Felt food: dessert edition

It's our final felt food post! For dessert we'll be enjoying a chocolate donut, with thick pink frosting and chocolate jimmies.

And here's all our felt food together, gathered up in the Sassy tote bag, ready for delivery: 

I just loved tinkering around with creating and sewing up these felt foods! 

I'm not quite done sharing the handmade gifts I made over the holidays. Next time I'll tell you about my take on the popular "happy memories jar" that has been ALL over Pinterest. See you then!

Felt food: lunch edition

Earlier this week, we enjoyed a little breakfast together. Are you hungry for lunch?

Nothing says lunch like a hearty sandwich with lettuce, tomato and swiss cheese. 

Maybe you prefer a hot lunch? Don't worry! We've got pizza:

I hope you'll come back for the final felt food post, which will of course feature the best meal of all: dessert!

Felt food: breakfast edition

If you're anything like me, you spend about 47% of your free time on Pinterest -- isn't it addictive? (And while we're on the subject, let's follow each other if we don't already!)

Lately I have been drooling over all the adorable felt food images there. In a recent post, I mentioned my friends' daughter T and the tote bag I made for her for Christmas. Since T has an awesome play kitchen, I decided to fill her new tote bag with pretty felt foods for some kitchen-themed fun.

So if you were to visit T in her play kitchen, she might serve you a little breakfast. Of course we all know the foundation of every yummy breakfast is obviously bacon:

And what's better with bacon than a couple of maple-y sweet pancakes?

Or if you're in the mood for something a little simpler, perhaps just a sunny-side-up egg:

This post is making me hungry! Join me back here soon and I'll treat you to lunch.

Sassy bag!

If you follow me on Instagram or Tumblr (and I'd love it if you would!), you've likely noticed a recent, um, uptick in the number of photos I post of my beloved Maine Coon kitty, Sassy.

I swear: I have a good reason for this foray into crazy-cat-lady territory. 

It seems that we have a crazy-cat-lady-in-training in my friends' daughter, T. This kid is obsessed with Sassy. I can't tell you how glad I am that someone else finally recognizes that Sassy deserves to be worshipped. 

So I decided the holidays were a perfect time to treat T to a little gift that would feed her feline fetish: a tote bag with Sassy's face on it!

For this project, I worked with Blumenthal Craft brand inkjet printable PhotoFabric:

I lucked out and found this on clearance for just $2.97 at a craft store, but it's also sold on Amazon.

(And for those who know me, the brand name here is merely a coincidence; I am unfortunately not connected in any way to this Blumenthal Craft empire.) 

This is such a simple method for transferring photography onto a fabric project, and I think it gives really great results:

I sewed a simple square cotton tote bag, cut my printed Sassy image out with some pinking shears and attached it to the tote with a little orange chain stitch. I live for chain stitch, so here's a little chain stitch porn for you:

But I didn't just give T an empty tote! Stay tuned for details about the handcrafted goodies that were inside...

Pay It Forward!

I am humbled to admit how insanely tardy I am in making this post; I first wrote about Pay It Forward on July 2, 2011. 

Here's what I wrote back then:

Pay It Forward is about making some crafty and thoughtful things, and giving them away to someone else (three someone elses, to be precise, as you'll see in the rules below). I love this idea because you can use any crafty skills you like to make your items, and you have a WHOLE YEAR to make them. (Now that's a deadline I can live with!) 

So I was supposed to complete my project by July 2, 2012. A deadline I can live with, indeed.

Well, even though I am mortifyingly late in following through, the good news is that I did actually make something for the one person who responded to my post, the lovely Allie who blogs over at Sleepy Northwest and who runs the charming Etsy shoppe, The Folklore Cabin.

And even better than that, I pretty much love what I made for her.

If you've been around Fourteen Countess for a minute, you might remember the nutty french knot project that I made back in 2010.

Oh, yes. I've done it again. Would you like to see? This time, it's A for Allie:

I even had some pretty cardstock for finishing the back:

I don't know what it is, but there's something I find so relaxing about making a zillion french knots in a row. 

So now I've made a letter B and a letter A. Maybe I'll eventually get to the whole alphabet! 

"Made in France" work in progress

My mother-in-law started stitching this project many years ago. I was very excited when she handed it off to me at some point in the last year or so. 


I recently pulled this out and started working on it in the evening in front of the television -- unlike counted cross-stitch, a printed piece like this requires little concentration and is ideal when you've got four seasons of Mad Men to re-watch before the season 5 premiere on March 25! 


