Create a Pumpkin Candle

What better to put in the middle of the feast. David Fisher will show you how to make this easy and impressive pumpkin tealight holder.

Make a Sesame Street Wreath

For 40 years, Sesame Street has been part of our lives and has encouraged us to accept all holiday traditions. Barbara Crews will show you how to create this wreath dedicated to some of our favorite Muppets.

Draw a Penguin Pilgrim

For Thanksgiving crafts like place mats and name cards, you’ll need some festive art. How about a lesson from Helen South on drawing this cutie penguin.

Embroider a Gift Bag

Save cash for presents when you reuse gift bags or buy those inexpensive plain bags. Phyllis Dobbs will show you how to dress them up for the re-gifting process with a touch of delightful embroidery.

Stitch a Swedish Ornament

If you’ve got an ornament exchange to attend this year, a traditional Swedish ornament will really stand out in the crowd. Cheryl Fall will show you how to hand stitch this original piece.

Wax Resist Holiday Cards

Add a contemporary look to your holiday while saving some cash on Christmas Cards. This wax resist technique from Marion Boddy-Evans is just what you need.

Pumpkin Foam Sticker Earrings

For a quick Fall look in a pinch, try these pumpkin sticker earrings from Tammy Powley. She’ll show you how to make them in five easy steps.

Paper Globe Ornament

This dimensional ornament has an intricate look, but is actually simple in design. Kate Pullen will show you how to cut and stamp this delightful addition to your decor.

Knit a Stocking Ornament

A mini stocking is a creative way to give a gift card, or hide a little treat on the tree. Sarah E. White shows us how to knit this cute little sock.

Christmas Tree Bunting

Decking the Halls has never been so fun, and this one is perfect for helpful kids to take part in. Use up those scraps of fabric with this decorative craft from the Sadie and Lance blog.

Make a Mini Hippo

Stuffed animals add a bit of fun and tenderness to any slew of presents. Stuff a stocking with a smile when you sew this little hippo from Lesley Shepherd.

Snowman Candy Jar

Top off your candy jar with a snowman face as sweet as the treats inside. Sherri Osborn will show you how to paint and assemble this wintry decoration that is appropriate to show off all season long.

Joy Ornament Crosstitch

Stitch a little bit of joy for someone this Christmas. Connie G. Barwick has the free pattern for this jolly cross stitch project.

Want to Join Make it Merry to show off your holiday crafts? We will showcase your crafts and recipes of all holiday traditions. Learn more.

Embroider a plain gift bag to make it unique and tell someone they are special - all you need is some Pearl Cotton and assorted buttons.

This is so quick and easy to make, you can make several.  Starting with a plain white gift bag, I used Pearl Cotton #3 from The DMC Corporation for the embroidery.  Draw 2 top lines 1 1/4″ apart and stitch the lines with a back stitch using 1 strand of green Pearl Cotton.  Stitch the inside lines with a running stitch and then stitch assorted sizes of red buttons between the embroidered lines.

Stitch a large lazy daisy flower with 2 strands of red Pearl Cotton.  Use a second needle and red sewing thread to anchor the loops at the outside edge with a small stitch over the Pearl Cotton.  Sew a large green button at the flower center to finish the bag.

You can add your own personal touches as you make your bags.  I would love to see what you make.

Have fun and happy stitching.

Phyllis

Copyright - this design if for your personal use and may not be used commercially without written permission.

I was invited to write a guest blog on ThinkCrafts.com by Create for Less.  I enjoyed writing about crafting and how it inspired and influenced a creative career for me.  I learned crafts early, taught by my mother and aunt.  As I see all the emphasis on various retro periods, I think of the crafts I was doing during each period.

ThinkCrafts.com is hosted by a craft expert and professional of many years, Maria Nerius and is a fabulous site for anyone who loves art, crafts, creative design and working with their hands.

I invite you to read my post and would love to receive comments from you.

Phyllis

The International Quilt Market in Pittsburgh this month was wonderful as usual.  Color was everywhere as new fabrics were displayed (including mine - Its a Dog’s Life with Quiting Treasures).  The mood was upbeat throughout the show and buyers were doing just that - buying.  I took loads of pictures of great vendors as well as my friends   But, if you read my last post, you know that my photo files were corrupted on the disk (the file names are all goofy symbols and Windows doesn’t know what file types they are- so if anyone can tell me what happened, I would love to know).

I am really excited about something that I purchased at the show (actually its being purchased through my local dealer).  I bought Bernina’s digitizing software, “DesignerPlus Version 5″ so that I can turn my art images into machine embroidery.

