This just spoke to me........

Yesterday I was over at my mother-in-laws felting a ton of wool (tutorial on that soon) and she gave me the "Where Women Create" magazine featuring Amy Butler, Nancy Soriano, and Jo Packham (just to name a few). 

I am so inspired by this magazine - reading all of these incredible stories of creative women entrepreneurs and the spaces where they turn their dreams into reality. I've read many issues of this magazine before, but for some reason this issue, in particular, spoke to me.  There were several quotes that I just cannot seem to get out of my head, so here I am blogging about it because I have to get these thoughts out in writing and maybe some of you all can relate.

So I'll start with sharing my favorite quote from the issue and it comes from "Little Women" via the artist Debbie Dusenberry......

"You have so many extraordinary gifts; how can you expect to lead an ordinary life?"

I struggle daily with whether or not I should be doing what I'm doing in regards to my children's clothing business, blogging, creating, ect.  I really do.  I think it's what they call "mother's guilt".   At this point, my life does not fit the same mold of most other mothers.  I struggle with what I feel my life should be verse what I want it to be.  I see a lot of other mother's around me completely devoted to their children, really taking no time out for themselves and their passions in life because it's what they are supposed to do.  And I respect that, really I do.  But I want more from life for myself and my family.  

I've always wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom (honestly, I have) and I am lucky to have the opportunity to do so.  And I love everything that has to do with the domestic life, but even in the early months staying home with my daughter, Savannah Rose, there was something burning inside of me.....a creativity that just needed to be released.  And thus, I created the blog "The Cottage Home" and the children's clothing business "The Cottage Mama".  Do I need to work? No.  Do I want to work on "The Cottage Mama"?  Absolutely!  It is my passion.

 

Which leads me into another quote..........that comes from Julia Cameron via the artist Amy Barickman........

"Creativity is an act of faith and we must be faithful to that faith, willing to share it to help others, and to be helped in return."

I never thought of creativity from this perspective, but it truly is a gift from God.  And for those of us that cannot control our need for creativity, we must follow in the faith.  That is why I love writing this blog, I love helping others learn and awaken their creative spirit and I love learning from all of you as well.  Why should we suppress a truly amazing gift from above just to fit the mold of an ordinary life?  We should feel lucky and blessed to have had that gift bestowed on us.

And finally a quote from Rober Schuller via Nancy Soriano.........

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

How many times have you thought about doing something, but then never acted on it because you just knew it would never happen?  We all act on our fears and insecurities and it is what inhibits us from following our dreams in this world.  So I ask you to take a minute and think about the quote above, what would you do?  I know what I would do. Push all your worries and fears aside and speak to your inner voice.  I cannot even imagine what our world would be like if we could all just push fear aside and go for it!

In closing, these are my final feelings.........

I want my girls to be proud of their mother and know that what I do for myself, I also do for them.  I want them to know that I did not conform to the majority and took a different path.  I want to not feel guilty about embracing the gift of creativity.  I want my girls to take the gifts God has bestowed upon them and actually do something with them, not suppress them to conform to the molds of what women and mother's should be in our society.  I want them to take on their dreams and goals head on without the idea of failure.  I want them to listen to their creative spirits.  I want them to walk to the beat of their own drummer.  I want them to be happy.

Thank you for reading.

Two Giveaways and Two Winners!

I am pleased to announce the two winners of our most recent giveaways.............

For the $25.00 Elizabeth Victoria Fine Stationary Giveaway, the winner is.......

And the winner of "The Cottage Home" 1-year Anniversary Celebration Giveaway (8 half-yard cuts of Heather Bailey's, Nicey Jane) is...........

Congratulations to both winners!! If you could please email me with your contact information (thecottagemama@gmail.com), I will make sure you receive your prize as soon as possible.  Thanks everyone for entering!

Embellished Hooded Towel Tutorial

I know it's a tad bit early to be talking about Christmas, but I just can't help thinking about it.  Since I have committed myself to handmade gifts this year, I need to do some serious planning in order to get all my gift giving accomplished.  So I thought you also might enjoy me sharing some holiday gift giving ideas a little earlier than normal.......perhaps you are going handmade as well!

The following tutorial was not entirely my own idea.  I had posed a question over on "The Cottage Mama" facebook fan page in regards to the projects everyone was working on and several women chimed in and said they were working on hooded towels for children.

Well, this little discussion reminded me that I had been wanting to make some giant sized hooded towels for my own girls.  I love the little baby hooded towels, but they seem to grow out of those so quickly.  And the larger sized towels that I see in some of the popular catalogs are just a little too pricey for me.

