Earring holder sewing tutorial

I had this idea when my mother-in-law was wondering how she could mail a pair of earrings to one of her relatives. I immediately thought of those little cards that I used to have for my earrings when I was a kid, only those were actually quite plain and boring. So why not make a cute earring holder out of some fabric scraps? Here's what I came up with:

I even thought of taking pictures to write a short tutorial :-)

A birthday present

My dear mother-in-law is the best cook in the world. I wish I could share with you the delicate scents of those yummy treats that come from her kitchen... Instead, let me show you what I made her for her birthday three weeks ago:

For the oven mitt, I used the pattern and tutorials over at

And now for something completely different - hand embroidery

I've been doing quite a bit of applique and embroidery on my sewing machine over the past months and have improved quite a bit. But when I wanted to quickly embroider a loop scarf last week, the tiny curves just didn't turn out as I had envisioned them, and I couldn't find a stitch that worked out. So I thought it was time to try out something new: hand embroidery.

I got some very nice light violet cotton and linen blend from a sale and it was just perfect for making two loop scarves. Unlike the other ones I've made so far, I decided to do these single layer, with a french seam and rolled hems (with my sewing machine's rolled hem foot - easy peasy :-)). Tutorials for these techniques can be found at Oliver + S (french seams) and Craftsy (free mini class on sewing machine feet with Steffani Lincecum). The scarves came together in a breeze.

I then looked for a cute embroidery design, and fell in love with this one I found on Pinterest (well, where else? ;-)) As I wrote above, I first tried embroidering it using my sewing machine as usual, but neither the satin stitch nor any of the other decorative stitches I tried turned out well. Luckily, I had bought a couple of skeins of embroidery floss a while ago, had a suitable needle and some fusible embroidery paper at hand, so I was all set to go. I signed up for the Craftsy class "Design it, stitch it" with Jessica Marquez (I was really lucky to get it while it was on sale! :-)), watched the introduction and the part on backstitching, and started stitching. It didn't even take me as long as I'd expected, maybe 2 hours all in all. I guess with a little practice I can even pick up some more speed.

So I'm planning to embroider the second loop scarf for myself (I gave the one above to my mother-in-law). Maybe with "Twice the fun" in a nice font and a twin motif? What do you think? Oh, and maybe my next post will be about all my unfinished projects? Would be nice for myself to see a full list of everything I've already started, not to mention everything that's on my "really wanna make" list...