Believe it or not, Dolly the Dachshund is just about the same size as Snowball the Cat underneath all that fur. It’s a quick pattern to make up and uses minimal amounts of yarn. If you give it a try, share some photos in my flickr group, would you?

Click the image below to download the free pattern.

There’s nothing like a little time lapse slideshow, right? (Really, I just took way more photos than I needed and wanted to use them up somehow!)

I’ve written up the pattern for this little guy, and it’s available for free. Just click the image to download it.

If you make one, will you share it in my flickr group? Also, please do let me know if you have any questions or find any errors!

Coming soon: Dolly the Dachshund.

This is the aforementioned slightly (deliciously) wonky mini quilt.

I did a raw-edge applique for the girls’ clothes, some simple stitching, and a little bit of special finishing to the yarn ball.

I don’t normally do a lot with blue, but lately it’s been appealing to me, especially the way it brightens this particular piece.

The blue fabric came from my mom’s basement, and the green was something my four-year-old picked up while we were shopping. She chose green for me, since it’s my favorite!

Both the quilt and the pattern for the embroidery are available in the shop. Now that I’ve gotten these done, I feel ready to move on to the next thing. What a relief!

Here’s one of the two embroideries I finally finished up this week. I kept it simple, using single strands of thread on a rough linen and a lacing technique (in bright red perle cotton thread) to mount it.

Both the original embroidery and the pattern, if you want to make your own, are in the shop.

Have a good weekend!

As part of my celebration, and as a “thank you” to you, I’m back to offer you my second freebie. (You can find the first one here.) Today it is a pattern based on a piece I filled with birdhouses.

Remember this?

I’ve taken part of that pattern and modified it into something stitchable just for you! Click on the image below to download the PDF.

I hope you’ll show me what you made with the pattern by posting photos to my flickr group. And, if you’re interested in purchasing the full pattern, head on over to the shop and check it out!

Well, friends, we’re nearing the end of the Grand Opening Week, but there’s still a little fun left to be had. There’s still time for you to get in on Wednesday’s giveaway, and tomorrow there will be one more. Hope to see you there!

Thank you. Really, thank you for being so supportive and enjoying my work as much as I enjoy making it. The patterns will always be available in the shop, and I am already hard at work whipping up a few more embroidery pieces to add in the near future. What fun!

Know what else is fun? Giveaways and freebies. I love them, don’t you? Besides being excited about the grand opening of my shop, I’m happy to get a healthy dose of giveaway/freebie fun in this week. (There’s still lots of time to participate in the first giveaway.)

For today, I’ve got a free embroidery pattern for you. Here in the States we’re headed into Autumn, so I’ve pulled out a pattern set that I drew a year ago when I was inspired to make a few things for my home. This freebie is a part of that pattern set and comes with a quote by Albert Camus that I really love. Click the image below to download the PDF.

I hope you’ll show me what you made with the pattern by posting photos to my flickr group. And if you want to check out the rest of the pattern set, it’s for sale in the shop.

Thanks for stopping by. Stay tuned for my second giveaway tomorrow morning!

P.S. By the way, I’m on Eastern Standard Time, so if you’re in another zone and my patterns are sold out, hang in there. I’m probably asleep, but I’ll relist ASAP in the a.m.! If there’s one you specifically want me to reserve for you, e-mail me. I can reserve it for 24 hours.

Actually, I made several before I had the pattern quite right. Since my daughter doesn’t know the difference and tends to get attached to things, we have several floating around our house.

Here’s how you can make one too.

You’ll need:

• The template* (full size or top and bottom**)
• About half a yard of fabric (each cut piece is going to be roughly 14″ x 20″)
• Pins
• Thread
• Needle or sewing machine
• Polyfil

*Please forgive my clumsy drawing. I’m still learning how to use Photoshop for this purpose.

**The full-sized version is too big for a standard sheet of printer paper. I have split the template into two separate files (“top” and “bottom”), which you can piece together.

First, use the template to cut out two pieces, being certain to fold your fabric and place the straight edge of the pattern along the fold as marked. You should end up with two identical, C-shaped pieces. (I made mine so the ends curve in a little. The actual Boppy pillow is a little straighter. If you prefer it that way, just redraw your pattern a little bit.)

Turn the pieces right-sides-together and pin in place.

Sew the whole way around with a 1/4″ seam allowance, leaving a few inches open for turning.

Clip the curves if you wish.

Then turn right side out and stuff with Polyfil to your desired firmness.

Hand stitch the opening closed.

There you have it! It’s nice for little ones to use to imitate mama, and it has other uses too. It’s good for resting little heads …

… or resting elbows whilst taking a drink.

Because I haven’t gotten beyond merely glancing at my pile of projects-to-be and thinking about them late at night after choosing sleep over creative fulfillment (so not like me!), I’ve decided to encourage others in Blogland to craft so that I might live vicariously through them. Stitchers, I give you … my original Chicken Scratch Snowflakes.

They took quite a few hours to work up in a readable format, and if I was wise I would attempt to sell them before carelessly tossing them into the wide world of Internets as a freebie, but I am feeling generous (and too tired to figure out how to sell things). It is probably not that hard to figure these out without the pattern. Nevertheless, some people like to take all the thinking right out of it so they can get down to the crafting, and this–this is for you.

I’ve tried to be as detailed as possible; please do let me know if there’s something I could do to make the patterns better, as this is my first attempt. Because these are so simple, they are not drawn to scale; these patterns are more guidelines or instructions for where to place your stitches. You’ll see what I mean.

Each of the snowflakes can be found in stitched form on my flickr page. I have drawn them up as if they are stitched on the traditional gingham background, and as a result they look a lot cleaner and more precise than they may turn out in actuality, depending on your foundation fabric. Most of my stitched versions are a lot more free form because I didn’t use a gridded background. I like them that way, but do as you wish.

And now, enough babble. Enjoy! (Click to download a full-size image.)