So this spring, when we put in this fence and removed a thick growth of junk bushes and an old chain link fence I decided to make raised beds.  I remembered all my blue bottles and voila!

Remember I live downtown with about a quarter of an acre that I call home.  My house is over 100 years old too.  I am feeling so vital and strong this year and decided that digging in the dirt would be a great way to stay on this road to health.  Look at the size of those mater plants!  I have banana trees too.

There is a little herb garden right outside the back porch for easy access.

Up and down the fence row I am anticipating sunflowers and zinnias. Maybe in about two weeks there will have flowers.

I am starting to reap the rewards of the garden itself.  The squash and zucchini were suffering from blossom end rot,but I have dosed them with Epsom salts for calcium and finally they are healthy and happy.

I started my tomatoes very early and here are the first ones off the vine!

I love my garden.

Most people would prepare a bit more for an upcoming guest spot, but I have gotten crazy busy!  Anyway, go to SewMamaSew’s blog for my guest tutorial on making a tunic and tips that will help!  I love this blog and find it useful, fun and essential.  Check it out and thanks for including me.

The tunics that you see in the blog are made with Butterick 4856.  I loved the slit neck and the contrasting yoke. I have also used New Look 6803 and Butterick 5392.

I have just gotten a job at one amazing fabric store, Textile Fabrics,  in Nashville.  It is an independent store and a real gem to have less than a mile from my front door.  I work there three days a week and fear I will never bring home a dime. Hmm.

Wow, what a whirlwind of comments! And I am thrilled to have been a part of Sew Mama Sew’s Giveaway!  Now, I hope that lots of you will come back often and see what tips and tricks I have and what other things I will be giving away!  Make is easy and click the orange RSS button to the right so you will be notified whenever there is a new blog entry.

Okay, okay I know you want to know who the winners are. So without further ado here are the lucky seamstresses.

Winner Number One receives $35.00 worth of Hot Potatoes stamps that they can choose from my web store.  Melissa from achildofthewildblueyonder.blogspot.com gets this prize.

Winner Number Two receives a velvet scarf kit.  Ohh, what a fun treat. Number 239 is Rachel Nicole.

Winner Number Three gets my book and so Lynne Cooper come on down!  Oh and I sure do recognize Lynne’s name as one of my good customers!

Please oh please leave a comment and tell me what other give aways you would like to see from me.  And what sort of sewing or craft projects are you looking for.  I would love to hear from you!

Check out this really fun idea!!  Sew Mama Sew is a wonderful site chock full of sewing tips, products and ideas.  I have always enjoyed this site, but as I am committing to blogging more and more every day, I am also learning how helpful she is to other bloggers and their success.  There is a huge May give away day and you can go to this link and find all the good bloggers participating and giving away amazing cool stuff all sewing related.  There are three different list to go through so be thorough and win something!

I am certain many of you remember me from  The Carol Duvall Show and embossing velvet.  But some of you still have never tried this amazingly simple and rewarding technique.  In my quest to get everyone addicted to embossing velvet, I am giving away THREE PRIZES!

First, I am giving away $35.00 worth of rubber stamps from Hot Potatoes.  The winner will choose whatever stamps they want and I will make them and send them out by the end of the month.

The second item I will be giving away is a kit to make a velvet scarf.  You get velvet to emboss and the burnout velvet for the opposite side.  There is fringe and even a piece of practice velvet.

And the final and third thing to give a way is a copy of my book with instructions and ideas for creating loads of goodies.

So here are the rules…and it is easy.

Leave a comment and be sure to include your email so I can notify you if you win.

Only comment one time.

The winners will be picked randomly.

You have till midnight on Thursday May 23rd.

I will ship internationally.

Lucky winnings will be shipped by May 30th.

Look at my great nephews!  This is Noah and David, identical twin boys that are seven months old.   My niece Sarah and her husband Josh had them in Boston seven months ago.  Lucky for them to have my sister and Josh’s parents close by.  The parents have siblings that offer support too.  Good thing as these parents are tired, real tired.  But I cannot imagine how they would be without family to help hold it all together.  My mom and I just went up from Nashville for a long weekend.  We played with babies, ate, drank, played with babies, ate some more, played with babies, well, you get the idea.

