Life, Love and the chaos of everyday

Thought I had abandoned ship?  Stopped sewing? Moved to a land with no electricity? Well, no.  But I did get divorced, I got to be a brides maid for the first time, found out I have pre-diabetes.  I moved into my parents house.. move back out into an apartment, my first on my own.  Lost my apartment and am back living in my parents home.  So my crafting space it pretty limited.  In true crafty fashion I never stopped making things; I made bookmarks for a friends wedding, I have been cross stitching a project for someone.. (top secret) and I made holiday ornaments for gifts.  I have pictures of lots of this stuff but today I'm going to ease back into stitchy blog land with the wedding bookmarks for my dear friends Kristy and Brian, their wedding was book themed. (Love!)
The project itself was fairly easy, Kristy approached me with an idea she found on this blog: Simple Serendipities I was happy to take it on.  Over one hundred book marks later I was tired of felt hearts and was trying desperately to make sure they were finished for the big day.

Start by cutting out 2 hearts of equal size.  Pick a pattern to stitch in, one you like or one that means something to you.  If you are going to do these in volume then pick something simple.  My hands would cramp after stitching very many, holding the heart and stitching it was tough on the fingers.  I suppose you could stitch a pattern on both sides but that would have been insane for the quantity that we needed to get finished, so one side was left blank.

We went with the lazy daisy and french knots in groups of three, pretty, simple and for her it was reminiscent of the Holy Trinity.

Next you want to stitch the hearts together, we went with the blanket stitch.  This was a little tricky because while I could stitch the bottom point all together the tops of the hearts had to be stitched separately so there would be room for the page to fit in.

What I found worked best was, I needed to start at one side of the opening.  Stitching over the back heart top, then when I reached the same spot on the other side I stitched both halves together down to the point and back up the other side.  Then switched back to single layer for the front heart top, creating a pocket.

*Note, It is important to try to keep the stitches even when doing the blanket stitch, otherwise the heart won't sit on the page right.

I made a bunch of these, I forget the actual number now but it was in the neighborhood of 130 ish.. I think.

There they are, a little army of bookmarks ready to be handed out as wedding favors.

 All packed up and ready for delivery!

I had plenty of time for this project but I didn't manage my time well in the beginning which created a crunch later on.  I had them finished and delivered on time but it was a little stressful as the wedding date drew near.

Keep stitching my stitchy friends!