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.

Strawberry Pillows, Day 5

On the top of my list of things that I don't like about sewing is hand sewing.  For one, it involves dealing with sharps, and, as you may know, I try to avoid interacting with pins and needles as much as possible.  For two, it doesn't move as fast as, say, a sewing machine.  Or a racing turtle.  Or an ambitious snail.  And for three, I always feel like I'm doing it wrong.

So instead of sewing up my strawberry, I worked on the strawberry top.  I cut the two template pieces out, and I was fine with the stem top, but I was confused by the stem bottom.  It said to "Cut 2 and tape together along dotted line."  Did they mean to cut 2 of the templates and then tape them together before cutting the shape from the fabric?  And if so, would I cut one or two pieces from the fabric?  Or, did they mean to use the template to cut two pieces of fabric and then tape the two pieces of fabric together (for some strange reason)?

Strawberry Pillows, Day 4

Ah, to frolic in a garden of strawberries as big as my house!  Can you imagine how delicious that would be?  Berry delicious!

Week 14: Strawberry Pillows

Strawberry Pillows from The Purl Bee
Photo courtesy of The Purl Bee

The other day I was shopping at the local chain grocery store and was lamenting over the selection of out-of-season tomatoes.  I tell ya, there's nothing like the smell of homegrown tomatoes freshly plucked from the garden.  But we're not at peak tomato season yet, so I've had to console myself by browsing through the local farmers' markets.  We're lucky here in Northern California to have so many farmers' markets to choose from.  On some days, we actually have more than one to choose from!