Happy Thursday

Seeing all the different ways to make flowers at Pink Paper Peppermints inspired me to come up with another flower for my dog Maggie's collar cover. I decided to make this fabric flower.

Sorry for the lousy photo. I took three of them and the other two are super blurry. Some day I will actually read the manual for my camera and learn how to take better pictures.

The flower tutorial was very easy to follow. I only had trouble when I was attaching the button. I didn't want to use a shank button because Maggie likes to roll around on her back and I was afraid it would poke her. I had made the collar cover for Maggie after I saw the fancy felt one at Bella Dia back in December. Her regular collar goes inside the felt one and this way she's still wearing her ID tags.

I just realized something as I was looking at that picture: the felt is from a wool sweater I washed, I did a chain stitch on it, and the material for the flower is from a sheet. Before I started reading craft blogs, I would never had done anything like that. Thank you to all the Crafty Bloggers out there for getting me to do more than cross stitch!

Speaking of collars, there'a tutorial on making a recycled collar (using the old buckle) for your dog or cat at Keyka [link via Craft].

Up until now, every pinkeep I've ever seen has been made from a cross stitched piece but take a look at this one. It's from a vintage embroidery pattern and done in redwork. Very nice.

Tip Nut will be sharing a set of Laura Wheeler gingham flowers embroidery patterns starting this week. And, have a look at Tip Nut's list of links to a bunch of crafty, kitchen and household printables.

The June challenge at The Floss Box is "to make something out of stuff that would otherwise be thrown away." Read all about it here. Also, Emily recently posted a tutorial for a stumpwork snail which looks really interesting.

Thank you so much to Jenny at All Sorts for hosting the A Post A Day In May challenge. I didn't post every single day but according to Blogger, I did post 39 times this month so that averages to at least one a day. I still haven't checked out all the participating blogs but I did find a few that I really like and will keep reading. (FYI: Jenny posted a list, if you want to go click some links and find more blogs to read, because I know everyone is seriously lacking in that department).

Saving the best for last: Kellie is having an apron giveaway and Barbara is giving away some vintage fabric. Woo hoo!