Fashionable Fabrics Giveaway!

Good morning! I hope you all had a fabulous Labor Day weekend. Over here in Seattle, the weather was beautiful and we did a lot of berry picking ... and eating! My fridge and freezer are stocked with blackberries, blueberries and more. Yum!

But let's get down to business! This week, partner Fashionable Fabrics is sponsoring a giveaway for our lovely readers. For a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to their online fabric shop, check out the end of this post and leave a comment.


Fashionable Fabric is a great source for the latest in fashion fabric from your favorite designers. They feature "fashion forward novelty fabric for seamstresses and crafters looking for prints and patterns that are often unavailable in traditional outlets". They recently added a bunch of prints to their Halloween and Holiday sections, so make sure and check those out. Their Sale and Remnant sections are packed full of great stuff too! I just browsed them and nearly added a dozen prints to my cart (like this one and this one and this one and...).

Craft Challenge - Scarves: Book Review and Giveaway

Good morning and happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. We enjoyed some sunshine here in Seattle and spent time outdoors: hiking in Discovery Park, washing the car, eating lunch on the balcony, spotting the Blue Angels doing their show for Seafair... Lovely mellow weekend! I know Angel is busy getting ready for Ian to start first grade next week. Are any of your kiddos starting school this week?

Another thing I did this weekend is make a project from the book Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose Scarves. A couple of months ago, Lark Crafts sent me a copy for review and I wanted to share my thoughts on it with you. Lark Crafts is also giving away a copy of this book to a lucky reader, so make sure to check the end of the post and leave a comment for your chance to win!


Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose Scarves
by Nathalie Mornu

The Craft Challenge series of books inspires readers and sewists to repurpose a specific material in myriad ways. In this book, scarves are the base material and the author presents 30 projects to get ideas rolling: skirts, dresses, tops, accessories, and more.

Alewives Fabrics Giveaway!

When we were prepping our Christmas in July series (by the seat of our pants, that's how we fly, oh yeah), we contacted one of our favorite fabric shops out there, Alewives Fabrics, to see if they'd like to join in the fun. Not caring one bit about the last-minuteness of things, Rhea jumped in with enthusiasm and assembled a little something to give away to our readers! Yay!!


To celebrate our last week of Christmas in July, Alewives Fabrics is giving away a super fun Holiday Hoot Fat Quarter bundle. There are 8 fat quarters in the set, including 3 different owl prints from Alexander Henry's Holiday Hoot collection and featuring coordinating dots, solids and prints! The color scheme is traditional Christmas red and green with an added twist of gold, blue and brown.

Fashionable Fabrics Giveaway!

Good morning and happy Monday! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Today we're happy to share a little giveaway with you. Fashionable Fabrics is offering a $25 gift certificate to one lucky Stumbles & Stitches reader!


Fashionable Fabrics is an online fabric boutique specializing in "designer fashion fabrics at fashionable prices". They also have a lot of sewing patterns and books in stock. In the spirit of our Christmas in July series, I checked out their Christmas fabric section. They've got some fun prints as well as Christmas-y dots, stripes and damasks from designers like Riley Blake and Alexander Henry.


Dennis and Tonia, the owners of Fashionable Fabrics, have two boys. So, as you can imagine, they are drawn to boy-friendly prints. There are lots of fun boy fabrics in their shop, like Rashida Coleman-Hale's I Heart Robots, Riley Blake's Alphabet Soup, Marty Goes to Mars by Camelot Fabrics, and much more.

Alphabet Glue Giveaway: Winners!

Congrats to the winners of our Alphabet Glue, Volume 2 giveaway!

The five winners are: Bargain Babe, Dawn, Diane, DaffodilAngel and Colleen!

We will forward your information to Annie, thanks for entering.

Fashionable Fabrics: Giveaway!

We've welcomed Fashionable Fabrics as a new partner this month and they are getting ready to spoil our readers with a $25 gift certificate!


Fashionable Fabrics focuses on fashion fabrics as well as quilting and novelty fabrics. You can browse their selection by designer, collection, manufacturer or prints. Their pattern collection is also pretty great!


They are currently offering flat-rate shipping of $4.95 or less for all US orders.
And pssst, they have the amazingly popular Ghastlies fabric in stock (it just came in recently and is flying off the shelves!) as well as some of Anna Maria Horner's gorgeous LouLouThi collection.

Homemade Living Home Dairy & Keeping Bees: Book Review (and Giveaway!)

