A Whole Bunch of Scissors Fobs

Since January I have been diligently working on a challenge proposed by my friend Susan to sew a heart every day for a year.  I am happy to say that I am currently 10 ahead in my heart count, yippee!  For the past 34 days I have been making heart-shaped wool-felt scissors fobs for this challenge.  You can see them individually on my other blog, 365 Sewn Hearts, but this is the only place you will see them all together in a single photo!

The fobs are all made of wool felt, embroidery floss, sewing thread, baker's twine, and polyfill.  They are all sewn entirely by hand.

Here they are in the pint-size canning jar I challenged myself to fill with fobs.  It took 34 of these little hearts to fill this jar:

And here they are, all laid out :

The bright flower fob, below, is my favorite.  Which one is yours?  If you leave a comment and mention which ones you like best, you might just win one of them!  On July 11th I will randomly choose three lucky winners to receive one fob each.  Please be sure I have a way to contact you if you win.

Lavender Sachets and Pincushions

I've been making lavender sachets; this is one of the projects I promised to show you that requires baker's twine.  Two readers have told me that after seeing my post about baker's twine, they placed orders from Talking Twine and Trim--the etsy store where I got mine.  That's awesome, fiddlegirl8 and Lime Riot--I hope you like yours as much as I like mine!


I made these lavender sachets for two reasons:  first, I was trying to come up with new heart-shaped things for my other blog, 365 Sewn Hearts (I need a heart for every day of this year!); and I need stock for my little booth in a local shop.  This project was so perfect for both!  I've made lavender sachets before, but in a different style, so it was nice to make something new.  I had lavender on hand, so I jumped right in!


Sixteen lavender sachets:

The picture below shows how I started.  I printed out words and phrases on the computer, then traced them onto white fabric using my light box and a micron marker. I have an assortment of the micron pens, each with a different sized writing tip, so for different projects I can use whatever size works best with the font size I've chosen for my letters.

I cut out a bunch of hearts from various fabrics, and ironed interfacing onto the back of each to give the finished heart a more "solid" feel.  Then I cut out the words and phrases, and machine sewed them to the front of each heart.  I took all the hearts to my sewing chair in the family room and watched TV while I hand-sewed a running stitch with embroidery thread around the edge of each phrase, using the machine stitching as my guide.  (I always try to have some kind of handwork ready near my sewing chair--I don't like to watch TV without it!)

Then I chose two buttons to accent the front of each heart, and sewed those on.

Back at the sewing machine, I sewed the heart fronts to matching backs, stopping at the top to add two 12" lengths of baker's twine.  Then I turned them right-side-out, stuffed them with lavender, and sewed the openings shut. 

I packaged each heart in a ziplock baggie with my business card, and put them in a basket to take to Country Treasures.

I thought I had an endless supply of lavender in my closet, so I was surprised when it ran out before I had finished filling all the hearts!  I decided to turn the remaining hearts into pincushions.  To keep pins from poking through the back, I cut plastic food-container lids into heart shapes and put them inside the hearts before filling them with polyester fiberfill. 

The front and back of un-stuffed pincushions:

Eleven pincushions, all finished!

This is my favorite one, because I love the the print and colors of this fabric.  I think I will keep this for myself!

Baker's Twine Review

I've discovered that baker's twine is a crafting necessity!  It can be used as part of a project, scrapbooking, or in place of ribbon when wrapping a package.  Recently I've been working on some projects that require baker's twine (I'll blog about them in the next week or two), and I want to tell you about the wonderful twine I purchased from a shop on Etsy called Talking Twine and Trim. 

My first order was for an assortment of 10 yards each of 18 different colors.  The shop offers several different packages of various colors and quantities--you will probably find exactly the amount you need, or you can place a special order.  I just wanted a variety to have on hand.  It was very reasonably priced at $17 (plus postage).  Each color came wrapped on a cardboard tag, and there was a little "thank you" tag included.  Cute!  I love all the colors, and I love knowing that I will always have just the right color to match whatever I'm working on.  The first time I used this twine I noticed that it is significantly thicker than the twine I have used before (I had previously bought one huge spool of red and white twine at Amazon.com, and have used it for wrapping packages.  It's fine for that, but it pales in comparison to my new twine!). 

I just started my second project that includes baker's twine, and I realized that I need MORE!  So I went back to Talking Twine and Trim, and this time I ordered full spools of eight different colors (each spool has 240 yards of twine).  This should last me a while!

Jodi, the shop owner, generously included four freebies (in front of the spools in the picture below)--she sent three lengths of twine (carefully chosen so they don't duplicate any of the colors I purchased in this order) and a package of scrunched seam binding, which is a new concept for me!  It turns out that the seam binding is also used for crafting, scrapbooking, and packaging.

Both times that I ordered from Talking Twine and Trim, the packages arrived quickly.  I highly recommend this shop and this baker's twine!