Showing posts with label tea towel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tea towel. Show all posts

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Better Know A Crafter: Mary Walker

Mary is one of our most prolific crafty customers and I can't believe this is her first time on our blog! She is an amazing seamstress--she is always sporting the cutest handmade tops and making us swoon over her fabric choices. (You may have seen her Anna Tunic made from pretty Kokka fabric on our Facebook page.) Her projects are always inspiring. She came in recently with some fantastic scrap applique tea-towels. They are too cute! We'll just be digging through our scraps now...

Mary Walker


1) Tell us how you got to be so crafty.
I began with training in the fine arts--oil painting, etc--and ended up applying the creative process now to fabric. I still paint but I also now quilt, sew, craft, whatever...






2) How did you make your tea towels?
I used to make collages to hang on my wall and this reminds me so much of what I'm doing now with fabric scrap applique. There is also the "drawing" element--using the free motion setting to draw with thread. The tea towels were inspired by Anthropologie towels. I used a French General woven twill for the towel fabric.



 

Even the backs of these towels are fantastic!


3) How did you learn to sew?
My mother mostly taught me to sew. When I was 10, she sent my sister and I to the neighborhood sewing lady for lessons. I made a tennis dress and sewed a lot of clothes through the years. My mother made a lot of our formal dresses, three girls, for proms and even a few in college.

4) What is your favorite animal?
I love all animals but I'm partial to pups!

Thanks Mary! Happy stitching!

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

New! Tons of New and Exciting Crafty Books!

Loads of newly published and amazing crafting books have been arriving almost daily around here! I almost can't stand how inspiring they all are. Here are some of the new store favorites.

Quilting is the new craft obsession for a few of us at Fancy Tiger Crafts, myself included, and with new fabrics arriving all the time I just dream of making patchwork quilts all day. Whip Up Mini Quilts is full of adorable quilting projects with great, modern style. Perfect timing to feed my obsession! My next project just might be the little art quilt which features hand embroidery as well as applique--cute!


Martha Stewart has done it again with this epic book chock full of great projects, tutorials and ideas. Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts covers everything you ever wanted to know about sewing and fabric crafts. Tutorials with clear pictures and directions will help crafters learn everything from embroidery to upholstery to quilting to printing on and dyeing fabric. There are so many projects--baby gifts and nursery items, bags, napkins, curtains, aprons and toys--all executed in Martha's simple and classic style. This book is a great all around sewing book and reference for the beginner or experienced seamstress.


The Homemade Home is a lovely book to help you decorate every room in the house with a handmade aesthetic. There are projects such as embroidered wall art, applique curtains and planting in teacups and tin cans. There are plenty of sewing projects, but many projects included use fabric, paper, and paint!


We have a whole ton of new Japanese crafting books in so we just featured our favorites. Here we have a needlefelting book, Small Dogs. This book will make you giddy with its cute wooly dogs (and one companion cat) and stunning photography. Picture tutorial makes it easy to use even if you don't read Japanese!


Felt Mascots is another ridiculously cute Japanese felting book. In it you will find the cutest of cute bunnies, chipmunks, finger puppets, llama, turtles, sheep, elephants, dogs, lion, birds, matryoshka and more! This book also anthropomorphizes ice cream treats, so you know we give it two thumbs up.


The Feisty Stitcher is a new sewing book that will be perfect for Summer! We love the oilcloth bike basket and the fused-plastic (re-using shopping bags) messenger bag. Great ideas for re-using materials and fun projects make this book unique.


Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose a Tea Towel gives you tons of ways to upcycle a tea towel destined for greater things than drying your dishes. It includes fun and simple projects like totes, tops, aprons and slippers, toys for little ones and even a backpack for Fido! I really love the saddlebag for your bike. Bike related crafts are all the rage for summer 2010!



We love Wendy Mullin's style and her new Built by Wendy: Dresses book is no exception. This book includes three paper patterns for basic dress styles plus tons of instructions for altering each style into hip, classy, or simple designs. This book is great if you are interested in designing your own dresses but don't have experience with drafting patterns.


This highly anticipated second book by Natalie Chanin gives you more amazing Alabama Stitch Style! Alabama Studio Style has projects for home and wardrobe in Chanin's unique hand-stitched and layered style. Recipes and decorating ideas abound so you can experience Alabama style everyday!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Better Know A Crafter: Allison Freeman

Allison is a brand new embroidery whiz! She took our Embroidered Sampler class and came back a few days later with this totally awesome masterpiece of a tea towel.

Allison Freeman


1) What types of crafty things do you like to do?
Well, I'm a hairstylist, photographer and painter.

2) Tell us about your cute embroidery project.
It's just embroidery floss and a tea towel.


3) How did you learn to embroider?
I learned to embroider about a week ago--here at Fancy Tiger!

4) What is your favorite animal?
Cows.

Thanks Allison! Happy crafting!