I think these would make a fabulous Christmas gift the younger people in your life.  You can be as creative as you would like with these and it's a great way to use a small amount of your beloved fabric stash (yes, I know there are others of you out there that are fabric hoarders like myself) to really make a statement on this one-of-a-kind towel.

Hooded Towel Tutorial

Supplies:
1 hand towel
1 large bath towel
1 strip of fabric (approx. 4" by 25")
Ric-rac trim (2 pieces - 25" long)
Thread
Scissors
Iron

Directions:

Cut hand towel to approximately 24" long.  If it is a little shorter or longer, that will be fine.  I just cut off the one end that looked a little different than the other.

Cut your strip of fabric 4" x 25" (allowing an extra inch longer than your hand towel).  If you used a different length for your hand towel, just add one inch for the fabric.  Pin your ric-rac (2 pieces also 25" long) along the raw edges of both sides of the right-side of the fabric strip.

Stitch in place.  I used different sized ric-rac for several different towels.  The one seen here is jumbo.  Base your seam allowance on the size trim you have.  You want the waves of the ric-rac poking through the other-side, so adjust accordingly.

Your best bet is to stitch straight down whatever size trim your are using.

With a hot iron, press the ric-rac to the other side.  Do this on both sides.

Press again with a hot iron to set in place.

Here is the fabric strip with the ric-rac sewn in place.  If you use smaller trim then your fabric strip will be wider because you will not have turned as much under.

Fold the hand towel in half (length-wise) and pin fabric strip approximately 1/2"-1" from the fold.

UNFOLD the towel and top-stitch down both sides to secure in place.

Above is the fabric strip sewn in place on the hand towel.

Now fold the hand towel the other direction - width-wise with right-sides together.  Stitch down the right and left sides.  Do not stitch the open end where you see the raw edges of the fabric.

Use approximately a 1/2" - 5/8" seam allowance.

Turn hand towel right-side out.

Take the corner of the hand towel that I am pointing to in the picture above and tuck it into the opposite corner.

Tuck the right corner inside the left corner.

Once you have tucked the one corner into the other, this is what your hand towel will look like.

Then open up your hand towel and now you have formed the hood.

You will notice after tucking the corners that you have one side that is a little longer than the other.  Fold this over and stitch into place in order to conceal the raw edges of the fabric.

I must have gotten too excited about nearing completion on this project because I didn't take a picture of the final step (sorry).  Pin the center of the hood to the center of the bath towel (right-sides together)......stitch into place using a 1" - 1.5" seam allowance (yes, a large seam allowance).  If you need to use a larger seam allowance because you can still see some of the extra hand towel, feel free to do so.....no harm done.

Here are four hooded towels for my two special little ladies!  I might applique their initials onto each towel in coordinating fabric.......I think that would be a lovely finishing touch.  I just need more hours in the day.......

For the towel above, I used a standard-sized ric-rac.  You could also omit the ric-rac altogether and just press your fabric under.  You could also trim the hood with coordinating ribbon as well.

Here you can see how the fabric strips end up being sized a little differently depending on the trim size used.  Again, no biggie.......exact measurements aren't really needed in this project

I wasn't planning on having my girls model these towels, but when they were outside with me taking pictures, they were begging to wear them........they looked so warm and cozy!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  Please let me know if you have any questions or if any of the directions need clarification.  Happy holiday gift making!  Stay tuned for more fun gift giving tutorials.  Anyone else planning a handmade holiday?

Cottage Mama's Note:  The fabrics used in this tutorial were Art Gallery "Paradise" (Double Ivory Bloom), Amy Butler "Love" (Sunspots Tangerine), Robert Kaufman "Sweet Tooth" (Camellia), Jennifer Paganelli "Flower Power"

Linking HERE.

reclaimed

during an internet search for an accent cube today i stumbled upon some great reclaimed wood pieces in a very unexpected place, overstock.com

this is the cube that i stumbled upon and quickly purchased.

{reclaimed wood cube $124}

then i decided to do a further search on overstock to see what other reclaimed wood pieces i could find.  here’s a sampling of what showed up.

{end table $110}

{wood tray on a stand $60}

{horse head on stand $73}

{indian forks $65}

{wood handle mirror $87}

{baturna side table $220}

overstock, keep doing what you’re doing.  these pieces are great!

LiveJournal Tags: overstock.com,side table,mirror,reclaimed wood,reclaimed wood cube