Now comes the post-holiday fun – where I share all the embroidered fun that I’ve been holding out on due to holiday gifting! I’ve been dying to share these for weeks, but I didn’t want to post anything that I was making for Christmas – and aside from ornaments, I’ve been largely working on Christmas gifts since November. I’ve been quite a busy lady.

My first share – this tea towel for my mother-in-law. She’s a fan of her tea, and when I saw this little vintage pattern (courtesy of doe-c-doe) I just had to stitch it up for her.

I learned a new stitch with this one – the blanket stitch – and was really happy with how it turned out. I think, though, that my favorite little detail might be the steam. Such a cool pattern. I hope my mother-in-law enjoys this one – I know I enjoyed stitching it!

Designer Lisa Stickley sent me a lovely little Christmas card which arrived this morning. It’s put me in an extremely festive mood – as has the snow that’s falling on London today! (Of course, it didn’t settle and so we basically now have the same mucky puddles we always do, but let’s try to keep things as lovely as possible here today. After all, we have just been listed in The Times…)

Lisa has been a busy bee of late, coming up with some fabulous Christmas tea towels and cushions. I particularly like the tea towel with a scribbled Christmas pudding recipe on it…

She’s also produced some retro cushions featuring 1960s photos of handsome chaps wearing bobble hats – a bit of a departure for Lisa style-wise, but they look great! It must be hard to look moody in a bobble hat, but the lads on the left and right are doing a jolly good job of it. On to other lovely things…the scarily fast approach of Christmas means I have an excuse to obsess about Bake it Pretty – an American shop full of gorgeous cake decorating bits and bobs…

I’ll probably have time to make some tree biscuits (yeah, right – got to at least give the impression that I live the dream I suppose…) but I think I’ll cheat and buy a ready-made, ready-iced cake, then decorate it myself rather than doing things the proper way. These little snow men would look fabulous on little individual iced Christmas cupcakes:

Right, I’m off to drink mulled wine at a German Christmas market. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it. – Ellie

I’m back with my Super Towel Tutorial.

I made 7 ~ one for each of my cousins ~

• 7 tea towels {I think mine were about 16×24″}
• 1/2 yard of 54″ wide fabric {washed & pre-shrunk}
• 6.5 yards 1.5″ wide grosgrain ribbon
• 2/3 yard skinny ribbon {for loops}
• 1.5-2 yards thinner ribbon or ricrack PER PERSON {for optional waist tie}

Press the end of your tea-towel where the fabric will go.

Each towel will take about 7″ of fabric. Mine has polka dots on it, so I wanted the fold & rows to line up nice & straight.

But the built in rows made cutting pretty easy.

Don’t worry about folding the top edges under, they’ll be hidden by the ribbon. You do, however, need to fold the side edges in.

Press the edges nice & crisp.

Then just sew up one edge, across the top. & down the other edge.

If you’re going to embroider, do a few tests on scrap fabric.

After about 6 tests, I learned that the ribbon needed to be placed about 1/4″ above these dash marks on the embroidery hoop. Use a sturdy interfacing to add stability to the ribbon.

After you pop it out of the frame, use Stitch Witchery to glue the ribbon to the towel. I tried to sew it down but it just looked like poo. It

Don’t forget to fold under the raw edge!

Make 2 little ribbon loops.

I wanted my towels to fold so that the back edge of the towel hit the top ribbon. Measure to the top of the loop, not the middle.

Stitch in place.

I switched the bobbin thread to white, so you wouldn’t really see the loops from the front.

Thread through ribbon of choice.

All done!

Our very own high quality 100% cotton Tea-towels, designed by Build for the Design Museum Shop. These 100% cotton tea towels are hemmed on all sides and have a fabric hanging loop woven in the corner. Made in the UK. A handy and helpful Design Museum Shop item!

Via & more: Design Museum

Kim’s challenge this week is

Monday, Dec. 7: Dare to… give homemade gifts!

Nothing is more special than a gift made by you. Try out something new to give this year – ideas include bath and body items, kitchen gifts, hand-sewn clothing or home decor.

My project is actually a surprise for one of our new family traditions.

Of course, since I’m putting this out for the entire world to see, I guess the cats out of the bag. If you’re one of Rob’s female cousins, do me a favor & stop reading so you can still be surprised!

See, Rob’s family is kinda gigantic. There are 7 female cousins/significant others in our generation {well, technically 9 but 2 don’t live around here}. Last year, we decided to start a new tradition.

Cousins Cookie Camp!

