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.