Wow, that was easy-peasy!

Thanks to U-Handbag Lisa's great turorial, I now have a brand new iron-board cover - lookie here:

I was not smart enough to wait for the feedback to come in from the last post; both L-bug and Littlest Sis picked the fabric with pink birds instead of this.  Actually, that was DH's pick too....  Unfortunately, I had already been running wild with the scissors before I read their comments...  I will have to learn from that lesson; never run wild with scissors!

The bag in front of the board is my sewing machine bag, made very Swedish as you can see!  I remember that I was still in grad school, dirt-poor, stressed, lonely, and missing home a lot.  I also recall that is was a pain to work on, since I picked out a really stiff and dense (and very likely cheap, cheap, cheap!) cotton fabric to carry out all the stitching on.  I used waste canvas and sharp needles - ouch!  To make matters worse, I had no idea that you are supposed to rinse the finished work under warm water in order to remove the waste canvas.  Trust me, the simple rinse makes this process much, much easier!  I was hurting for days after this exercise...  The tiny pin-pillow was much less painful to stitch and I really like how it turned out.
I really love all the memories that are connected with craft!  As I write this all the memories come back to me and I really appreciate how much easier life is - grad school is over and I don't use waste canvas anymore.  :-)

Well, back to the ironing board - here is a close up of the fabric - I should probably have gone with the pink birds.  Next time, promise!  I did also not iron the fabric before I made it into the cover...  Didn't feel like it was necessary - it will get ironed over and over, I told myself lazily.
I do realize that this is a pretty busy and maybe even a tad obnoxious fabric, but I think that if I display it on another surface than the still Christmas clad kitchen table, it will calm down a bit....  Let me also defend myself by stating that I am trying to be less timid in my choices of colors, patterns and general life decisions.  I have a feeling that I may overdo some things for a while until I find a good balance.  (Hey, I would probably have picked a solid black about 15-20 years ago, so this is an improvement, right?)

Other than that, nothing new is going on.  This week DH went back on 3rd shift for maybe 3-6 months, we don't know yet.,  In other words, there will be a lot of intense stitching going on in my house for some months forward.

Tonight, before dragging out the sewing machine, I was stitching on Halloween Pin Garden by Raise the Roof Designs.  I have had this kit for a few months, but I got reminded how seriously cute it is when L-Bug and I ran amok at Keepsakes last week, since it was on display there.  Stitching on this cutie thing was so much fun that I really had to make myself quit!  Ain't stitching great!?  I am also all excited about the finishing possibilities.  I think that I will shamelessly draw inspiration from the class that I took with BBD at SB this past fall.  I am excited!
Hopefully I'll be finished stitching the main design tomorrow.  I'll post a pic if it gets done.

See you tomorrow!