One Saturday before Christmas, we all get together at one of our houses and bake cookies. It’s a way for everyone to learn the family recipes that have been passed down from older generations and test out some new recipes too. {I think my Cranberry Orange Walnut “Cookies” will be making an appearance.} Plus we all get to hang out, which doesn’t happen nearly enough.

I wanted to create something useful for all the girls to commemorate the occasion.

What do you need besides a Kitchen Aid for making cookies?

A place to wipe your fingers!

A plain ole boring white tea towel got spruced up with some festive polka dot fabric & grosgrain ribbon.

This was cheap too! The 7 towels, fabric, & grosgrain ribbon cost me $25 total ~ Or about $3.60/towel!

On the grosgrain ribbon I embroidered “cousins cookie camp 2009″.

I debated about embroidering it or not ~ didn’t want it to be too corny ~ but I’m glad I did. The right-justified small point font & all lowercase letters keep it modern, instead of lame.

As I finished up the tea towels, I held one up to my waist.

See, I’m a messy baker. Ok… I’m inherently messy but adding flour & eggs to the equation makes for an especially messy time. I’m always resisting the urge to wipe my fingers on my pants because I left the tea towel on the opposite side of the kitchen.

And it hit me!

Tea Towel Apron.

Add a couple ribbon belt loops and some rickrack… VOILA!

A completely perfect place to wipe my gooey fingers after cleaning the beaters {& by “cleaning the beaters” I mean “meticulously squeegeed off the batter with my fingers and into my mouth”}.

And if you don’t want to wear it as an apron, just remove the ribbon. The loops provide a pretty handy place to hang the towel up.

I hope the girls like them!

Big THANK YOU to both my mothers. I pre-washed both the towels & fabric at my mom-in-law’s, then stitched it all up at my mom’s tricked out sewing room/basement. She has an embroidery machine! It’s totally sweet.

The embroidery adds a special touch and I’m pretty positive I would not have done it by hand.

Yup… Absolutely-positively-without-a-doubt would not have embroidered all 7 by hand. {Me=not patient} It was also awesome to not have to buy any notions, like thread or interfacing.

I’ll post a complete “How To” on Thursday. Without the embroidery, this whole project is pretty beginner. You could even do the whole thing with “Stitch Witchery” right in your apartment!

Don’t forget to pop over to Kim’s & check out everyone’s fabulous projects

Click here to see my previous Dare to DIY projects!

These handprinted tea-towels from Peckham, show all the lovely wildlife on the doorstep! ACE!

To wash up with these grimy London inhabitants, buy one from the shop of garudio studiage , only £8 too>> Bargain! ….. 

HX

Edit:  I’ve put in an order for towels, and they have all been snapped up.  Everyone who has already emailed me will be getting their towels, but there’s no leftovers for anyone else!

I’ll be doing another order next year, probably start of January some time.  If you want towels through that, let me know so I know how many to order.  Sooz will be doing an order after that, but she’ll just be back from up North and trying to sort out her life, so pickups only.  If you’re in Melbourne and want to save on postage, let her know.  If you want towels before christmas, you’ll have to source them yourself, I’m afraid!  Good luck and looking forward to seeing everyone’s creations!

It all started with this photo from Sooz.

I commented that I thought maybe I’d start collecting tea towels – you have to love a beautiful thing that is made with care and love and art, but you can see and touch every day.  And it’s useful, so it’s not like you’re spending money on frivilous things!  Amiright?  I’m totally right.

Nautical cotton bar towels by branch handmade

So Sooz and I started an email conversation in which we talked about tea towels and spammed each other with excellent examples, and mused over craft.

The heated teacup by the heated teacup

And then today (this was a two day conversation.  Of course.) after much discussion of where to buy blanks, and a firm decision on each of our parts to actually do some creating, I said ‘maybe we should do a swap!’

Seahorse teatowels by humble collection

After some excitement on our part, and talking about logistics (mostly sooz, with me going ’sure.  Sounds… good!  yay tea towels!), Sooz blogged it, and we emailed some of our crafty friends about it.

Summer weeds by skinny laminx

And right now I am super glad it is Sooz who is organising it, because it’s hit twitter and apparently mixtape and craftapalooza tweeted it along with lots of other crafty types, and the sign ups are coming in.  And it’s only been up a couple of hours!  Scary.  Exciting.  Lots of cool and crafty people!

