Little finishes

This morning, I went to the market with my mother in law and picked up some sour dough bread and farm vegetables. Then, at lunch time I cut up turnip, carrots, potatoes, cabbage and string beans for a vegetarian stew. I use a vegetable broth and tomato juice to simmer it in. Later, I will thicken it, add a can of navy beans, and maybe make dumplings.
After lunch, I got to work at using up some of my odds and ends.

I again used the little mug rug as a practice piece. For the first time ever, I sewed the binding on by machine. I followed a good tutorial at Red Pepper Quilts blog. Check her sidebar for the tutorial.

http://www.redpepperquilts.com/

The back isn't too bad. Not sure I'd do it on a quilt but it's great for these little rugs. I think though that I would try a narrower binding so the seam on back would be closer to the edge. I used 2 1/4 and ironed and pinned.

Just thought I'd show you this idea for gift tags. First, I cropped photos of my fiber art, imported them to a Printshop program, and arranged them on the page. Then, I printed it off on card stock to make little tags.

This a shopping bag from a store that had a logo sticker on the front. I glued one of my tags on top. Now I can use it as a gift bag.

Next, I did some black thread sketching around another one of my gelatin mono prints. I didn't use a stabilizer; I just stretched on it as I went. It ironed flat afterwards as its not heavily stitched.

I sewed it into a lavender filled sachet.

This is the back view.

Finally, I added color to the flower on this mono print using the Neocolor II crayons. I think I might make another bag with it. The one I showed the other day is sold already!