Cross Stitched Linen bread bags for March

 

The March embroidery club project and designs are up and ready for download, click here to get to the download page. The project is a pretty bread bag embellished with cross stitch embroidery and a “vintage look” lace edging.

Every Easter my mom makes beautiful braided egg bread. This is a tradition for us that goes back for generations. While the bread is still warm, she carefully wraps each loaf in a linen tea towel to keep the crust from ruining. And then the best part, she gives us a loaf. It's golden yellow, fluffy and lightly sweet, in one word it's yummy. So yummy in fact that it inspired this pretty bread bag. This year I plan to give her a few of these so that she can give them away with her beautiful bread.

Now it occurred to me that not everyone makes their own bread, so by all means go ahead and buy the bread to store in your bread bag. Actually the bread bag is a great way to store any bread, especially if you don't like the idea of stuffing it directly into a plastic bag. If your bread lasts more than a day or so, you may have to put it into some kind of plastic, but it is better wrapped in fabric first. And, be sure to wash the fabric bags after each use; mold spores remain and can cause a new loaf of bread to spoil sooner.

I’ve been told to never store bread in the refrigerator. Apparently the temperature is just right for the starch to gelatinize - eeew. Bread keeps well in the freezer though. I know I do it all the time. Just be sure to freeze while it is still fresh. Cause if you freeze stale bread, when it thaws you get stale bread, of course.

When I imagined embroidery for my bread bag, cross stitch immediately came to mind. It seemed the perfect touch for a vintage project idea. I think it turned out beautifully. There are actually two different borders included with the projects, even though I did not get a picture of the second border.

This is a fairly simple project and the instructions are straight forward. The one thing that I will remind is to prewash your linen. I made the mistake of not washing my striped beige linen, so when I washed out the stabilizer, you guessed it the fabric shrunk. Won’t make that mistake again. By the way the lace is not in the hoop. It’s made by stitching several rows of a seam overcast stitch onto wash away stabilizer. It’s a technique that’s been around for a while, you will love it for this project. Have fun!

We’re Back

St. Lucia was wonderful. We stayed at the Almond Morgan Bag resort. Would go back in a flash.
It’s so lush. The background looks like a postcard. It is the view from the Wedding gazebo on the resort. Very pretty.

We took a day trip around the coast of St. Lucia. That’s me in the striped bathing suit top, trying to stand under the waterfall.

Now back to reality. I have to get to the next embroidery club project. It’s just a few days away.

On the fly

Hello everyone, hope you are enjoying this month’s embroidery club project. Well I am off for a short vacation to St. Lucia. We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon. And, yes I am all packed. Well except for a few sticky notes with things to pack at the last minute.

Do you recognize this bag??

You should. It’s the Appliquéd Messenger Bag, without the appliqué. Kind-a hard to tell, but I have also added a zipper to the top, instead of the magnetic snap. Nice addition, I have to say. Love the extra security of a zipper. The best part is the weight, or lack there of. It’s made of nylon and it is super light. Fabric handbags are always lighter than leather ones, but nylon rocks. So amazing for shopping. I was so inspired that I purchased more nylon. Now I can hardly wait to come back from vacation to make another one. OK, I didn’t believe that either. I can wait, but I am really excited about the nylon bag. Anyway, that’s it for now. Talk to you after St. Lucia.

Warm and Cozy

It’s that time of the month for my retail embroidery club members. Time to download the February embroidery club project and designs, click here to get to the download page.

This month it’s a cozy hot water bottle cover. It’s embellished with embroidery designs from the coordinating design set Folk Art Appliqué Embroidery Designs #sc042d. This appliqué technique is very different from the satin stitch appliqué. I really hope you enjoy the embroidery process. Patricia from Sault Ste Marie used polar fleece for her hot water bottle cover. With the polar fleece background she found that the stems sunk into the pile, so she stitched over them once more and liked the results. So if you plan to use polar fleece, try this technique. Have fun and let me know how your club members feel.