Redwork teatowels byNorththreads

If you’re interested, head over to Sooz’s post, and check out the info.  The deal is, you have to hand embelish your towel in some way.  Print, sew, embroider, whatever takes your fancy.  You can sign up for 2, 5 or 10 partners, (that’s 2, 5 or 10 towels for you to send and recieve) and you have to be willing to post overseas.

Tea towel summer swap by mindboggld

 Signups are open from now to mid january, to allow for christmas madness.  Although, if you’re printing, why not whip up a big batch and distribute to your meatworld friends as well as us electronic buddies?  Actual mail outs will be first week of march.

Retro modern owl by melysbaby

Tea towels should be linen, because they last longer and are generally nicer.  I will be ordering a bunch from here in the next few days, so if you want some let me know and you can have them at cost plus shipping.  Should be about $3-$4 plus shipping depending on how many we get.  Of course, feel free to sourse your own, or order your own from there. 

Jack Russell towel by DownZipper

If you want to grab some off of me, please sign up for the swap first (email sooz on sooz.com {at} gmail.com) so we know you are part of the swap and not some crazy   Then email me on kaviare {at} gmail.com and let me know how many you were after and your address, and how you’d like to pay me.  DON’T pay me yet!  I’ll let you know when I have the towels, and then give you my paypal or bank transfer details, as you prefer.

I still have my eye on this one, though

Mr Darcy proposal by Brookish

It’s a tea towel!! I know I shouldn’t have checked my Google Reader one last time before I signed off, but I did anyway and thanks to Cornflower Books I found this – Kitchen Sink Dramas! “Great stories don’t just belong in books. Make room for a little more reading in your life…“

They also have a short story by Saki tea towel that I would like, and a feature called The Reading Room that offers the chance to win their monthly drawing for a free SET of tea towels!

I think tea towels are my newest thing.

This one, called the Traveler from the hip peeps at Makool Loves You. is especially on the swell side.

… pals!  I met Natima earlier this year through the Quilt Festival online.  I was excited to make her acquaintance because of our shared South-east Asian heritage and love of quilting:

I embroidered this little tea towel and sent it over to Natima in Oz-land for her birthday:

Earlier, Natima has sent me the pattern for the Civil War Bride Quilt.  She will be my quilting buddy in this endeavor.  I am going to try doing this quilt by hand.  I haven’t started on it yet, but am in the process of starting a practice project before I jump into the CWB project because I want my CWB quilt to be perfect:

from Threadbear Patchwork & Quilting

It truly is nice to have pals in one’s life, is it not?  Thanks for stopping by and being my pals!  I wish you a very beautiful day.

I was moseying about Paragon one day and decided to stop by Crabtree & Evelyn.

To my surprise, I found this lovely vintage oven mitt & tea towel set sitting right by the teas & jams. Just one of each left. It was love at first sight. ♥ ♥ ♥

But being the Singaporean that I am, I thought “Ah, I’ll go pick ‘em up at the Vivocity branch and claim parking since I’m on the parking redemption scheme.” When I finally made it down to the Vivocity branch a few weeks later, they made a few calls and informed me that only the Paragon branch carried the mitt & towel – and they had only one left of each!

So much for saving on parking.

So I went back to Paragon a few days after that, and my mitt & tea towel were still there waiting for me. Pleased as punch =) The mitt is really cool because it’s one piece and has a little hook sewn on so you can store it easily. I hope the mitts are thick enough though. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you might remember that I have these great mitts with neoprene grips, which till now are the only comfy oven mitts I’ve found that can handle >150deg celsius objects. (You can see them hanging next to my new Crabtree mitts in the picture at the bottom).

Life is like a box of chocolates…

This ad is for a vintage style 100% cotton novelty tea towel, measuring 75cm by 48cm.

The item is in perfect condition (unused) and would make a great novelty gift or collectable item for the bargain price of £6 (plus postage)!

To make sure you receive it in perfect condition, I will carefully wrap it in acid-free tissue paper and protective packaging- and will send it out within 24 hours of receiving cleared payment. I’ll use Royal Mail first class post as a default, but if you’d prefer me to send it by registered post just let me know when you pay.

Link to my ad in Gumtree:

http://www.gumtree.com/london/39/45786939.html

Miss Maree and I headed to the Eveleigh Markets on Saturday for a spot of shopping and munching.  We stopped at a garage sale along the way for a peak at what they had to offer.  I snapped up these adorable old plates for next to nothing.  The whole lot cost me just $10.  The lady that I bought the plates from told me that she was very pleased to see a young person buying the plates, as they have been in the family for years.  Joh made scones for breakfast on Sunday and we ate them off these plates.  Perfection!