OK, so last week when I was visiting family for Easter, I started to notice that everywhere I looked - um, there was stuff I made hanging around. Little paintings, a fabric covered journal, quilts, stockings made from my great grandmothers old raggedy quilt, napkin rings, placemats and of course, purses. I'm really all about this handmade thing - it truly is a wonderful gift when you can give someone something you made by hand (or something someone else made - something unique - you get the idea!)
SO...here's a cool idea for you crafty types for a Mother's Day gift for YOUR Mother - a set of placemats and napkin rings! Seriously, easy project. Here we go:
Materials needed - the obvious, sewing machine, thread, etc you'll need fabric (see below), fusible interfacing and prequilted fabric.
Pick 4 different fabrics (I picked some Amy Butler dots to coordinate with some vintage kitchen prints I found). For each placemat, CUT four 5" x 14.5" panels.
Using 1/4" seams, piece your panels together. Press your seams open. Next, cut a piece of fusible fleece interfacing to fit on the rear of your front panel. Cut it 1/4" smaller all the way around than your front panel. Following the instructions with your interfacing, fuse it to the wrong side of your front panel. This will give your placemat some extra oomph and keep your cotton panel looking crisp - in my opinion.
Once you have your front panel complete, use it as your pattern to cut a solid rear piece from your prequilted cotton fabric. I used a cream color - the same I often use in my purses - sound familiar?
With right sides together, pin and sew with 1/2" seams. Leave an opening for turning. Turn right side out. Top stitch. I also typically add some "steam a seam" to my opening just to make sure it stays shut. That's it kids! Done! Now repeat for the rest of your set of placemats you want to make.
Napkin rings are loads of fun when you use old buttons. My parents had given me an old tin that belonged to my grandmother full of buttons. I glued some of the pretty and larger ones to magnets and gave those to my family. For the rest, I cut a piece of wide elastic just big enough to fit around my napkins. Then I stitched buttons galore until the elastic was fully covered. I warn you - it takes a lot of buttons to cover one and it actually took me several, several hours to stitch all of these on for 6 rings.
What a great gift set. My Mom still loves hers and I loved seeing them adorn her table last week at Easter. Even my kids were impressed. "Did you make these Momma?" Ah, yeah. Hope that gave you a good handmade gift idea.
A few more dresses and embellished jeans went out this week and a cute little tie tote that my girls gave to their girlfriend for her 8th birthday. These will be finding their way to my etsy site pretty soon.
Lots of orders being mailed out this week - thanks to my neighbor Barb for helping me cut everything! We need to do that more often because we never did get to our banana split desserts!
Don't forget - just a week or so left on this month and our April giveaway will be done. The two peas will be picking a comment out of a hat and we'll be sending you, the lucky winner, a way cool, patchwork accessory bag with an awesome buckle...I'll share that photo with you later next week.
Keep Spring coming - I'm begging for the sun and warm breezes to start coming every day instead of snow, rain, sun, snow, rain, rain, rain, sun...we just need some SUNNNNN to stay in O-H-I-O for awhile!
xo - Trish
Where do I begin? So much I want to share with you but so little time! The girls enjoyed a great spring break last week and if you were following me on Twitter you know we headed out to the zoo...in the snow. I love working at the largest university in the country - gives me a chance to network with loads of people and luckily, one of our alumni board members is a keeper at the Columbus Zoo SO, she was wonderful enough to give my girls a behind the scenes tour. We got to see exactly what she does to care for the animals and a chance to see a grizzly bear, 2 alaskan brown bears and a cougar very close! So cool! No photos to share of that as we were not allowed to take any in the back areas but...check this out!
And some cool looking birds we saw in one of the aviarys...where it was WARM.
And so on to Easter...we went to my parents house which was fun. The girls got these really cool little jackets for their American Girls from the sewing room of the easter bunny, aka 
OK, so I never did get them to stand very still for a photo but here's a few portfolio shots...you get the idea!
Does the baby look happy here? Poor thing! Her sisters love her TOO much! Well, lots of photos, not too much text. Since Easter (yesterday) one of the peas has been diagnosed with whooping cough. She doesn't look sick does she? Exactly why we had no idea...since all she had was a nagging cough. Our AWESOME doctor caught it and well, things are now quite hectic in our house so I'll be back next week with an entry about handmade stuff! (I noticed at my Moms, my sisters - dang! I make a LOT of stuff cuz it's all over their house from paintings to placemats! More on that next week!)
I cut about 5 different designs and pieced it all together. Then we tried to put on the snaps. Shhheeezz! I think we busted about 10 of them before we gave up.
SO...we dropped our older daughters at an afternoon birthday party and took a trip over to the local fabric shop for a pair of pliers designed to put on snaps. Hoping to catch a bite out to eat, we headed to the local wine bistro...not open. Then over to our old favorite, Village Wines, also closed due to renovations! And...we don't actually drink alcohol but our favorites happen to be wine bars, both these places serve amazing food! Next try, a local mexican eatery and it was open. We gobbled down a ton of chips, salsa and some mighty big burritos. Yummy! Hit the spot...oh, yeah, back to the snaps!
oyed this process and my twins want to be sure that we bring their favorite, a brood of fat little birdies on orange dots, to church tomorrow. They think she should wear it all day, not just at meal time!