Friendship Pillows and Little Friends

Today I was able to spend my time doing one of my most favorite sewing activities -- teaching kids to sew. My oldest daughter is an elementary school teacher. She asked me if I could come in and share my love of sewing with her kids. Well, of course I could! We did it last year and it was a hit. We worked in two groups and the kids just amazed me. Each and every one of them was interested, respectful and polite. We made "friendship pillows" -- a baseball theme for the boys and pink hearts for the girls. I embroidered felt patches with the kids' names on them and had them hand-stitch the patches in place in the center of the pillow tops. I took the pillow tops to the machine and quickly stitched the back on. Back to the kids to stuff and then back to me to close them up. My daughter and I chose to make the pillow backs out of white cotton so that the kids could autograph each others' creations.

The kids had a ball, I had a blast and it was just THE best way to spend a sunny Spring day!! Can't wait to do it again next year!!

Back in the Blogging Saddle

About a year ago, I wrote a post about how I hadn't written a post in almost a year. Well...it has happened again. I guess I'm not as good at the blogging thing as I hoped I would be! I look around the web and see amazingly beautiful blogs full of gorgeous photography and want to have a blog like that, but I now realize that that's beyond my capabilities. My strength lies in my stitching and I just love sharing my passion for machine embroidery and sewing with other like-minded creative souls. So I will stick to what I know best and I will not make a promise I can't keep. I will, instead, do my best to keep up with this and share informative and hopefully inspiring posts to stay connected to my dear, fellow stitchers.

So where have I been? Well, I was in Denver this past fall to film my very first online machine embroidery class for Craftsy.com. "Machine Embroidered Applique" is the title and the subject matter. I was given the opportunity to design five fun projects and share them as "lessons" in my own "homeroom" on Crafty's wonderfully robust learning platform. Take a peek and see what you can stitch with me. :)

I continue on as a columnist at Designs in Machine Embroidery magazine. I LOVE sharing my work through their publication! My column is called "4" x 4" and Fabulous!" and each month, my goal is to offer a project, that while stitched in a small hoop, provides big impact and a real "Wow!" factor. One of my favorite projects was my "Linked In To Style" purse. The "links" that make up the front embellishment are stitched in a 4" x 4" hoop. I was SO excited when I saw that it had made the cover of that issue!

 

I'll be posting embroidery tips, tricks, projects, giveaways and fun, so please check back. :)

 

Happy stitching!!

Jo  :)