Today we will be sharing a review of Homemade Living: Home Dairy and Homemade Living: Keeping Bees, two books by Ashley English sent to us by Lark Crafts. The DIY homesteading philosophy behind the Homemade Living series is close to our hearts, as Angel and I both strive to lead as homemade a life as possible. Additionally, we are friends with author Ashley English and love her blog Small Measure. So we are thrilled to be sharing our thoughts on these two books with you.


Lark Crafts is giving away a copy of each book to one lucky reader! Read to the end of this post to see the details.

I'll start with the Dairy book and Angel will continue with her review of Keeping Bees.

Sew Tina! + Alewives Fabrics Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations to Tamie!



You have won the book Sew Tina! by Tina Givens from Lark Crafts and the gorgeous Pomegranate fat quarter bundle from Alewives Fabrics. Look for an email from us shortly!


Thank you to everyone who participated, we loved hearing from you all about your experiments in sewing clothes. And thanks again to our fabulous partners for being so generous!

We have a very exciting week planned for you all... Look for a post from Angel in just a little bit!

Sew Tina!: Review (and a Giveaway!)

Good morning! I hope you all had a great weekend. Today, I'd like to share some thoughts (and a project) about Sew Tina!, a recently published sewing book generously sent to me by our partner Lark Crafts.


Sew Tina! 30 Cute Projects & Adorable Decor Items For Kids by Tina Givens features clothing, accessories and decor projects for kids age newborn to roughly 8 years old. The book is broad and spiral-bound for easy use while sewing (yay!), and comes with 18 full-size patterns in the inside pocket (just trace and cut, and you're good to go!).

Big Little Felt Giveaway Winners! (And, Happy Monday!)

Hello everyone! Hope your weekend was FABULOUS. Mine was spent planting zinnias, calendula, strawberries and all sorts of other things, all in the almost-90-degree (and super humid) weather. Today we're back to Spring temperatures, with a giant thunderstorm coming (along with some tornado warnings). Typical!

Anyhow, what you've all been waiting on: the winners of our Big Little Felt Universe giveaway! Thanks again to Lark Crafts for their partnership, we are super excited to bring you more book reviews and giveaways from Lark Crafts in the coming months.

The winners are:

Pameladawn!

And Aimee!

Ladies, check your inbox today for an email from me! And, congratulations!

We'd also like to thank Prairie Point Junction and Felt-O-Rama for their participation in our giveaway, if you haven't already go check out their wonderful shops. Y'all have been a pleasure to work with!

Last, but not least: Tomorrow, April 12, 2011 is the deadline to enter the Spring Runner Sew-Along! If you'd like to enter, just go to the original Spring Runner post and leave a comment, that's it!

From Our Stash to Yours: Giveaway!

Welcome to the first post in a new series we'll feature from time to time on Stumbles and Stitches: From Our Stash To Yours. This is a chance for our readers to enter into a giveaway where we feature well loved (new or gently used) things from our respective craft-item stashes. A small way for us to say "thank you" to everyone that reads and supports Stumbles and Stitches!

For this round, I have raided my knitting stash and have TWO knitting packages to give away. Here's more info:

Giveaway Number One:

- A knitting journal with enough space to record 28 knitting projects, plus a spot to write your needle inventory in the back, plus a ruler and conversion chart! I bought this book when I first started knitting, and never got around to using it. It is well constructed and would make a lovely memento for anyone that knits. And, it is out of print!

Each page has a place for a photo, a yarn sample and specific details about your project.

A skein of cotton yarn, in pink and a pair of wooden knitting needles, size 3. Not sure of the yardage on the yarn, but it is quite a bit! Tied in the original skein, no label (it is from Turkey, I received a huge bag of about a dozen skeins as a gift from my parents!)

Three back issues of Interweave Knitting Magazine (Summer, Fall and Winter 2004, no longer available through Interweave!):

Giveaway Number Two:

A copy of The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. This book has patterns for hats, socks, sweaters and other knitted items with sizes from baby to adult, lots of variations included! I bought this book when I first started knitting, and have referenced the patterns inside for a few projects. I'd love to pass it on to someone else!

A skein of cotton yarn in orange, with a set of size 13 wooden needles. Same as above for the pink, there's no label and there's quite a bit of yarn!

A copy of "Slave to the Needles" from 2003, this is an awesome knitting 'zine with comics, patterns and more.

