I received a nice surprise.....

from my daughter this afternoon.  She loves to do beading .... which is Greek to me....and she made this beautiful bracelet for me.  I love it!  One thing I did discover is that it is very hard to take a good picture of beads but I did the best I could.  She's thinking about taking orders so stay tuned for that information.  It's hard to tell but the inside pearl is a pale pink, smaller beads surrounding that are teal, silver metal long beads in the corners and deep burgandy crystals in each corner.  

I shall treasure this always.

Blessings, Barbara

What to do, what to do.....

I guess I have the summertime blues.....as Alan Jackson calls them.  I haven't touched my Blackbird project in weeks.....I started a new knitting project and I've added some new things to my shop.  I've gotten quite a few orders for my project bags and I want to thank the ladies who are purchasing them.  It means alot to me knowing someone out there thinks my work is good enough to spend money on.  Here are my new ones:

 I Love My Cat Project Bag

 Ribbon Pumpkin Gift Bag

 Black Cat Gift Bag

 Bread Basket Liners

 Blackbird Designs Project Bag

Delft Blue Project Bag

As you can see I've been keeping busy but sometimes a person just needs something new to do and I'm at that stage.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older and I know there are few years left to learn something new and enjoy it or what.  Also there's the expense.  I would love to learn how to do stumpwork but I suck at embroidery....pardon my french .... but I do.  So I guess the question remains.....what to do....what to do.

Here's a shout out to all you ladies you put up with me.  I know I can be a pain but you always cheer me up.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart...you all are the best.

Blessings, Barbara

Christmas gift bags....

are a wonderful way to give that stitcher something lasting.  I made these smaller (approx. 7 x 10 inches) so that a stitcher can keep her accessories like scissors, her floss and anything else that comes to mind at easy reach.

This is one of them....there are 3 different designs.

Blessings, Barbara

Good news to report.....

DH and I went to the Pulmonary doctor on monday and according to him, it just looks like scar tissue.  He has him scheduled for another CT scan of his lungs in two months to see if there is any change but he doubts there will be.  That started my week off good!

Then I came home and got busy in my sewing room and came up with 5 new project bags.  Here's what they look like:

 Summer Fun

 Teddy Bear

 Tribal Cat

 Springtime Bird

Ragdoll

You know where they are if you're interested.  

I haven't been stitching too much lately and I must get back into finishing my Blackbird Christmas design.  I've been knitting and crocheting Christmas gifts for my two sister-in-laws who live in Pa.  I'm making them each cowls that they can wear around their necks and pull up over their heads for hoods.  I love working with yarn....especially natural fibers like wool.  Any knitters or crocheters out there?  What's your favorite yarn to use and what have you done lately.  I thought by cutting back....even stopping.....cross stitching that I would have more time for my other addictions but that's not the way it's been.  I just need more hours in the day or give up sleeping.  

Blessings, Barbara

Saw this on Pinterest and it just cracked me up.  It is soooooooo me:

Have a Blessed Day, Barbara

Question for you ladies.....

I just purchased this Vera Bradley tote on Ebay but the seller didn't know what the print's name was.  Anyone here a Vera Bradley fan?  I really want to try and get a wallet to match but I don't know what to ask for.  Any help would be appreciated.

Blessings, Barbara

I've been busy......

First off, I've been sewing up project bags for customers and here's 3 that I finished today.

 She loves cats so the first one says "Cat Lover" the second one is for Halloween and it says "Black Cat" and the poor kitty has a number 13 on it's back and last but not least is the Christmas one with a Peace dove on it.  

About 3 months ago, I came across some Vera Bradley fabric on Etsy.  I was able to purchase one yard of one of her discontinued fabrics.  I just didn't know what I wanted to do with it......until today.

The name of the fabric is "Maison Blue".  If your a Vera Bradley fan, I'm sure you will recognize the fabric.  These are in my shop if your interested.

