Hello 2014

I have started off 2014 with some sewing.  And by sewing, let me just interject that I mean that liberally to include reading or watching sites about sewing; straightening my sewing room, etc.

Well, I embroidered a very nice towel that I got this past October from, All About Blanks, who are also one of my favorite visitors to the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo.  The latter was in Fredericksburg, VA this year rather than Chantilly, and once I got there, I was sold on Fredericksburg for life.  (They have ruined the Dulles Expo.)  There is a Wegman's grocery store and about three or four hotels right next door to the Fredericksburg one.  Anyway, I digress.

Before making the towel, I took the time to assemble and set up my "new" Brother SA503 10-Spool Thread Stand , which I actually bought last year and had yet to use.  It's compatible with the Baby Lock Ellisimo and is an incredible time-saver!

The dishtowels I bought have a bottom trim like the picture below.  I got a couple with black trim, a couple with brown trim, and a couple with a green and red Christmas plaid trim. 



I'm very proud of the towel I made because this time I did some more sophisticated embroidery editing than I have done in the past.   

I combined a Christmas tree ornament with a small branch of holly.  I rotated the ornament 20 degrees to the side and and made a mirror image of the holly, so that the holly was on either side at the base of the ornament.














 DH liked it and wanted to claim it for us, but was satisfied with the promise of another!  This will be a gift for my colleague at work.
















And in other news, I am currently working on a bat-wing top from a Kwik Sew pattern.  Review to come soon.

Stash Contest starts June 1st on PatternReview.com

My Own Fabric Stash Message Board

PatternReview.com has a couple of message boards I like to follow: the Stash Sew Along and the Slow Sewists Sew Along.  But there are some problems for me with them. When I'm in the mood to sew, I don't want to waste precious time on the boards and when I'm not, I don't feel like reading/writing on them.  But another major problem is that they are getting large and unwieldy to read through.  

The first one is now 1500 pages and much of it is social chat unrelated to sewing.  For those who've been on the board since the get go, they really know each other and feel like friends, so I can understand that.  But it's hard for me to keep up without going back and reading through all 1500 pages--NOT!!  Plus, I feel awkward like I'm butting in--albeit, the ladies are definitely friendly and inclusive, this is just my own issue! 

So I thought the solution might be to make my own board on my blog.  Not a regurgitation of my PR reviews, just brief updates on what I'm planning and working on--but maybe that's how others do it, too and they just don't post until done with a project.  But it is more than just projects.  I have real goals of stashbusting this year that I want to keep tabs on.  Currently, it looks like 8.33 yards of material per month will get me to the magic number of 100 yards.  But maybe even 50 will be OK, since it's so much more than I've ever done before.

Stay tuned for a stash reduction update!