I plan to start with the motifs from my fabric collections. I also want to create designs to put on some of my projects featured in magazines and books.

Call me a nut, but I actually love learning new software, until I get to a frustration point!  The good thing about this software is that my local shop (Robin’s Sewing Shoppe) will give me lessons on using it, in addition to the demo I received at Quilt Market.  So, any frustration points can be resolved locally!

But the next step is that after getting home, I have decided that I want to upgrade my sewing machine.  That actually means starting new since my machine can’t be “upgraded”.  I’ve been visiting the websites of ALL the sewing machine companies to see which one has the features I want. Boy, now that’s frustration!  Some of the websites have much more information than others and its frustrating looking at one that has very little information on the features of their machines.  Then when I find a feature of one machine that I really like, I look back at all the sites again to see which ones have that feature.  And I love features! Unfortunately, the $$’s go up with each feature so I am going to have to tone it down.

So now, I’m off to visit local dealers to make a decision on which machine I want and to see if I can find one in my budget.

Oh well, wish me luck!

Phyllis

Quiltopoly Board Game

If you are a quilter or sewer, you will love the new “Quilt-opoly” board game from The DMC Corporation that debuted at International Quilt Market.  Its like Monopoly, (which by the way,  I’ve always loved to play) but features quilts and quilting.  The properties are all quilt blocks with escalating degrees of complexity.

Quilt-opoly board game for quilt lovers

I have a special love for “Quilt-opoly” - I designed the graphics for it, including the quilt block properties, the the actual quilt stitching properties shown in the center of each row, as well as some of the sayings on the cards.  It was a fun project to work on and I just love the way it turned out. And I can’t wait to play!

In addition to “Quilt-opoly”, I designed and created the quilt blocks in DMC’s booth featuring their fibers and threads for quilting.  I really loved working with the various textures represented in the various fibers of their product line.

Log Cabin Quilt Block

Sunflower Quilt Block

Diamond In Block

Butterfly Quilt Block

As a special note, I want to say that The DMC Corporation is not going bankrupt or out of business.  Since I have worked with DMC a lot over the past several years, I occasionally get asked this question.  DMC-US is a separate entity and is doing just fine.  They have sold their other divisions and are concentrating on the fibers only and are doing extremely well, I’m happy to say!

Tomorrow, I will write about another “celebrity” that I met at Quilt Market as well as show come of the many gorgeous quilts that I saw there.  So, please check back!

Embroidery is a fabulous way to embellish your jeans (or jean jacket).  I just received the July issue of Sewing Savvy that has the “Hot Mama” chili pepper iean embroidery that I designed.

Embroidery designs will add some colorful and spicy accents to your jeans, so check out this issue of Sewing Savvy, curently at your news stand, for the instructions and patterns.

To see more jean embroidery designs that I created, click “Denimbroidery” in my category list to the right.  This link will show jean embroidery kits that I designed for Janlynn, Inc.

While you are looking through the July issue of Sewing Savvy, check out the ad for the Meow Meow cat fabrics that I designed for Quilting Treasures (Page 55).

I hope that you will give your jeans a little tweaking with a needle and a few strands of floss.  I would love to see what you stitch.

Bernina of America sponsored a Bernina Fashion Show at the Spring Internatonal Quilt Market.  I took photographs of 3 of the gorgeous entries, although they were all spectacular.

This entry. titled The Many, Many Tears I’ve Shed, was created by Virgie Fisher of Yukon, OK.

Audrey Durnan of Claremont, CA, created the blue Silk Road Caravanserai which has a coordinating  hooded cloak.

This fashion, The Warrior Goddess…Guardian of Lost Treasure, was created by Janet Brooks of Rio Rancho, NM.

It was a busy show, so unfortunately, I did not get back to take additional pictures of the gorgeous fashions. 

Please check back for more from Quilt Market.  And one more piece of eye candy, a close up (although a little out of focus) of one of the beautiful rhododendron blooms that were outside the convention center.

I have been wanting to write about this absolutely, unbelievablely fabulous quilt, based on a translation of an old German Fairy Tale, and the interesting woman who designed and made the quilt - but my blog has not been working.  Someone hacked into it and it took me days to get it fixed.

But onto the story of this quilt and the woman who created it - Sieglinde Schoen Smith.  I had attended the International Quilt Market trade show in October 2006.  After the show, I was sitting in the lobby of my hotel waiting on the airport shuttle bus and had dozed off.  I was awakened by a woman, Sieglinde, who had started taking to me.  She had just arrived for the International Quilt Festival, this huge consumer show that follows Quilt Market.  She was so excited - she had entered a quilt and hoped that she would win a prize.  Sieglinde showed me a picture of her quilt, and my mouth dropped open - it was the most fantastic quilt.  I thought to myself that if she didn’t win, the judges were blind.

