Grey + Linen

Hi Angel! I hope you're well. How is the remodeling progressing on the house? You must be so antsy to move back and settle in (and set up your new studio space, ha!). I can't wait to see the things you made for the craft show where you had a booth last weekend, hint hint!

In the meantime, I wanted to show you a spur-of-the-moment project I've been working on. I need some input and ideas!


Grey is my favorite color lately. Blame it on Seattle... as well as the amazing fabrics currently available everywhere featuring that muted and versatile color. I've been on a mission to finish a well-overdue gift for a friend (more on that soon!!) and I wanted it to feature a combination of greys and linen.


I pulled out all my grey fabrics and cut strips of various widths that I sewed together. The project came together nicely, here's a sneak peek. I will share all the details once it has reached its recipient...


After assembling the fabric pieces for the gift, I was left with several triangles of grey strips and linen. I decided to sew them together yesterday, to make squares. I had made coasters along the same design for my shop and love the diagonal seam between the linen and print. I think the patchwork adds even more to it.




I added a charcoal border to the smallest square since it was much smaller than the others. Oh how I wish I had paid more attention to matching up the seams, the wonky corners are now ALL I can see.




The beauty of such a spur-of-the-moment idea is that it's creativity at its best. However, I now have 4 squares of various sizes featuring this combo. I love the look of it but I have no clue what to make with them. Well, that's not true. I have several ideas, but none of them are grabbing me. SO, I would love your input!




What would you make with these squares? Would you make one project involving them all or would you split them up? Would you make something practical or decorative? Tell me, tell me.

Heart Garland for Valentine's Day

Happy Monday! I did NO crafting or sewing this weekend, not for lack of several piles of WIPs needing attention. I'm in withdrawal and can't wait to get stitching during naptime today. Instead, we visited family -- which was lovely -- and rearranged the living room and dining room furniture -- which was stressful. I need a weekend to recover from the weekend. I hope yours was wonderful!

All right, I mentioned last week in my Lovely Hearts post that I would share the how-to for making my felt and fabric scrap garland. This is a super easy project, it took no more than 1 hour from start to finish, including multiple kid and baby interruption, AND the 4-year-old was "helping" me. So really, easy-peasy project with a great result, I think! (ALL my photos of this garland suck, I'm sorry, we have too many windows!)


First, we selected all the pink and red fabric scraps from my scrap bin, and we also got out the red and pink felt (a rayon/wool blend, but I think any kind of felt would work here).


I sprayed all my scraps with a LOT of starch, until they were really wet and saturated, then I ironed them. It took a few passes with the iron for them to be dry. When done, they were pretty stiff, kind of like cardstock paper. (Note: I am pretty new to starch, but it's really changed my life in terms of sewing with scraps and linen. I like this all-natural non-aerosol spray starch, it smells gooooood.)


I had bought a few extra heart cookie cutters for our needle-felting playdate, so we used them as a template for drawing different size and shape hearts on our felt and on fabric. But you could draw various sizes of hearts on cardboard, cut them out and use those as your templates.

I folded the fabric in half, right sides together, so I would get a double sided heart when done. The felt was a single layer.


I did the cutting of the heart from the felt and fabric. Ben tried, but it was too tricky for his little hands.




After cutting the fabric hearts, I switched the fabric layers so they would be wrong sides together and the prints would be facing outward. Since the fabric was pretty heavily starched, the edges matched each other almost immediately and perfectly.


With Ben next to me on heart-choosing duty, I sat at the sewing machine. I first pulled out a large length of thread (to use for tying the garland) then I began feeding felt and fabric hearts that Ben was handing me randomly (or rather, he would beg to differ, very mindfully and artfully!) through the machine.

I stitched at about a quarter to a third from the top of the hearts; any lower and the hearts might tilt and hang upside down when the garland would be hung up. When stitching the hearts, I encouraged Ben to randomly alternate fabric and felt, sizes and colors, so we would get a well-varied result. With the fabric hearts, I made sure to pinch the 2 layers when feeding to the sewing machine so they would stay nice and even when stitching.


After stitching the last of the hearts, I pulled out another length of thread before cutting it. I tied a knot at each end, and ta-da, it was ready for hanging!

There's my silly boy jumping up and down, very proud of his work!


It's very cheerful, hanging in the middle of our apartment!


What fun stuff have you made for Valentine's Day? Are you going to make a garland now that you've seen my easy scrap-busting process? I'd love to know (and see your photos!). Please share in the comments and don't hesitate to ask any questions!

If you're looking for an even more kid-friendly variation of this garland, check out the super cute version created by Jenny of Cut Sew Iron Repeat. She prepped 300 hearts for a kindergarten Valentine crafting session!!

Lovely Hearts

Hello there!

I am not usually one to be inspired by Valentine's Day. I tend to find this holiday commercial and kind of cheesy -- or maybe I still hold some resentment from my lonely single days! In any case, this year has been different and I've embraced the kitshy red-hearts-for-everyone lovey-dovey aspects of V-day. Ben and I made some Valentine's decorations and I created some artwork for my shop. I thought I would share some photos with you!

