Salad Tea Towel - Completed!

I finished my salad tea towel!  And here is my "surprise" hem trim...

Ruffles! A double row of ruffles:

I love the way this trim finished this towel.  The green ruffle reminds me of curly lettuce so it is perfect for this towel's theme :)

I am really happy with the fabric color match to my embroidery floss too:

I have really learned a lot making this ruffle trim.

I followed directions from a basic sewing book.  There were so many options for making and attaching ruffles!  I knew I wanted a double layer ruffle and I wanted to sew the double layers in the center so that both edges of each layer would be free and ruffled.

To make the ruffles, I cut a strip out of each of the fabrics I wanted to use for the ruffles.  Factoring in the seam allowance,  I cut the bottom ruffle 1/2" wider then the top ruffle.  As for the length, both strips are the same length, but to allow ruffling, the instructions said to cut 3 times the finished length!  This is for a fully gathered ruffle.

I finished the edges of both of the strips:

Then I machine stitched two lines of stitches on each strip using a basting stitch:

Then I carefully pulled the basting stitch threads, gathering up all the length on each ruffle.

I pinned everything in place and sewed through all the layers with one line of stitching centered on the top ruffle.

I turned the ruffle strip ends under and hand stitched them in place:

I also decided to embellish the other end of the tea towel.

I used one of the border patterns from the Salad Fixings embroidery pattern packet:

and stitched it up!

I love this tea towel and I really like the ruffles.  I want to make this again and I really want to try out the other ruffle variations.

Sewing Room

These pattern pieces are part of my new embroidery pattern packet called Sewing Room.

I really enjoyed putting these designs together.  The designs are perfect for embellishing just about anything you would find in a sewing room! 

I am stitching these three pattern pieces to frame and hang in my sewing room:

and I want to make a sewing machine cover that I can embellish with embroidery from these patterns!

This is the pattern packet - available in my Etsy shop here

Garden pictures and wip

 I have an embroidery wip update to share and also a few garden pictures.  First the garden pictures! This gorgeous red rose:  {hybrid tea - Ingrid Bergman}.  I love this rose bush, it blooms beautifully every year:  

Some ripening cherries...these are pie cherries - not at all sweet - but so delicious in pies.

Some sweet peas: These smell so good!

My embroidery wip: remember this? I took out the stitching on the tomato and am now doing a split stitch using six strands of floss.  I like the look much better.  I finished the mushroom in the tan floss {thank you everyone for your help in the mushroom color choice!}

I like the green I have been using for the carrot and the tomato tops.  It is dmc 906 - I am nearly out of this color and I can't finish this until I get some more.  I could use one of these beautiful shades of green but I really like the 906...

I am still working on my tea towel and will post pictures soon!

Progress report...

I have some progress to share on one of my salad wips.  The tea towel:

All of the embroidery is complete {I think - I may add a motif at the other end of the towel}.  I am really pleased with the stitching and colors:

Here is a closer look at the stitches, I used two rows of back stitch in two different greens for the lettuce leaves, split stitch for the tomato bodies and back stitch for their accents and green tops.

Now onto the hem.  I have two fabrics that match my floss colors.  You can probably guess what I hope to do using these two fabrics...

If I can figure out how!

 It will make a nice finish.

Here is a list of the floss colors I used for this project: