Cameos, gingham, and stripes.

I know my posts have been a bit scarce lately. The beginnings of my weeks during the summer have been busy with babysitting (what do you call babysitting when the kids are school-aged? :) and errand day, and the ends of the weeks are sewing/crafting days. It seems like I just posted, but before I know it, it has been almost a week. But school starts back soon and things should calm down a bit.

I finally finished this little cross stitch cameo that I started months ago. My embroidery has been a bit neglected anyway, since I've been knitting like crazy, and I guess this just wasn't a stitching project that I was super-excited about. So it was hard for me to find the motivation to finish it. :) I am pleased with the end result, though.

The pattern is from A Rainbow of Stitches. It's very small...the finished piece is less than 3 x 4 inches.

I found a plastic frame from another piece that my mom or grandma had done years ago and decided to switch this cameo in. The frame was dark brown so I had to paint it, and the only color I had that would possibly match was this pink.

I am not a pink person. I never have been one of those girls who's crazy about pink...I actually don't like the color one bit (unless it's a darker, deeper shade). So this whole color scheme is a little unusual for me. But I have enough browns and blues and yellows and reds on my embroidery wall that it balances out. :)

Recent project #2: New curtains for my room.

I've been wanting to make curtains for my bedroom for a long time, and I finally got around to it. I knew that I wanted a light blue, but I couldn't find any home decorish fabric that I liked. So I decided to use gingham. :)

Unfortunately my room is really dark and has the weirdest lighting ever, so I couldn't get a good picture. At several points during the day, the new curtains make half of my room have an eerie blue glow. It's interesting. This photo cracks me up with its awfulness.

This is the most basic curtain style ever...rectangles with two straight lines sewn across the top. Instead of just hemming the gingham, I backed it with white broadcloth so it wouldn't be so sheer. I would have liked for them to be about two inches longer, to cover the white part at the bottom of the sill, but with the 45" wide fabric, this was the most I could squeeze out of the yardage.

I love gingham. It's so sweet and unassuming. And this shade is not like a Dorothy-dress-light-blue...it's a brighter teal.

My previous curtains were made by my grandma several years ago before I started sewing. They were made from chocolate brown curtains. Here's a peek (the new ones definitely lighten up the room):

Actually, at this moment, one window has brown curtains and the other had blue. I'm a cheapskate and couldn't bring myself to buy all of the fabric yardage in the same week. I still spent the same, but somehow it made me feel better to spend it over two weeks rather than one. :) The curtains for the other window will be made tomorrow, hopefully.

And finally, one last little pair of projects. After seeing this brooch board several weeks ago and this embroidery hoop brooch display recently, I couldn't resist. The other day, after cleaning my room (and by that, I mostly mean cleaning and reorganizing my bookshelves and a brief dusting, vacuuming, and straightening of everything else), I decided I needed to make one of each for storing my brooch collection.

I used an 8x10 picture frame with the glass removed, some fabric and two layers of batting for the first display. I painted the frame with what was supposed to be a bright cherry-red paint, but the wood was so dark that it just turned out burgundy. This one is for my vintage brooches (I posted more about some of them individually here and here).

And for my lighter, handmade brooches, I'm using the hoop. I glued the red ribbon on the frame before I picked the fabric. And when I saw these stripes against the red, my first thought was, of course, The Wizard of Oz. :) You can seriously find the cutest, quirkiest handmade brooches ever on Etsy. It's an obsession of mine...my Etsy favorites mostly consist of brooches I want to buy eventually.

{I wrote more about these brooches here.}

This isn't my whole collection, but these are my favorites and the ones I wear most often. Some others, like several that belonged to my grandmothers, are stored elsewhere.

I'm not too crazy about these random crafting posts where I dump all of my recent projects. But for now, it'll have to do. :)

Until next time,