To enter to win, simply leave a comment here, and let us know if you have a preference for package 1 or 2. Don't forget to provide a blog link or email address so we can contact you. For additional entries, "like" us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter , don't forget to add a comment for each of these additional entries. Comments will close Sunday 1/30 at midnight PST and we will announce the winner on Monday morning.

Good luck and happy knitting!

The random number generator gave me number 1 and number 4! Congratulations to Yana and Lora Clare, look for an email in your inbox today!

Magpie Patterns Giveaway Winner!

Thank you to all our lovely readers who participated in our first sponsored giveaway this week. Magpie Patterns generously offered a $20 gift certificate to their shop.

And the lucky winner is... outside 'z' box!

Congratulations!   Please email us at stumblesstitches (at) ymail (dot) com so we can coordinate the delivery of your winnings!

Thanks again to everyone who participated. Stay tuned for more giveaways coming up soon! And make sure to check out Magpie Patterns for lovely patterns (for those last minute Christmas gifts!!) and a fab selection of crafty books.

Magpie Patterns: Introduction and Giveaway!

We're excited to introduce you to a new Stumbles & Stitches sponsor: Magpie Patterns!





Let me start out by saying that I look at a lot of independent online shops, and there are a few things that stand out to me when I visit a site for the first time. First, how does the site look and how easy is it to use? I need form and function, a beautiful site that is easy to order from and browse, that's organized in a way that makes sense to me. Secondly, does the site have a well curated selection of items?  And third, what do I know about the person running this small business? I like knowing that my purchase is helping someone that I would like to sit down with for a cup of coffee.



Magpie Patterns fits the bill on all three counts! Gorgeous layout and graphics, easy to navigate with fun and fitting search categories. A wonderful selection of patterns and books for knitting, embroidery, sewing, crochet and more. And a friendly, knowledgeable and creative person at the helm. (Check out her lovely blog Crafty Bird.)

I would be excited just to introduce you to Magpie Patterns, but to top it off Magpie has offered to give away a $20 gift certificate to their store to one of our lucky readers! (And, I should mention here that there are downloadable PDFs galore, so if you're looking for last minute gifts there's a good chance you can find a pattern or two with instant gratification for those last minute Christmas gifts.....)

To enter, go visit Magpie Patterns and take a look around (you might find some FREE PDFs while you are looking around, I noticed quite a few during my own visits the last couple of weeks). Then come back here to post a comment about your favorite pattern or book. For an extra chance to win, "Like" Magpie Patterns on Facebook, and post another comment here that you've done so!

That is 2 chances per person to enter the giveaway. Make sure to include contact info in your comment, like a blog link or email address. We'll accept entries through midnight on Friday 12/10. And we'll announce the winner on Saturday, 12/11. Good luck!

Here are some of our favorite things WE'D buy if we won:



French Press Felted Slippers pattern


Envelope Clutch pattern


Amelia hat knitting pattern


Festive Flock embroidery pattern


Felt Campfire sewing pattern


Spaceboy and Robot sewing pattern
Want to get your hands on some of these amazing patterns and books now? Magpie Patterns is offering a special discount for Stumbles & Stitches readers! Use DEC15 at the checkout to get 15% off your purchase until Friday, December 10! (You can always save the gift certificate for a rainy day, if you win!)

You can find Magpie Patterns in the following online spots:
- Shop
- Blog
- Facebook
- Twitter

Congratulations to V!  You've won our Magpie Patterns Giveaway.  Email us so we can connect you with Magpie!

"Guess The Project" Winners

Thank you to everyone who participated in our little "Guess The Project" contest this weekend. As many of you guessed, I am going to be making a swanky diaper bag!


With this beautiful fabric and those notions, I intend to make the "Dad Bag" from Handmade Beginnings for myself, with a few modifications. I'll be posting about it in the near future hopefully. So far, I've only cut half of my pattern pieces. Lots of work ahead...

The first reader who correctly guessed the specific project is Joanna, The Hungry Crafter. Congrats, Joanna! You are the winner of the FQ of Shadow in Teal from Anna Maria Horner's Drawing Room collection.



And now for the random winner of the 3 other fat quarters... Drumroll...


Congratulations, Erin (ScottFM)! You've won yourself three lovely pieces of fabric!




I'll be emailing the winners shortly to coordinate the fabric delivery.

Thank you all for participating! We are planning on having a few more giveaways before the holiday season is up, so stay tuned! For updates, you can "like" us on Facebook and/or follow up on Twitter if you don't already!