Loomyinous Flowers!

Once upon a time, I took a weaving class! That's right, the kind of weaving class involving a weaving studio and huge looms. Luminous looms! It was a Saturday morning class, and I really fell in love with weaving. All except for one thing--threading the loom! When you are working with a huge loom, threading the loom can take...oh...forever! So, it's no wonder that I've always wanted one of these little looms that you can make simple yarn flowers with. Finally, I bought one the other day, and I've been having so much fun!

It only takes minutes to make a little flower...and not much longer to make a bigger, layered flower.

Not even thinking, I happened to choose this variegated Sugar n Cream yarn, and it happened to be the scented kind! It smells like flowers--perfect!

For a little weaving kit--it comes with several looms for circles and squares.

Then the whole thing compacts nicely and travels well. Why didn't I get one of these flower looms long ago? I'm just imagining all the kinds of yarns and ribbons I can use on it to embellish both my fabric and paper projects.

So some of my first flowers were a little wonky as I was getting used to it, but I'm much faster now. Can't wait to move onto the squares! I'm a dream weaver!

Fabric Dream House No. 2

My second mixed-media fabric themed house is a little cottage called, Good to Bee Home.

It is themed after the big fat garden bees that I love to see tending to my flowers, herbs and veggies.

This little garden cottage is stitched together with a fabric roof appliqued with ribbon, old broken jewelry, buttons and sequin pieces. It has a gardening angel charm hanging on the side, looking after the bees and their busy work.

Instead of using four squares for the house this time, I used an old quilt square as the base. I had found a stack of old quilt squares at my flea market. Onto a quilt square I attached a cross-stitched garden on aida cloth, made just for this piece, featuring a couple of butterfly buttons, and my fat cross-stitched bees. I found this flower cross-stitch pattern in an old Ladies Home Journal magazine! I substituted some sparkling DMC floss for some of the colors in the pattern.

After sewing on the door, with a button doorknob and heart patch, I added a piece of knitting over the door, made from colorful ribbon yarn. The words Good to Bee Home are embroidered in sparkling DMC on the side, and more ribbon and jewels are attached as a bell pull to decorate our cottage.

It's so fun to combine cross-stitch (probably the thing I'm addicted to the most) with my love of fabric, knitting, ribbon collecting and applique. This piece is going to be framed and someday (a girl's gotta dream) it will be part of my gallery showing of 20 themed fabric houses! Woo hoo!

In the meantime, I'd like to thank the big fat beautiful bees in my real cottage garden for inspiring me and making my first zinnia bouquet of the year possible. 

I hope you enjoy eating well, writing often, dreaming big, and stitching happy!


Here's how I keep my DMC Floss organized:
Search Amazon.com for stitchbow travel bag

Keep stitching and have your aida cloth delivered:
Search Amazon.com for charles craft aida cloth