When I got our giant 36” over the bed monogram I also ordered this smaller monogram to use on our front door from League of Letters on Etsy.

The retro styling is perfect for our 1950s ranch home.

This was way easier to do than painting too!

All I did was lightly sand the whole thing, then I stained it with a cherry stain using an old sock. I did two layers and it was perfect.

I hammered a D ring to the back and hung it with a ribbon onto our door knocker.

Looks great with our new storm door.

Hey there Hello Kirsti readers! It's been a while since I put together a guest post for y'all, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy crafting. I'm a teacher, so I've been home all summer getting my craft on. I've made 2 different types of burp cloths (more on those and the advice I have for you later), minky baby blankets, gift baskets, monograms, and so much more.
Today's project was a bit of art work for our Baby Girl's room. Her furniture arrived on Wednesday and now it's time to focus on the finishing touches before she arrives.
It started with a trip to Michael's to find the right sized canvas to go over the crib. Decided on a 12 inch x 36 inch, which just so happened to be on sale for $5.99!!! And I had a coupon for 10% off everything...SCORE!!!!
Then I needed to decide what to put on the canvas. I wanted something simple and sweet, and decided to go with “LOVE”...something that would be timeless, and could be hung somewhere else down the road.
The most difficult part of this project was finding the “right” font. It was the part that took the longest --- endlessly searching dafont.com. But eventually I found the perfect one, Shardee. I've put together a pdf of the file I used to make my template, so you won't have to search endlessly! (YAY for time saving)
Download the template here!
First I printed the letters and cut them out. I used Tombow monoadhesive to hold them in place while I traced. It's hard to see here, but there are pencil lines on in this picture.

Next I started the scary part...pushing the pins in! This part takes the longest.

I found the best way was to outline first and then fill in. This project took roughly 400 push pins. It's really dependent on how you push them together.
Here's the project once it was all finished!

Can't wait to hang it in her room!
**P.S. I've tried shaking the canvas to try and get the pins to fall out but they are pretty secure. Barring any earthquakes I think they'll be just fine.**
Download the template here!
Kirsti:: Is this not the cutest!! Can’t wait to share all the things I’ve made for Bestie’s beautiful daughter!
Here’s a whole room shot =)

Here’s an easy room divider my Dad made for their pool house. He wrapped a typical plastic shelving unit in table cloth. By adding pleats it lays nicely.  It’s makes easy to get to hidden storage for all the ‘pool stuff’.

To attach it at the top use screws paired with washers screwed into the plastic.

Very simple, but effective and cheap.

 

   

Bestie is a teacher and has a great little classroom that needed some chevron love, so I created some fast valances for her.
I know you don’t need a tutorial on how to make a valance but I did want to share something I encountered.
The chevrons were printed onto the twill crooked. So I was left with the choice, cut it straight or cut it look straight. I ended up making sure the hem fold hit the same spot in the chevron across the valance.
So they look totally wavy when they are folded, but gathered on the rod they look even.

The fabric is Taupe Zig Zag from Carousel Designs, they shipped very quickly!

Materials for a Queen Duvet:

• King Top Sheet
• Queen Top Sheet (I found the individual sheets at target feel really great for the money)
• Sewing Machine
• Buttons or Ribbon for closure

Directions

Prewash both sheets
Iron the King size sheet
Fold and iron the top sheet make yourself a pressed line grid so that your tufts end up straight.
Layout the queen sheet on the floor of your work area, this bottom, sheet is your “sizing guide”
Twist and tuft as desired. I alternated, 'more dramatic tufts’ with ‘smaller tufts’ to get the effect I wanted. While tufting you’ll need to watch the size, the top King sheet can’t get smaller than the bottom Queen sheet.
You’ll need to pin your tufts well to ensure they make it through moving, I did this by ‘weaving’ the pin back and forth to keep the twist.
To keep the tufting sizes consistent I used my seam gauge to measure “the depth” of the twist. My “dramatics” were 2” inches and my smaller ones were 1 inch.
Carefully sew your tufts using a denim needle and a short stitch length. I went back and forth several times to ensure it kept it’s twist. At this point your top sheet resembles, Belle’s Yellow Ball gown.

Once your completely tufted it’s time to match up both the top and bottom pieces right sides together. I found the easiest place to do this was on the bed.
Now you’re going to center the king size sheet on top of the Queen sheet, and pin the top and sides together, I used safety pins to make it easier. You will need to ease in the excess fabric into the seam as you go with little pleats.
Since the Queen sheet is already so nicely hemmed, I used my zipper foot to ‘ride’ along the Queen sheets hem to keep it straight.
After ‘riding’ the Queen’s already done hem you’ll have some excess fabric on each side, so I did a rolled hem on my serger so it won’t fray. (If you don’t have a serger you can pinking shear cut your excess).
On your open side on the bottom, you’ll have extra excess, so you’ll need to decide how you want your closure to work then, you’ll hem it as needed.
I still haven’t added a closure to the bottom (want to do a dramatic color but can’t decide which!)  but you could do ribbon ties or buttons easily.

