Week 16: Fabric Pennant Banner

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Well, maybe not stormy, but certainly windy.  Here we are, four days into May, and we're having strong winds in the Bay Area that are more typical of an impending winter storm.  Trees are being thrashed about, debris is flying all around, and there is the possibility that the near-30 mph winds may cause power outages.

Just a few hours earlier it was hot, sunny and breezy.  We were escaping the 90-degree heat and enjoying hot dogs and strawberries in the air-conditioned home of one of our friends, but now I'm having to pull out my heavy comforters and sweats.

I, for one, will ignore this blustery weather and look forward to the coming summer, full of sun, family, and celebration.  And what would a celebration be without decorations, decorations like this week's project, the Fabric Pennant Banner from Leigh Anne of yourhomebasedmom.com?

Fabric Pennant Banner from Your Home Based Mom
Image and design © Your Home Based Mom

French Poem Tea Towel Embroidery, Day 6

I've come to a decision on the tea towels, and my decision is this:  These tea towels, once completed, will not be gifted to my best friend.  My "handiwork" on the embroidery is so atrocious, so embarrassing, so offensive to the eyes, that to present these pieces to Miss BFF as tokens of friendship would cause such a strain to our relationship, that I must vow to hide them from her for all eternity. 

French Poem Tea Towel Embroidery, Day 5

Ladies and gentlemen, can we have a show of hands from those of you that don't seem to like embroidering as much as you thought you would?  One, two, oh, Sunnygal, you don't need to hold up both hands.  What's that?  You REALLY don't like it as much as you thought you would?  You messed up how many times?  And you've thrown away how many feet of embroidery floss?  Oh, dear.  Oh, oh, dear.

French Poem Tea Towel Embroidery, Day 2

Bon jour!  The pattern for this embroidery project was originally set to napkins, but I thought it'd work well for tea towels, too.  Teresa Down Under used lines from a French poem entitled “Pomme et poire" and accompanied them with some cute sketches.  I'll be making four tea towels, so I'll just be using four of the five parts of the poem.

Week 15: French Poem Tea Towel Embroidery

I would really, really like to catch up on my blogging this week.  At last count I have 15 posts that I still need to work on, all for projects that have already been completed, so I'm hoping that this week's project leaves me enough time to catch up, even just a little bit, on the blogging.

I've gone back and forth about posting on this week's project, as it was supposed to be a surprise housewarming gift for my best friend (and she moved into her apartment years ago).  She's one of the five people that read this blog, so it won't be a surprise after this post, but I've still got a Christmas gift to give her, and it's been several months since I wrapped it, so when she finally opens it, it'll be a surprise to the both of us (hopefully it wasn't perishable).

Strawberry Pillows, Day 7

The day has finally arrived.  The day I had been avoiding all week.  Yup, today is the day I finish up the berries with hand sewing.

For finishing up the berry, The Purl Bee listed a cotton embroidery floss that was a size 12 thread.  All I had on hand was DMC embroidery floss, which comes in six strands that are each size 25.  I don't know much about embroidery floss, and even less about floss sizes, but apparently the higher the number, the thinner the thread size.

Strawberry Pillows, Day 6

Since I was still procrastinating on hand sewing up the Connecting Threads strawberry, I moved on to the patchwork strawberry.  I had about five different shades of red for the main body and about seven shades of green for the stem to work with.  I didn't have any real rhyme or reason when sewing up the patches together, other than to not sew up the same fabric next to each other.