This is one proud and happy great-grand-mom, who will be referred to as Gigi from now on.  How do these names happen?  I don’t know, but they are dear and I like saying Gigi.

In my new burst of enthusiasm for sewing I had to make some play suits to take up to the boys.

The parents don’t want them to dress just alike, but in similar things.  I get that.  Anyway, I just loved these fabrics and in no time at all, they will be too big to put into cute things like this.  I was pleased that they are a bit big so hopefully they can learn to crawl in these suits over the summer.

I made them so that they are completely reversible. The animals are dear, but check out the coordinating polka dots!

And then what about this print?  There is even a plunger in with all those tools.

And the opposite side for this boy suit is a print with screw heads.  Who thinks this stuff up?

These two boys are so cute, you could eat them up.  So really, why not just look at these two cuties.  No words necessary.

This is the proud Nana, also known as my sister Barbara.  She is devoted and this baby is Noah (I think).

So this must be David.

I took to these little guys but I do have a confession.  I have never changed a diaper.  True.

We had to say our good byes and head back home.  My mom is a happy camper.

In my never ending quest to perfect the tunic I made this yummy yellow tunic and pants for my mom to wear on Easter.  Check out those orange shoes!  How cosmopolitan! She lovingly refers to this ensemble as her Indira Gandhi outfit.  It suits her so.  She has always had a keen sense of fashion, though she wasn’t always able to fuel the fire.  She is adamant that as women age, they should not simply give in to wearing pants.  The waist is rounder, the bum is flatter, and it is simply not the best look.  Mother is devoted to skirts for her daily life.  But this suit seemed to combine the flow of her skirts with a smart and sophisticated look that would set her apart on Easter.

Then of course, we all know that accessories make or brake the outfit.  Who could have known that my sister-in-law in Ireland would send this fantastic Indian silk scarf?  It is sheer perfection!  I had already purchased the linen and had the concept in my head when “the scarf” arrived.  The season is perfect for a light wrap, and if you have been in the South then you know that concept of ” a summer jacket” is a myth.  It is not even possible to consider a jacket after June 1st.   Thankfully Easter was in April this year.

The neckline is lovely, if I do say so myself.  As a friend in my weekly sewing class says, it takes a village to figure out this tunic perfection.

The turquoise necklace (from my own closet) finished off the look.

A dear friend told her she looked like an Easter egg.  I do not think that is the look she was going for.

Some of the details just run like a loop in my head.  It is almost too much to bear.  The storms late that night were intense.  I keep thinking of what might have been a long lonely night for that wonderful cat.  That was all avoided and all because my neighbors jumped to the cause.

They knew where Auggie had run to try and escape and they came for us immediately.

These folks travel a whole lot.  They actually left town early the next morning and somehow still found time to send some very special Parrot Tulips.  Exquisite!

They are very involved in weddings and so they obviously know the good florists in town.

I was completely bowled over by this gesture.  Such grace and thought surely helped what started as such a dreadful day to brighten up in an amazing way.

But the love didn’t stop there!  My husbands niece and nephews that house sit so often for us, sent more flowers!

But wait…there’s more!  Yellow tulips for a yellow cat!  And believe it or not they came from the same florist as the Parrot Tulips! My friends are in the know! These came from a “cousin” as we say in the south.  She is a cat lover!

And then, my baby, er, I mean Ann Wilson across the street and her mom brought more tulips!  I think Auggie had Dutch ancestry!

And just as I think I am going to cry a river of gratitude, yet another friend arrives with champagne and a poppy called champagne bubbles!

This poppy looks like it might be something Carol Duvall made out of crepe paper.

Now my husband had also gone out and purchased an amazing bottle of the bubbly to celebrate the life of our Auggie.  We have been abstaining through Lent, but this was a life and a love we had to celebrate.

And in the midst of it all, people called, people tried to find us a new kitty to love, and people wrote on my blog and on FaceBook.  I had no idea of the power of love and humanity on such a dark day.  I have witnessed how all these people holding you up make a new day possible.

