maggie makes

happy birthday s!

What's today? New Year's Eve? NO! well yes, but it's S's birthday first......at least around here. That means G is making some amazing humbow and dessert is going to be angel food cake. Not bad.

Happy Birthday S! Thank you for being such a great friend to a girl who can be so demanding. You handle it with grace. And to top it off you are great at making baked goods, you play a mean piano and know more than anyone should know about transportation.

P.S. Your bad dancing and screaming like a banshee when you see spiders is also pretty amusing!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

*banner inspiration

embroidery

I am trying to teach myself embroidery. The top photo is my first attempt at learning some new stitches. I haven't had much luck with split stitch. In my trials I can get about one inch out of six that looks good and the rest looks like a tangled mess. Its pretty important for a project I want to work on so I am going to search for tricks and keep on practicing.

The second photo is a close up of my sashiko project I told you about before. For some reason this simple project became a nightmare for me. I actually started it three times. It was supposed to be a cover for our mixer.

The first time I didn't have the mixing bowl with its cover on the mixer when I measured so it was too small. The second time I had G measure it and he even got it wrong. The third time it fit but I just don't like it. It seems so big and boxy, I think I will just stick with the mixer as is.

I like how the sashiko on the striped fabric turned out. I will have to find something to repurpose it in. The pattern I used is called arrows, which seemed appropriate since I have been thinking a lot about getting back into archery. 

Off to practice split stitch, if any of you have any tips please let me know.

lazy morning

jenga

My brother and his kids stopped by this weekend to exchange gifts. While they live only about an hour away we only see them about once a year. Like most kids these days their lives seem to be scheduled from morning to night with school, lessons and teams. Besides Birthdays and Christmas we don't make enough effort to get our schedules to work out.

It was so great to spend some time with them and get to know them better. Bradley talked non-stop reading from his book of world records or telling us what was going to happen each minute of the movie we watched. Leah played DJ with her new ipod, showed us her skills in origami and beat us all in Jenga. 

It was a good reminder that I really need to make more of an effort to include these special little people more in my live.

happy holidays

I just wanted to take a quick second to wish everyone a happy holiday! I hope you are having a good time with your friends and families sharing fun stories and eating tasty food.

lucky

My father just moved to a new house with a much larger yard. So he and his wife decided to get another rescue dog. Her name is Lucky. Her family before lost their home to foreclosure and weren't able to care of her any longer. It tears me apart to think of ever having to be in that situation. It must have been such a hard choice to make.

Lucky is apparently loving her new home with their other dog Chimi. (Who has to be the craziest dog I have ever met!) She will definitely be spoiled with long walks, treats and lots of love. G and I are sending them some Christmas peanut butter snacks to enjoy.

Welcome to the family Lucky!

grandma's sugar cookie

This morning G and I made some of my grandmother's sugar cookies to send to my dad. He's had a pretty rough year and he has amazed me with how positive and strong he has stayed through it all. In my family we only give gifts to the kids and the adults rotate picking a charity to give to instead of one another. Even so I wanted to do something special for my dad.

His mother's cookies are the stuff of legend in my family. After Grandma wasn't able to make them anymore, my mother started making them for us. G and I used to help I but got bored rather quickly and after the first batch I would rather eat them then make more.

Since my mother passed away g and I have been the ones to make them. Its taken a few years for us to get them just right, they have to be very very thin and just the right amount of browning at the edges.

This year I stuck to it up until the last batch so G finished them off. He got a little creative and made a shack and Maggie cookie. Of course that meant we had to stage a whole scene with the shack and Maggie, complete with snowflakes and trees. It must have been from all the sugar in the cookies we ate.

more done

 

Placemats, napkins and coasters for G's mom done and in the mail. We picked Kaffe Fassett fabrics which are so soft, colorful and perfect for his mother. I really like how the bold stripes really offset the flowery print making the placemats playful instead of old ladyish. 

Now back to making more gifts.

one more down

This quilt is for G's little sister and her husband. G designed it himself to go with their mid-century modern taste. We decided to send it out to get quilted, which turned out to be a smart (but scary) move. Of course everyone that people recommended were already booked months out so we had to take a chance and try someone new.

The lady was very sweet but she was a little flaky? spacey? ADHD? When we walked through what we wanted with her she asked the same things over and over or wrote things down wrong. So when we went to pick it up we were a little scared and joked that maybe it would be quilted with pink thread or quilted with butterflies. To our relief it turned out much closer to what we wanted.

More gifts to come.....

are the holidays over yet?

 

  
Yes I know that isn't a very cheery sentiment but I wish there was just one week more to put everything together. G's family is doing a homemade Christmas this year which I would usually love but as usual we are still pulling things together last minute and I have shopping still left to do for my niece and nephews. Ok end of whine.

Part of G's gift to his family is homemade candies. He's made fudge, peanut brittle and hard candies to go along with all the other gifts. I wanted the packaging for his treats to have a crafty and homemade look to it so we created gift tags, envelope stickers, and package bands inspired by Swedish embroidery patterns. I love the way they turned out and its not just because I got to incorporate graph paper into the design, but that was a big plus!

I thought you might enjoy them as well so I have made them all available for download. We made the template for the gift band label blank so you can personalize them by hand or with stamps, as well as some bands without labels that you can piece together for larger packages. The tags are setup so you just have to print the same pdf on the front and back and everything will line up. The punch I used for the tag is 2.5inches and for the stickers 1in.

Happy Holidays! 

Oh by the way, aren't the felted acorns awesome?!?! They are made by Reya Veltman and you can get them here.

template: star garland

I am excited to share with you another craft project idea that I have been working on. Linaloo's adorable patchwork stars in the SewMamaSew Scrap Busters Tutorial Contest were the inspiration for my new star garland. The project is simple to make and is easily adjustable to fit the space you have and your occasion. I have included multiple variations for you to consider when personalizing the garland to your needs.

For mine, I wanted a Fall feel to it. We have a very dark wood mantel and I thought bright Fall colors would stand out best. I used the Candy Corn color spectrum bundle from PurlSoho. Their Christmas Tree one is spectacular too.

Don't forget to share your designs on the maggiemakes Flickr pool, I can't wait to see what inspires you!

wow!

 
I am offical sorry I didn't make it to the Urban Craft Uprising this weekend. If I had been there I would have known about MaybeEmily a couple days sooner. I came across the work of Emily Rose through Feeling Stitchy today and I love her designs. It's this little bird amazing!?!?! Lucky for us she sells her designs as kits on Etsy! Everything you need for this cutie for only $25! A great gift idea for a crafter. Hint, hint. (G & S I hope you are reading this)

and the list keeps growing.....

I am working on my own shasiko project that I can't wait to share, but it's taking me longer than I imagined. The project itself doesn't take a lot of time, its just that I haven't had the time to work on it with all the other things I have going on. I hope to be able to share it with you all this weekend. Its simple,decorative and useful.

In the meantime I came across this project on the always inspiring Purl Bee. While its not really sashiko it uses sashiko thread and its a fun and easily adaptable idea for so many purposes. I have wanted to try some embroidery (How could you not be inspired by this lady's beautiful work!?) and I love how this has that sampler feel and small enough to be a good introductory project. The tutorial is well illustrated and they even include links to an embroidery tutorial and a reverse alphabet template for download.