Blessings, Barbara

Don't you just love......

those days where you can spend the whole day in your sewing room?  I went into mine this morning not knowing what I was going to get into but I knew I had to do something.  What I came up with are these:

The first two I machine embroidered on overdyed wool and came up with these 3 strawberries and a scissor case.  The bottom picture is a tote bag with handles that I decided to do a peacock on.  Now if you look closely, you'll see that the peacock is wrapped around a silver shoe.  The strip of fabric you see to the right I added because that's the fabric I found for the lining and it's just too pretty not to show at least some of it on the outside.  By the way, there's over 74,000 stitches in the embroidery design.  My poor little machine was really working it's butt off doing this one.

Blessings, Barbara

....and as I continue.....

to make more of these dang project bags, I keep coming up with more ideas.  Here are my 3 new ones:

For us tea lovers

Parisian

 For us dog lovers

You know where they are if you're interested.

Blessings, Barbara

Cookies...

I'm talking about the good kind you eat......not the ones in your computer.  How many of you ladies belong to Pinterest?  I find it a fantastic place to get new ideas in stitching, recipes and make overs from just about nothing.  One of the things I really enjoy looking at are the cookies that some of the great cake designers do.  Here are a few that caught my attention:

These just blow me away!!!!  That someone would take this much time just to decorate a cookie is amazing.  If you've never spend some time on this wonderful website I highly recommend it.  If you have, what's your favorite things to look at.

Blessings, Barbara

I was able to finish 2 more this evening and they're kind of vintage looking.  The top one has old fashioned labels on it so I thought it needed a label of it's own.  I do like how that one turned out.

The bottom one is for coffee lovers....which I am not.  I even have to hold my breath when I go down the coffee aisle at the grocery store.  That one has vintage style coffee labels on the fabric.  They are both in my store......oh and if you couldn't tell what the design was in the first bag today....it's a black cat's face with green eyes.  I love that design!

Blessings, Barbara

Yep, I've been sewing again and came up with some new ideas for my project bags.  I have 6 embroidered and I was able to stitch this one together this afternoon.  I'll do the remainders tonite and tomorrow.

This one is done using prequilted fabric in golds, browns and blacks and the fabric I used for the embroidery is a gold Dupoini silk that matches perfectly.  These are becoming habit forming to me.  Now there's a question for you.....can certain types of needlework become habit forming in a "harmful" way.

Anyways, this one is over in my store if your interested.

Blessings, Barbara

Good morning everyone!  It's kind of cloudy and overcast here in Florida and I'm feeling the blues.  This is going to be one of those rambling posts where the reader doesn't know if she/he wants to keep reading or not....I'll leave that up to you.  On one hand I have the good news to report that we went to Shand's Hospital in Gainesville yesterday to meet with the heart surgeon and his recommendation was to wait.  The leaky valve is not causing much trouble and the anyurism (sp?) is small and his advice was to keep a watch and wait.  My DH cardiologist here in Orlando will perform heart echos every 6 months and CT scan once a year and relay the info to him.  When he deems it's necessary for surgery, we will be informed by the docs here.  Now for the bad news from Gainesville.  When they did the CT scan yesterday, they found a spot on one of my DH's lungs.  Seeing that he use to smoke years and years ago, this must be looked at immediately which it will be on the 16th of this month.  And again.....we wait.

Do any of you belong to message boards or groups online?  I belonged to a knitting/crocheting community and it's so cliquey (word?).  I love talking with other stitcher's of any kind, but it's hard to find a place where there's no problems to solve.  That is one of the reasons I started this blog.....to talk with ladies who wanted to talk about stitching or other topics that we chose.  I've made some very sweet friends thru this blog and I cherish you all.  I just don't understand the mentality of some of the message boards.  Why the cattiness?  Why the being mean and nasty to newbies?  Beyond my comprehension.  On this one board, I mistakenly posted about something that apparently I wasn't suppose to talk about on that thread and was attacked for doing this.  What?  Are these people perfect?  Have they never made mistakes?  I think I've learned my lesson and will stay close to home on my little piece of the internet.  :o)

I hope all of you had a fantastic weekend and that your week has started out great.   I don't know if anyone else is following the horse California Chrome and how  he's won 2 of the triple crown races this year...but I will be watching the Belmont Stakes this weekend.  It could be history being made right before your eyes.  The last one was in 1978.  Whatever you'll be doing I hope you'll have a fantastic week and stay out of trouble.

Blessings, Barbara