fruit coasters!

If you've been reading my blog for a while you probably know how much I love stamped-for-embroidery projects and also that I work a lot with fruit themes. It's so cool when I find both in the same item! I won this recently on Ebay and it arrived a few days ago. It's a single panel with a dozen little round coasters, each with a small bunch of fruit in the center—two each of bananas, strawberries, plums, cherries, grapes, and pears. Once they're embroidered, you cut them out, add a backing (and I have tons of fruity fabrics I could use for this) and then blanket stitch the edges. Or you could do a crocheted edge if you wanted to. I don't know how so I'll stick to the easier solution. Or perhaps I'll use them in the centers of small pillows.



I'm getting pretty stressed with the holidays rapidly approaching (and several custom orders on my work table to finish) so I'll be setting them aside for a while. But they look pretty simple—just outline and lazy daisy stitches, and a few French knots—so they should go quickly once I get started.

I have so many cool stamped-for-embroidery projects that I've been collecting for the past three or four years. I'm thinking of selling some of the patterns on my web site. Not to compete with others who offer copies of vintage transfer patterns—there's no reason to think I could do it any better than they already do. But, there are so many cool motifs on tea towels and runners and baby bibs that were never published as patterns—like these fruit coasters. And the chicken waitress patterns I showed you a few months ago. What do you think? Is there room out there for more patterns? Would it bother you if they weren't actual transfers and you had to transfer them to fabric yourself? Just trying to figure out which direction to go so feedback is appreciated.