Pretty Pillowcase

As mentioned in my last post, I have really been into embroidery lately. It isn't too time consuming, and it's quite fun to do. Also, unlike hand sewing, I think this is quite easy as well. I'm still not the greatest at it, but again, I am really enjoying doing it right now.
After thinking of things I wanted to do with our bedding, I decided I wanted to have embroidered pillowcases. I saw this and knew that it was perfect. Most embroidered pillowcase patterns are very flowery and girly. I am not a really flowery kind of girl anyway, but I knew that my husband would demand that very flowery pillowcases be immediately and completely removed from our bedroom. So I don't think that he will mind this pattern too much. If he does, I'll just have to come up with more masculine patterns just for him.

Mom's Birthday Gift

I love making gifts for my mom. She loves pretty much anything handmade, and I know her style pretty well. So I can get creative and come up with tons of things that I know she will like. She has a hoosier cabinet in her kitchen that she decorates beautifully every season. During the summer she usually has a small collection of beehive knick knacks displayed in her cabinet. I've been wanting to make something beehive related for a while to give her, and I decided to do this. (She really liked it.) It is a small about 5" square wall hanging.

I have recently rediscovered embroidery. I really dislike hand sewing, but for some reason I really enjoy embroidery. It's just something about seeing a picture come to life with color that I really love.

The Sunday Bag

So, a few weeks ago at church I looked around at all of the other mothers of young children and realized something. None of them were carrying big overstuffed diaper bags like I was. They were all carrying cute little tote bags. This is when I realized that I didn't need my huge diaper bag anymore. All I really need for those few hours is a diaper and pacifier, really. So I decided to join the "in" crowd and downsize to a cute tote bag.
The only problem with this decision was that I didn't have a cute tote bag. I had several plain canvas tote bags, but again, not very cute. I was trying to decide what I could do to spruce up one of these bags when I remembered this. I looked up more images for sashiko embroidery and decided on the pattern that I wound up using. I didn't want to bother with trying to find a pattern that was the same size as my bag, so I grabbed a plastic cup and started tracing. I completely free handed it, so the circles are off center a little bit. But even with those imperfections, I really like how it turned out. In fact, I like it so much that I am now constantly thinking of other projects that I can make with other sashiko designs.

So I took my new bag to church on Sunday and everything I needed fit, plus it looked really good too.