Happily Stitching

My latest hand embroidery project is this small stitchery, a free pattern offered from a favorite website: http://www.red-brolly.com/

I have been getting together the supplies I'll need for the next few projects I want to start putting together.  I thought these fabrics for the Poppies project bag would work very nice together.

Fabric for Poppy project.

Poppy project bag inside

Poppy Project bag stitchery flap

The first time I saw this fabric I immediately thought of the pattern from Crab-apple Hill even the colorway was perfect and some of the flowers look like poppies.

Large flowers 

I thought I would use this coordinating fabric for the two pouches, it even has the little forget-me-not flowers that are on the stitchery pattern.

small flowers

I picked up sewing thread, a few packages of buttons and rickrack to add my own little touches to my bag. 

The fabric also comes in a blue/purple colorway I am considering buying to make a second bag or some other project, I just love the modern look of the large flowers which is a surprise because I usually like smaller floral prints.  

A few days before Memorial Day weekend while going through my fabric bins I noticed I didn't really have much in the way of solid fabrics so I headed over to Joann's early Saturday morning to take advantage of the sale on solid cotton fabric, at $2.49 a yard.

I picked up the remaining colors I needed to restock my DMC embroidery floss which was on sale too.  I have one of each color available on hand it's surprising how quickly I use it up, just yesterday I used the last of a dark green so I write down the number in my little notebook so I know what colors I need to restock.  I may be getting a little obsessive with embroidery floss. 

I bought this sweet little fabric too mainly because I like the bicycle and trees, it also comes in several colorways I like the pale pink and purple and the spring green. 

I am hoping to find a project or two in this nifty little book of hand sewing items, I love having a small project or two that I can take along with me for appointments and group meetings.  It's getting too hot for large quilt projects and heavy crochet or knitting.

 A friend recently sent me a few patterns that include hand embroidery, she is no longer using them so my stitchery pattern collection is rapidly growing as is the companies and designers who make and sell the patterns.

I recently discovered Browyn Hayes Red Brolly patterns and I just love them, as I mentioned the little stitchery above is from the website.  

My friend sent me the pattern book above full of the sweet Brolly Sisters stitchery patterns and I

plan to have a few of them traced onto fabric soon.  I would like to have several of the patterns I plan to work on over the summer traced onto fabric so I can just start one after the other then move on to the finishing when my fingers are too sore to sew by hand.