Mandy's morning tea

                                                             

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.               ~ Henry James    The Portrait of a Lady

 I can honestly say that my New Zealand girls are truly enjoying their morning and afternoon teas.  Everyone stops what they are doing, and takes time to sit down and enjoy a bite to eat.  I know that they often have tea for their morning tea, but the afternoon tea is usually a light snack;  I have just facetimed with them and they were having pita chips and hummus, with water to drink.  Issa often drinks Chammomile tea while we are chatting.

Mandy wanted a tea cozy, and I saw this pattern and thought it was the cutest thing.  I will give the details of the pattern on my next post, because this little cozy needs to be fixed!  I was very careful as I marked the pink bottom of the cupcake to embroider...Mandy's Morning Tea.  It was just right, nice and straight.  That is until I atttached the top of the cupcake, I wasn't watching to keep the bottom even.  I didn't even notice until I took the photograph.  

Tomorrow I will pull the cozy through its lining, rip out the bottom seam, trim the cozy so it is even with the lettering, and reattach the lining to the body of the cozy.

Thats my plan!                          

First Day of Kindergarten

 Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire.
                      ~William Butler Yeats






     This little girl is so ready for her first day of Kindergarten.  She needed a towel for rest time, with her name on it of course.  
     The  project started out easy enough.   I went to Five Star Fonts,  purchased the Sassy applique font,  and brought it into my software.  I wanted the name large across the top of the towel, so I used my mega hoop. I did this towel like I have done so many others, hooping only my stabilizer and very carefully centering the towel on top with 505.  The machine stitched out  the placement and tack down straight stitches.  So far so good.  I removed the hoop and trimmed up the letters, and this is where everything fell apart.
     As I put the hoop back on for it to satin stitch around the letters, the satin stitch was a good half inch below my underlay; a result of shifting when I cut out my letters.  Oh No!  The only way to salvage my project was to go to my sewing side of the machine and manually  zigzag around each letter...the old fashioned way.  Not at all neat or even, but the letters are on there!
     My only consolation is the fact that Kindergarteners only nap until December.

Nite Nite Jonah

Fatigue is the best pillow. ~Benjamen Franklin

zazzle.com






This pillow is for sweet little Jonah, who lives in Birmingham.  His
room is decorated in primary colors, and we had a blue dish towel at the store,  so I thought this was an easy way to do a quick gift.

   I fiinally bought the Designer Plus version of the Artista software! This is my first project, and I love how easy the lettering was to do.  I am not sure of the font that I used,  I think it may be London, but I just typed in his name and enlarged it.  I changed both the fill stitch  and the underlay to a step stitch, since I enlarged the name a good bit.  Then it was as simple as going to the icons on the left, clicking on the Outline Tool, and choosing a triple straight stitch.  There is a box to check for Outline Holes, and I had to go back and check that because the inside of the O and A did not get the outline on my first attempt.

Jonah's little sister, Julie, gets the next pillow.  I hope to finish it soon!