Update - Completed God's Eye Gift Tag Ornaments

Happy December everyone!

I recently finished making my God's Eye Gift Tag Ornaments, which I had started in October. You can read about how to make the God's Eyes out of perle cotton and toothpicks in my previous October post.

God's Eye Gift Tag Ornaments, sewn onto tags and  before adding corner embellishment.

After I finished making the God's Eye weavings, I sewed them onto pre-made Gift tags, which I had purchased from Craftsy.com earlier this year, during one of their supply sales. The gift tags have a nice gold glitter embellishment on the bottom of each tag. To sew them onto the tags, I used perle cotton thread, and sewed two opposite sides of each God's Eye onto the tag. I poked a hole in the cardstock tag on each side of the toothpicks, before beginning to sew them in place, I sewed through the holes about 2 times, and took a couple of stitches in place on the back, stitching into the threads to secure the ornaments onto the card.

Completed God's Eye Gift Tag Ornaments, sewn onto tags and with added corner embellishment.

I then embellished the corners of each gift tag with silver spiral designs, drawn with a silver gel marker. I experimented with a heart design on one of the cards, but opted for the spiral design for the other cards.

I added a Holiday greeting on the back of each gift tag, with my signature.

All the cards (except for two which I kept) are on their way to family and friends, along with my Holiday greetings.

#ad - Craftsy has a Holiday sale going on now, if you click on the link to the right in my blog you can check it out! Their supplies and classes are on sale, and they have free classes and patterns which you can download, too. Their free and paid classes are all great, and you can connect with other crafters through their online community. It's a great way to get creative, and try out new things. I love Craftsy!
I wish you a wonderful Holiday season, and if you are not celebrating the Holidays, I wish you a Blessed Winter Season.

Sincerely,

Denise A. Buchwalter-Losczyk

Published My First Pattern on Patternspot.com (yeah!)

I'm writing to share some news - it is a first for me, I've self-published my first pattern design on Patternspot.com. (Yeah!)

I first learned about Patternspot.com from TheQuiltShow.com. I believe it was in one of their newsletters/blogs. I kept the information in mind, and finally was able to use it to publish my first designs. After the work of writing the instructions, it was very easy to post my pattern on their site. If you are interested in publishing your designs, it is a fun place to check out. There are also many nice designs on the site for purchasing, and some free ones to try out.

My pattern is for a Yo-Yos Cubed design I created several years ago, and have wanted to share for a while. It includes instructions for a pincushion design, and 3 ornament variations.

I've attached photos of two of the designs. Yo-Yos Cubed Pincushion and one of the Yo-Yos Cubed Ornaments made from stacked Dupioni silk yo-yos.

I had wanted to publish a book for awhile, but decided to self-publish the designs as patterns, instead. I like the immediacy of getting the patterns out, rather than spending tons of time submitting proposals to publishers. (Life is too short!) It still took several weeks to self-edit my instructions. I plan to have additional related designs in the future. First, however, I am looking forward to taking a bit of a break, and working on the in progress quilt project in my studio!

Has anyone else self-published their patterns before? What experiences have you had? I would love to hear from you, if you would like, please leave comments below.

The link to the design on Patternspot.com is http://patternspot.com/patterns/sewing-patterns/4705-yo-yos-cubed-pincushion-amp-3-ornaments, if you would like to take a look.

Take care and have fun creating!

Denise A. Buchwalter-Losczyk