Voting is now open! Please vote for my design in this linky, the top 10 designs advance to the next round!

When I saw blog favorite Prudent Baby post their Borderline Brilliant contest to win a Brother PE500 Embroidery Machine, I knew I had to come up with something awesome. (I’ve been lusting over this new machine for months!)
I had just made my Machine Stitch Sampler for my beloved Brother SQ-9000 I finally had a ‘real life’ reference tool for all 79 stitches it’s capable of. If you haven’t made one for your machine yet, do it, it’s so helpful!
So I decided to make my entry a bit of a challenge for myself, to only use I use only the stitches of the SQ-9000 had, with some very careful guiding!  (I did do a tiny bit of hand embroidery for his eye, mouth, and nose).  I chose to make a squirrel since I’m so excited for fall to finally arrive in Nashville, and since my sorority mascot is the squirrel.


It was a great challenge to test my creativity and was a lot of fun too! In the end I utilized 18 different stitches on my SQ-9000, and two hand embroidery stitches, for a total of 20!
Using a picture of my machine stitch sampler, I added labels and arrows to show which stitch I used for each!
Using decorative stitches to machine embroider by hand tips:

• Stabilizer helps a ton to keep stitches crisp.
• Control your speed, my machine has a little slider that controls the ‘top speed’ I use it all the time to make sure I don’t get a lead foot.
• Figure out the best spots in the decorative stitch to ‘turn’ some flow well with a slow constant turn, but those with ‘linking’ straight stitches work best if you do all your ‘turning’ in that straight stitch section.
• Take your time! You can’t easily pick out your mistakes, and the heat n bond make it’s hard to hide your needle holes.
• Cut thread tails as you work, since you’re sewing over the same areas you don’t want a tail to get sucked into your bobbin case and cause your machine to jam.

Materials:

• Squirrel & Acorn Pattern for tracing (Free from me!)
• Brown Fabric (8”x8”)
• Acorn Fabric
• Acorn Felt
• Backing Felt
• Lots of thread Colors
• Heat n Bond Lite 
• Pellon Medium Weight Stabilizer
• Black embroidery floss

Steps:

Trace the pattern to the back of your Heat n Bond Lite, then iron on to the wrong side of your fabric, then using sharp embroidery scissors carefully cut along the lines.

What you want to do with your finished embroidery will dictate how big your backing felt is, mine is 11” x 17” ish. Cut some medium weight pellon stabilizer for the back to make it easier to machine stitch.

Iron on your squirrel to the center of your felt, then using a chalk pencil sketch out the features you’d like your squirrely to have.

 

I started with a curly cue stitch, which I stitched in a swirl pattern to create great a fuzzy looking chubby squirrel belly.

Then I did the ears using a satin stitch pattern, then I used a normal straight stitch to better define his little pink ears.

By setting my standard zig-zag stitch to a wide width but a short length I made a statin stitch triangle nose for squirrely.

I then used my triple stretch stitch to define his toes.

I used a stretch stitch, which is basically a long skinny zig-zag to define the border, and his arm and legs, I loved the effect! I’ll definitely be using this stitch for future appliques.
 
I had 6 different fur like and fall themed decorative stitches  which I used for the tail, I over lapped them in some places to add dimension, and sewed them matching the curve of the tail.


Using lots of different straight and swiggle stitches I created some ‘body’ fur. I also did some long straight stitches to add textures to the arm and foot of the squirrel. You can see the stitched I used in each place on the stitch directory.

With embroidery floss by hand I made a satin stitch oval shaped eye.

Again using embroidery floss I back stitched around his nose to ‘frame’ the machine satin stitch, then I backstitched a little smile for him.

I then ironed on the acorn and stitched it with an applique stitch. I used a stretch stitch in brown to border the acorn top, then a cross stitch style stitch to embellish the top.



Finish into your completed project. I chose to frame him, but he'd make a great little throw pillow or wall hanging as well.



Today (Thursday) the sun came out for the first time since Sunday, here's a photo of squirrely in the sun =)

Voting is now open! Please vote for my design in this linky, the top 10 designs advance to the next round!

This post is an entry in the Prudent Baby Borderline Brilliant Contest.
This post is partying here.