Spectacular Gifts

Firstly, let me say I hope every Mum had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed special time with their children and families.  I'd like to thank my husband and son who went above and beyond call of duty to design and build me a mobile trolley for a herb garden for our back deck.  Not only can it can be wheeled in and out of the sun and placed in a protected area during storms and folded up for compactability but has been designed so the plants can be placed on a lower shelf at night and covered with shadecloth to deter pesky possums with a culinary taste for parsley and coriander.  The day was finished with a family dinner shared with my Mum and daughter at our favourite local Chinese restaurant - all in all a lovely day.

A few weeks ago I set to work to make a couple of gifts as my contribution towards the Guild's Mother's Day Craft Fair gift table.  

These spectacle cases were quick and easy to stitch with the added bonus of using fabrics from my stash for the finishing process.  

This floral design used lazy daisy stitches for the flowers, french knots for the centres, satin stitch for the leaves and chain stitch for the heart.

With this design, the effect for the top three hearts were each stitched with two rows of stitching using chain, blanket and stem stitch and the bottom heart using a single row of petal stitch.

For this spectacle case I extended the contemporary design to cover the fold and part of the back and by using just stem stitch in colours complimentary to the fabric achieved an effect which I was very happy with.   

All cases were lightly wadded and bound in self-fabric with a slip-stitch finish and small enough for just reading glasses not larger sunglasses.  Spectacular, wouldn't you say!

Ros

'Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous' - Bill Moyers