Arts and Crafts Movement

Many of you know for the past six months now I've been in a ridiculous arts and crafts move. It's got me OBSESSED with many things and techniques that I'm striving to learn. Hence, this started the ridiculous need to crochet every pattern I can get my hands on and now I'm moving slowly but surely into crafting things that are a little more practical all year round.


I've always loved cross stich, scrapbooking and cardmaking, and who can forget in high school when I decided I would make all my own clothes, including my homecoming dress that had to be sewn on me because Mom and I forgot to put in the zipper.


But I'm learning to venture out into the unkown.


I've had this fabric that I love and its been moving with me for years and I suddenly had this vision of a wonderful summer tote that would keep me happy all summer long, would be a great airplane bag for the travel I'm doing this summer, and could tote all my crochet madness with me to work and back.


So I went to Jo-Anns and knowing enough to know I don't know anything, asked the really nice lady to help me. I told her what I wanted to do and she gave me an education in interfacing to make the bag stand on it's own, so to speak. Then I had this vision that I would like to try my hand at embroidery on the bag as well. Something free hand instead of from a pattern like most cross stitching (or at least what I've done) is.


So then I decided to pull out the design from the fabric and stitch that in a larger version on the bag itself. Then I decided that I didn't know if it would stand out enough. I remembered thought about the hankies that were still in the package that I was trying to think of something creative to use them for. But, darn it, they are bright white and the background of the fabric is more of an off white.


And then I (are you still following this? I swear it's almst over) thought about how I was reading about tea staining to tea stain my birthday invitations to make them look like parchment (the whole Harry Potter birthday thing is going to be awesome) and so I decided I would try my hand at tea staining a hanky and see how that worked out. It was perfect!! It also used up some of my Lipton that I don't drink ("Life's too short for cheap tea") and so it was a win-win all the way around. So I'm going to try to embroider on this hanky to make the embroidery stand out more against the pattern on the fabric and wait to figure out the shape of the bag until I get the buttons my dear dad (in law) found antiquing in Tampa for me that I'm so excited to see them, hopefully there's one i can use for the closure on the bag (did I mention I'm not good with zippers. See the homecoming dress mention above.)


So here are some pictures of all my adventures in tea staining. I hope embroidery is as fun as it has always looked.

Tea, Yum!

the fabric the bag is being made out of

the tea stained hanky next to an original hanky.

Here are some pictures of the other crafts that have been keeping me busy.

finished green baby kimono and hat

finished red baby kimono and hat

pink Baby Ella hat (she doesn't have it yet though)

white baby hat with cute little flower (thanks for the idea Eleamar)

Gryffindor scarf for Harry Potter events this summer