March | 2014 | Lori Miller Designs

Wow, it has been several months since I started this adventure and the holidays and life in general has kept me busy. But I did take some pictures, so I am going to catch up! Bear with me as I post a little history to get current. I am going to start with these fun holiday placemats.

For the holidays, I dug out my Clover Yo-yo maker, and made a pile of peppermint yo yos.

I stitched and strung groups of them together.

Then I added them to some plain red placemats I made out of solid red kona.

A cute holiday placemat is born. But wait, there is more.

I took my old pattern for gift cards and made them up for silverware holders.

They are completely lined so they have a contrasting cuff when you fold them over. I used this apple green candy cane print.

Isn’t that a cute Holiday place setting?

Enjoy!

I love bread. I have a very old bread-making machine that keeps chugging along and I usually make it in the dough cycle so I can finish the goodies up in the oven. It does the mixing, kneading and rising for me. This was about Thanksgiving time and I was inspired by an heirloom bread cloth my Mother in Law had given me, but it was very plain. I decided to make two new ones, one for me and one for her with some added embroidery pizzazz. I got to play with fancy stitches and needles on my sewing machine too.

I started out with this basic pattern.

I just used white cotton kona for the fabric, wish I would have had some white linen. I used a fancy heirloom stitch on my machine and a very large wing needle to hem the entire thing. I sewed right along the seam so the stitch caught it.

I sketched out a couple of designs and started to embroider on one of the flaps. this is a cute orange pumpkin and oak leaves.

Here you can see the fancy stitches better and my embroidery. I just used a simple stem stitch for the whole thing.

For my heirloom bread cloth, I stitched a tree with colorful fall leaves all in a chain or lazy daisy style stitch.

It was a perfect gift to send for Thanksgiving since we could not be together. And I made a big batch of dinner rolls nestled in my cloth for us here in Michigan.