Wedding Pillow

So, my niece just got married to a young man from Texas and I was in need of a wedding present. Since she was facing a move from her native North Carolina to Texas, I wanted to make something personal but very portable. ;)

After a bit of wandering I came across this great idea from In Between Laundry.

It's just a simple embroidery design of each state joined by a heart. It was one of my first real attempts at embroidery and it came out beautifully.

 

I wish I had gotten a better picture of it, but I finished it last minute. Anyway, check out her tutorial if you're interested in creating one yourself. Happy crafting!

Quiet Book Finished!

Now that the trip is over I finally have time to tell you about the rest of the quiet book, as well as its success on the trip!

 

So, I ended up with 12 pages all together, so I've got four new ones to show you.

 

First up was the orchard with fruit to count and a basket for...

 

The garden's crops! Tomatoes, beets, and carrots. Yum!

 

Then I added the frog with his zipper mouth and long tongue that snaps onto the flies surrounding him. :)

 

And, finally, I added the weather page with clouds full of rain and rainbows, covering a sunny mirror.

 

These all came out so well. I was really feeling it by this point!

 

So, here's the final layout of all of the pages.

 

Now that they were finally done, I sewed two pages together, right sides facing, and then turned them inside out, finishing off with a top stitch. Each set of pages also had three ribbon loops attached to the side for gathering together in the cover.

 

 

The cover was one long piece with holes in the middle for binder rings to hold all of the pages together. And it all buckled together at the front with a ribbon.

 

I even added a pocket at the back for any miscellaneous bits.

 

And boy, was it a success! She's had so much fun playing with it! Even uses her tools from her overall page to "dig" in the garden. Too cute!

Granted, it took a ridiculous amount of time to make since a lot of it ended up being hand sewn, but it was totally worth it. We're gonna keep this one for a long time and I've already got more pages planned! ;)