Bird Tea Towels

This weekend my best friend Brandi came to visit.

We met in college during Summer session.  There were three of us that usually sat together and visited but one day the other girl wore a weird sweater and an ugly long skirt and we realized that she wasn't as close a friend as we thought.

Now before you jump to any conclusions you should understand where this understanding came from.  It wasn't the other girl's bad taste...it was the fact that neither Brandi or I could tell her!  If either Brandi or I had worn the skirt, the other of us would say, "What were you thinking...?"

Here's the other difference, it doesn't even matter what the skirt wearer (Brandi or I)'s reply would be, (e.i. "I'm going through a weird skirt phase, I'm trying to protect my skin from the sun"...) it wouldn't even matter, it's just about being close enough to a person to tell them your opinion, and about having a strong enough sense of self to listen, but still do whatever you want! It would've made the other girl cry :(

Brandi and I at graduation

Brandi and I had most of our classes together and worked on multiple projects together; so when I found out she was coming up to visit I immediately began looking up classes that we could take together, cooking, crafting, basket weaving...anything I could find, but after not really finding anything that jumped out at me, I decided we could just make up our own projects!

Also, I had just bought a new sewing machine and had a sewing class the week before so I was "sew" excited about her and I playing with my new machine!  Brandi and I have a lot in common; we have an eye for what looks good, we're thrifty, we love the hunt of a good bargain, and a coincidence that we both were Accounting majors?...I don't think so! 

So when Brandi complimented me on my tea towel from Anthropologie, I said, "Thanks, it was $12, don't use it". It was settled, we would make our own applique tea towels for a fraction of the price, that could be used. 

We found a cute  but simple pic:

Traced it and chose our material (still the same $3 box of garage sale material).

Brandi's bird

my 3 birds (symbolizing, Brandi, me, and the girl with the weird skirt, j/k!)

When taking my sewing class, my sewing instructor said, "Do you sew-on any appliques?"  (I sat there thinking through the context clues with a blank stare)  I finally gulped and said, "Is that the thing where you take a thing and sew it on other thing, like...letters and stuff?"  I felt like an idiot, but she said, "yep, that is sewing on appliques!" Yeah, I got it right, I didn't know there was going to be a quiz, lol!

Brandi, sewing her bird on.

We used the standard foot (B) and a blanket stitch to move around the applique and around the edge of the muslin fabric.

The look of the stitch from the back

My 3 birds, two outside birds sewn on.

The finished project!  It's hard to tell the exact cost, probably should be less than $1 a piece, but I used up half the spool of thread because I put the bobbin in backwards.  It kept clumping up and I thought the machine was broke until I replaced the empty thread and re-threaded the bobbin!  If only the machine would've come with an instruction manual...that wasn't so completely boring that I could've read it, and known what the problem was!