line......oh how yummy it is!  I can't seem to get enough of the Deck the Halls collection.  How awesome would it be if it would expand with more coordinating fabrice that didn't leave us with the Holiday mini?????  Seriously - how awesome would that be???  I know, right???

Well, I have two fabric projects to share with you today.  A french style memo board and a little piece of wall art for the Holidays.

We will start with the memo board.

This was my sample board for a stamp camp I held a couple of weeks ago.  We made a glass jar with decor elements on it fro Halloween.  It was super cute and wayyyyy  super easy.  And then, we all made a memo board using Designer Fabric.  I took a bunch of the fabric to the camp and let everyone pick their own to make everyone's memo board personal.  We had a great time at the camp - the memo boards the girls did were awesome!  I have to say though when I asked my hubby for his staple gun for a Stampin' Up! class.....he did look at me like "are you serious.....a staple gun for stamping?"  And I think the girls that were at the camp got the same reaction from their hubbies.  ( I had them bring a staple gun if they had one to help with time )

Oh sorry.....I got really off track, huh?  And to think.....I haven't even had my diet Coke or Coke Zero yet this morning.  Maybe lack of caffiene makes me meander through my thoughts......or maybe caffeine makes it worse?  Hmmmmm.......  There I go again!

Anyway - my memo board was made with the Cherry Cobbler fabric from Deck the Halls.  I told you a while back that Cherry Cobbler was my favorite red we have .....didn't you remember?  So - when Stampin' Up! gave us a fabric that was cherry cobbler and very vanilla - it was meant to be. 

The ribbon pattern was made with the new Cherry Cobbler 1/2 " Seam Binding.  I gotta say - I {luv} this stuff!  It is so smooth and flexible and soft.....do you get the picture?  lol!  Where the binding intersected, to accent the quilted look of the memo board, I placed antique brads.  I gathered the seam binding through the prongs and put them throught the entire board to pull the fabric down a bit.  Wanna see?

You like?  I do!

Oh boy.....and I said there were two projects to share today.  The second one is a wall hanging I made for the Holidays coming up.  I gotta say.....I think this is really cute.  Boy, I am full of myself this morning, uh?  lol!  Without further delay......here it is:

I told you it was adorable....WHAT?....You didn't believe me?  After all this time, you still don't trust me?  That hurts.  Really hurts......

The background is just an ordinary piece of muslin that I sandwiched with another piece of muslin with quilt batting - bamboo quilt batting - ever hear of it?  Made me feel really "green" since I was using it on a tree project.  lol!  I then machine quilted it at an angle.  It isn't perfect...please don't measure down to the 1/16th of an inch.....I didn't care that it wasn't perfect, to be honest, it is to look "shabby - country - cute"  That is a professional decorating term, right?  lol!!

The tree pieces were cut with my pennant die (the smaller pennant) and big shot.  Do you give yor big shot massages weekly?  You should - it make sit more relaxed to pump out great projects like this :)  Each "pennant" is three layers - a piece of muslin and then a piece of wool felt and topped off with a piece of fabric from Deck the Halls.  I adhered the tree down onto the background and then added a trunk.

The tree trunk is simply a piece of wool felt cut with the new Scallop Squares Duo Bigz Die in the Holiday Mini.  I stitched it right to the background piece very haphazardly with two colors of thread to kind of simulate tree bark.....how did I do?

After I had the tree, tree trunk and background all sewn together - I snipped all of the scallops and throught that baby in the washer and dried it in high heat to get the normal shrinkage you get with 100% cotton fabric in high heat.  Oh and the adorable fraying too!!  I was looking for that!

No tree is complete without decorationg, right?  Right....that is what I thought, so I adorned my tree with Deck the Halls Big Designer Buttons.  I tied bow with the 1/8th inch very vanill tafftea ribbon through the buttons before adhering them to the tree.  See??

And a tree topper......I must admit, I wanted to use the star die with some mustardy colored felt....but my felt color that I had just didn't mesh well with my tree....so I pulled out soem very vanilla taffeta ribbon and made a bow that I then acented with more 1/8th inch very vanilla taffeta and another big button.  Take a look at that:

You like?  I was very please with this tree. 

What were your inital reactions to the projects in this post?  Leave me a comment below and let me know!  I do have two more things to share with you that I made out of more fabric...but that will have to wait until later today.  Oh yeah - you will get two posts today....after all - you deserve it, I have been so sporadic posting lately.  I am really sorry for that!

toodles :)

5 comments:

Deb said...

I love, love, love your projects! And your wall hanging is just wonderful!!

MAT said...

The projects were wonderful. Now if you could only teach me to sew!

Carrie Gaskin said...

These are both wonderful projects!

Lisa Martz said...

Both projects are just really clever! Great job!

Mary Brown said...

Both of your projects are just wonderful and perfect for the 'gift giving' season! Thanks for playing along this week in the Create with Connie and Mary Thursday Challenge!