Last week we had a crafty playdate with friends and made needle-felted heart ornaments. Angel, we used your tutorial but since the kids were involved, we skipped the embroidery. This was such a fun project! And with a lot of supervision and reminders about the sharp needles, the kids (aged 4.5-7) did great!

Hooray for 1000! (A Celebratory Giveaway, for YOU!)

Dear readers, Stumbles & Stitches reached a lofty goal this past weekend: we surpassed 1000 fans on our Facebook page. What a perfect excuse to have a giveaway! Seems like it's been a while since we've thanked all of you for your support, inspiration, collaboration and friendship.

Jenny and I have cooked up a nice little giveaway thanks to wonderful friends and sponsors. One lucky winner will receive 5 awesome prizes.

February Sponsors!

Welcome to February (a few days late...)! We are excited to have three lovely sponsors on board this month. We hope you will check out and support these small businesses. Not only do they offer fabulous fabrics and more, they also allow us to keep blogging here for your reading pleasure!

Without further ado, here are our February sponsors and their latest deals.



Fat Quarter Shop is the place to shop for all your quilting fabrics and pre-cut needs. Their selection is just incredible. For something fun and different, check out their Block of the Month program! Their 2012 Designer Mystery Block of the Month sounds so fun: you receive the pattern and fabric to make 12 different sampler blocks, resulting in a spectacular vintage sampler quilt filled with traditional blocks. The Among The Stars BOM sounds right on trend too.

Fat Quarter Shop -- The Jolly Jabber Blog -- Facebook -- Twitter
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Drygoods Design Online is about to move to a larger space in Seattle (where I and other locals will be able to visit and browse, rather than just order online! Can't wait!) Owner Keli is offering some super deals: 30% off fabric orders of $100+ (includes sale and regular price) through February, and until Wed 2/8 midnight, folks can save an additional 25% off of sale fabrics, while supplies last. Woot!

New in stock are top picks from Good Fortune by Kate Spain, all of Echo by Lotta Jansdotter, new Timeless Treasures, and the cutest flannel chevron prints from Northcott. Washi by Rashida Coleman Hale and Curious Nature by Parson Gray will arrive soon, among many others!

Drygoods Design Online -- Blog -- Pinterest -- Facebook -- Twitter
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At The Intrepid Thread, Pezzy Prints are on the way, and owner Julie just marked down over 200 items to 30% off in the sale section, including Power Pop, Pear Tree, Primitiva, Sugar Hill, Happiness and Petal Pushers. I noticed they have a lot of the super popular Outfoxed Pearl Bracelet in stock, in various colors!

Just for Stumbles & Stitches readers, Julie is offering a 10% discount on your fabric purchase with the code STUMBLE10, so go check out her great selection!

The Intrepid Thread on Etsy -- Website -- Blog -- Facebook -- Twitter
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What catches your eye in these wonderful shops? We'd love to know.

On My Dining Room Table

Happy Monday! I am currently SWIMMING in works-in-progress. Too many ideas, not enough time... and too many kids, ha! I thought I would share a few pics of what has been occupying my dining room table this weekend.

Remember these and these? I got the urge to play with scraps on Friday and began experimenting with the makings of a few pouches.

Tutorial: Embroidered Felted Heart Ornament

Hello! Things are moving along here, hard to believe we've been in this rental for a month already! Pretty much every day I think of some crafty something or other that I want/need (and didn't bring with me) and the room in the house where everything "extra" is stored is terribly unorganized. I can't find my container of buttons, my beads or some of the art supplies the kids got for Christmas, you get the idea. My goal for this weekend is to remedy this situation, I can't stand it when inspiration strikes and I don't have the materials I need on hand.

Today, I wanted to share a fun, easy needle felting project that combines two of my favorite things: embroidery and felting! If you are new to needle felting, this project features some nice basic techniques, including the use of a metal cookie cutter to shape your felted ornament.

The cookie cutter method is fairly common in needle felting (examples here and here). In fact, Magic Onions recently posted a very similar project, minus the embroidered embellishments. If you haven't given this blog a look yet, you should! So many wonderful tutorials, projects and Waldorf inspiration. Donni also has lots of cute Valentine gifts in her shop, Fairyfolk. I want one of everything!

Anyway, on to the tutorial:

Tutorial: Embroidered Felt Heart Ornament


What you'll need:

• a felting mat (I'm using a dense foam mat here) 
• a heart shaped cookie cutter 
• wool roving (this is a good handful, probably 1/8 of an oz. I'm using Wilde Wool in red plum here.)
• felting needles (a coarse 36 or 38 and a fine 38 or 40, I have this sampler pack and the needles are color coded on the ends. If you aren't sure what size needle(s) you have, or if you only have one, that's ok!)
• scissors
• embroidery floss
• an embroidery needle (I am using a chenille needle, I like using a needle with a larger eye)