When finished, this will be the largest work of embroidery that I've ever done. Wish me luck plugging away at this pretty, colorful project!

Jasmine tree ornament

I had so much fun stitching up this jasmine flower Christmas tree ornament earlier this week!

I really enjoyed making this because it was a multi-step project. First, I shot the photo of the jasmine flower, over a year ago when we were on vacation in Spain. Here's that original photo:

Then I cropped the photo to make it round:

I wanted the ornament to actually have the scent of jasmine, so I mixed up some jasmine essential oil...

...with some cellulose fiber fixative, which absorbs the scent of the essential oil, making the scent last longer in a project. 

I printed my cropped photo on some photo fabric that can be put right through the computer printer:

And then I stitched my photo fabric onto the felt, which I embellished with embroidery. Once the embroidery was done, I sewed the front and back pieces together with a little blanket stitch, and stuffed the inside with my jasmine-scented fixative and some fiber fill. Here are some more photos I took before wrapping it up and giving it away today:

I've got several more ornaments underway at the moment, and will reveal them here sometime soon. Happy holidays!

Mother's day tea towel from a linen dress

One of the things I love about living here in Beacon, NY is the fact that I can always count on our Main Street shops for something unique and lovely when I need to find a gift for someone dear. 


A couple of weeks ago, my hubby and I were wandering around Main Street looking for some inspiration for a mother's day gift for my mother-in-law, Lisa. As usual, we ended up in our favorite shop, Clay, Wood and Cotton (aka CWAC):

CWAC is an adorable shop with a range of beautiful handmade items. At shop-owner Kristy's suggestion, we decided to give Lisa a "tea-time" themed gift this year, starting with this sweet cup and saucer from Virginia Piazza pottery: 

Next, we stopped by the Alps Sweet Shop...

...because what's tea-time without some truffles?

Final stop was the Beacon Natural Market...

...for the tea. We thought some organic Yogi Tea would be nice.


Then we headed home so I could whip up a nice tea towel to tie everything together. I wanted the towel to coordinate with Lisa's new cup and saucer so I raided my craft stash, looking for something in the green or blue family. I've had a very light blue linen dress from J. Crew in my craft stash for quite awhile. I used to love wearing this dress, but it doesn't fit me right anymore:

I harvested some fabric from the skirt, and stitched Lisa's name on it:

I sewed a band of cotton fabric (which you may recognize from earlier projects, here and here) to the bottom, and here's the result:

Enjoy your cuppa, Lisa!

Upcycled, embroidered cardigan sweater

I've had this Ann Taylor LOFT 3/4-sleeve cotton cardigan for at least eight years. It's really nothing special, but it just seems to go with everything, so I've gotten a lot of use out of it. Here's a shot of it out on the town one night on vacation back in 2006:

You can imagine my disappointment when it recently finally started to show its age...

...and even began unraveling a bit on the back:

But I'm not ready to part with this old girl, so I decided that with a little repair-work, and some pretty embroidery, I could breathe new life into it.


For a while I was stuck trying to figure out what to embroider, and that's when Amy over at Early Bird Special posted the Lovely Lotus Free Embroidery Pattern!

This is exactly what I was waiting for! 


My first step was to print out the lotus flower pattern, which I then traced onto some Sulky Solvy water soluble stabilizer. (I seriously love working with that stuff; you can read one of my other posts about it here.)


Here's how it looked when the stabilizer was pinned onto the sweater:

And then I basted the stabilizer on, and I stitched! The lotus flower looked like this before I washed the stabilizer away:

(It might not be apparent in these photos, but I used some metallic DMC thread on the middle petal of the lotus flower. DMC 3849, Light Effects Aquamarine Blue, to be exact. It's such a pretty look, but damn! Could metallic floss be any more annoying to work with?)


 ANYways, here's how it came out on the front of the cardigan:

I really liked the little swirly parts of the pattern too, but I decided to stitch them on the sleeves:

And remember that ratty part on the back of the sweater? I did a little pseudo-darning to stabilize the holey sections (pseudo-darning because I have no idea how to darn properly). After that, I sewed some ribbon along the edge that matched the embroidery (this might be my favorite part):

And here's the final product:

Voila! Maybe I'll be able to squeeze another eight years out of it now!


Next up: Lisa's embroidered mother's day tea towel!