Coffee Anyone?

Below is an image of the towels I made using 4 of the Funny Coffee Bean designs I've been working on. Notice the border fabric! I like making things that are different than what you can find in the stores or through other sources. I used a coffee themed fabric by Timeless Treasures in a really yummy shade of brown with darker brown coffee related terms printed all over it. It adds a punch to the really cute embroidery designs, don't you think?

The towels measure 26" long x 14" wide; the border measures the full width of the towel x 1-1/2" high. The towels are a wonderful, soft and thirsty cotton in an off-white.

These will be added to the web site tomorrow. If you are looking for something different for that coffee lover you know, why not give them something not only practical, but a gift that will provoke a smile!

Unfortunately, we are not able to accept any more orders for this holiday season. We're getting ready for the Christmas holidays ourselves. Our office will be closed officially on Wednesday, December 21, 2011 and will reopen on Tuesday, January 3, 2012.

As this will be our final blog for 2011, I'd like to extend our wishes to all of our customers and friends for a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah and a New Year filled with the very best of everything!

Christmas Placemats

Well, December has arrived and Christmas shopping is in full throttle! Happily, the Christmas placemats project was finalized and my customer is thrilled.

I had to make some changes to the original idea that I blogged about back in October. The designs I selected are wonderful, but for this project, they were too dense for the quilting fabric I used. No matter what tricks I tried, there was too much puckering and I didn't think that adding the stipple stitching would help. So, I came up with Plan B.

As you can see in the image below, I opted for appliques in three different Christmas themes, a star, tree and gingerbread. I had digitized the gingerbread design back in 2004, both as a filled embroidery design and an applique. I went back to edit it a bit more for this project, digitized the tree and star appliques and was able to finish the project in record time!

Unfortunately, you can't see the quilting stitches, but I stipple stitched around the appliques and went with a simple stitch in the ditch method for the quilt block area. Rather than competing with the bright fabric colors and matching (or close to it) threads, I opted for invisible thread and it worked out perfectly.

Now that this project has been completed, I'm working on several other projects. One, that I will post a picture later, is a set of Coffee Bean towels with a wonderful coffee themed border. I think that adding a lovely fabric border that matches the theme of the embroidery designs is a great way to finish off a set of towels. The other project is to finish up this lovely FSL Christmas bowl. I actually have several to do, so I'd better get my "thread" on!

Hope you are having a creative day.