My husband fears that when he goes there will not be near the amount of flowers sent.  I know different.

But what I really know is that loving a pet is the purest love on earth.  It is a bond to animals and to people.

Sleep well, dear one.

Tonight, Auggie met his match.  Two stray dogs grabbed him and injured him beyond repair.  He was in such shock as he had never had any animal get the best of him. Actually he had quite a reputation of kicking ass all over this neighborhood.  This place will be lousy with bunnies in no time.

Auggie walked with us, of course not on a leash. That was for dogs.  He was often seen down on the big road at the Subway Shop drive-in window.  He got picked up in a parking lot of Zanies Comedy Club because some girls thought he looked lost.  That took a week to track him down in a much better zip code than the one he returned to.

But oh, my sweet boy. I am going to miss you something terrible. I am so sorry that I had to make that decision to end your beautiful life. And you did have a grand time for all those years.  But the wounds were too great for you to survive and I could not see you in that pain.

I love you Auggie and will miss you forever.  I hope you make it back to me one day.

I have some really bad joints and this new strain of electric blankets (with no bulky wires and a light wonderful coziness) made sleeping possible and comfortable again.  My husband gets huge points for this gift.  I love him too and I mean I REALLY LOVE HIM!

Anyway, the other morning, there was this cold snap and when I went to turn on my love blanket, I got a flashing E for ERROR.  Good grief, how could this happen?  Not now!

I called up the folks at Overstock.com and voiced my complaint and within a few hours I had an email that informed me that I could return my blanket for  full credit!  They didn’t seem to have blankets that day.  No problem.  Summer is just around the corner anyway.   I wrote back that I would indeed return the faulty blanket.

But as I went to wind up the cords to put it in a box and ship back, the sad truth of the matter was revealed.

Oh brother, this had to be the work of my cat.   He is truly a bad ass.  Sorry, but that is what he is.

He must have nine lives.

But now I realized that I could not return the blanket.  This obviously was not a faulty product, but more like a faulty cat.

I wrote back to Overstock.com and told them the fault lay on my side of the blame and I would not be returning the blanket.  And you will not believe this, but they responded by saying they appreciated my honesty and would credit back half of the money my husband had paid for the blanket of love!

So with a true air of confidence, I decided to repair the blanket and know I would be cozy next winter.

So after stripping back the insulation and wrapping the copper wire with itself and then electrical tape I was ready to go!

Drum roll please!

ARRGGGG!  The good news …The blankets are back in stock.  They are on sale. My husband says go for it!

Guilty

Her mother asked me if I knew how to make pillowcase dresses.  I, with no previous baby interest, had never even heard of these puffs of prettiness.  But a few Google searches and off to the fabric store I went.  I think the mom (Amanda) did not intend for me to just jump in and do this, but was simply curious that I might have the ability.  Well, I was rendered helpless after the amazing fabric selection at my local fabric store.  And the simplicity of these dresses, well what do you think?

This one is a tiny print of baby clothes.  And then I had to use pink satin because Ann Wilson would want it that way.

This next one is my favorite.  What a great print and the bias tape and checked ribbon made this dress too cute for words.

As luck would have it, I made the dresses and could hardly wait to take them over for my baby to wear.  But suddenly those warm spring days disappeared and a cold and rainy spell socked in on Nashville for days.  I wanted pictures of my baby in her dresses.  I just had to be patient.

Ann Wilson has quite a vocabulary for such a little girl. Of course she does.   She is MY BABY after all.  When I presented the dresses to her she reached up with those little perfect little hands and said  “Pretty Pretty!”  Oh my heart melted right then and there.

Yesterday the sun came out and so did Ann Wilson in her new dresses.

She requests accessories…bow…glasses…and then when she cannot get them on she says “need help.”  This baby is killing me!

She did make a break for it and decided to run away, but only to another house with lots of flowers and rocks that interested her.  There was even a little stone fox that she had to go and kiss without any prompting.  I missed that photo op but it is ingrained in my head forever.

A picture is worth MORE than a thousand words.  I love my baby.