Sieglinde grew up in Germany during the war and had the children’s book Mother Earth and her Children read to her.  She had remained fascinated by this book and created her quilt based on this story. The quilt is really “mind boggling”, a work of art that is so detailed with both the quilting and embroidery.

As we sat and talked, Sieglinde told me of her childhood and family and the horrors of growing up during the war.  She was completely fascinating and had me thoroughly captivated.  Unfortunately, the shuttle bus came too soon and ended our conversation.  I could have sat hours listening to her.

Although I had her card, I was busy working and did not follow up with her, but often wondered how her quilt placed at the show.  

The next spring, I attended the Spring Quilt Market.  As I walked the show, I saw a quilt hanging in a prominant spot and immediately recognized it.  The booth was a publisher, Breckling Press.  I asked about the quilt and learned that it had been awarded “Best in Show”.  I also learned that the quilt was being used  to illustrate Mother Earth and Her Children in a new children’s book. 

When the Fall Quilt Market arrived in October 2007, Seiglinde was in Breckling Press’ booth, busily autographing copies of the book. She has another book coming soon, Mother Earth’s ABC,  using the alphabet on the quilt. Congratulations to Sieglinde, who is living a true fairy tale, and a huge thanks for sharing her talent!

This is really going to be fun!  I’m working on a design creation to enter for the  Fashion Embellishment Challenge sponsored by Expo International Inc. at the Craft and Hobby Show in a couple of week.  Yikes, its less than a couple of weeks! As you can see from the pile on my work table, I am just getting started. But, I can tell its going to be fun working with all the wonderful trims - I just love beads! Choosing the trims I wanted to work with from Expo was like walking through a candy store and deciding which piece of chocolate I wanted (all yum!!!). 

Well, back to work. As I said in my last post, this is frantic time for the designers attending the CHA show and I’m definitely in that frantic stage! 

Craft stores have such a huge assortment of craft supplies available, from supplies for scrapbooking to supplies for painting, needlework, sewing and quilting, floral and gardening, beading and many other types of crafts. The good part is that you don’t have to figure out what to do with these supplies. There are many design projects available in all of these categories in magazines, books and project sheets as well as kits that include both the supplies and instructions. 

As someone who has been designing for the crafts industry for many years, 23 to be exact, I thought I would give you a little background on how many designers work in getting their designs there for you.

A lot of craft designers are members of The Craft and Hobby Association (CHA). CHA is hosting their Winter Convention & Trade show in Anaheim, CA in February. This is the premier trade show for anyone involved in the crafts industry and is open only to the trade.  Manufacturers present their newest and hottest products to buyers who attend from all over the world.  CHA has a Designer Section for the designer members and offers several opportunities for designers to connect with manufacturers, publishers and editors. 

Designers can set up a table in the Designer Showcase held one day during the show.  Designers/artists create a table display showcasing their designs and portfolios so that editors, publishers and manufacturers can view the designs for use or publication.  These are many of the designs that you see and use for creating your craft projects.

Another opportunity for designers is to exhibit in the License and Design Section during the show .  The designers have a booth space to show their art and designs that are available for creating new products or in using products.The theme for this year’s show is Fashion Crafting and designers are also showcasing their fashion designs in the Fashion Crafting Display, our version of “Project Runway”.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing some of the designs created by friends as well as myself.  The flower at the top is a Gerber Daisy Fabric Sculpture created by Lynne Farris and shown in her newest book “Fresh Felt Flowers” published by C&T Publishing.

The 2 designs embroidered on jeans are from the DenimBroidery embroidery kits I created for Janlynn, a needlework company.

Joan Elliott painted the Jingle Cats Christmas image, which has been licensed on tee shirts, fabrics for hospital scrubs, mugs and cross stitch kits.

Linda Wyszynski designed the embroidered pillowcase for Create and Decorate magazine, using buttons and embroidery to create a floral design for stitching on the pillowcase edge.

Audrey Jeanne Roberts painted “My Heart’s Garden” as part of a digital scrapbook kit for Daisie Company.

Vicki Schreiner painted the sports images which were used to create a scrapbook kit and stickers sold in stores.

I do have some very talented friends!

All the designers that I know who are attending the show, including myself, are now frantically creating new designs to present. So the next time you are using instructions to create a craft or sewing project, it may have come from one of these designers working to create craft projects just for you!