No more pencils, no more books...

Tomorrow is Gl's last day of school.  So far, I have loved every single one of her teachers.  Seriously.  She has not had a bad teacher.  They have all been caring and inspiring but this year's teacher, I feel, will stand out in her mind in years to come.  Much like my own beloved Ms. Williams (2nd grade), Ms. Peterson (4th grade) and Ms. Sawyer (7th grade).  Anyway, I of course wanted to make something special for Ms. S.   I was hoping to get it done in one day but as I am also trying to potty train a 3 year old boy at the same time and said boy is running around the house in nothing but a long shirt......well, stuff happens.

Day 1:

The fabric that I ended up using is a lovely green rose, floral that I found at a "thrift store".  I'm not telling you where because then everyone will go there and I'll stop being able to find such awesome stuff.  Let's just say this place rocks and that I also found a couple yards (like 6) of lovely wool that I can't wait to use.  OH MAN!  You wish you knew the name of this place! Ahem, moving on... I knew I wanted to do some embroidery so I pieced together the green with some muslin (that gift just keeps on giving Nina). 

Then I basted it to some batting and drew my image on some tear away stabilizer and pinned it in place.  I've been using tear away stabilizer since I started doing embroidery but I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it.  There were a lot of little details in this image and it took around an hour to get all the stabilizer off once I was done because I had to be very careful.  I might have to try that washable transfer stuff sometime. 

This is how far I wanted to get by the end of Day 1 but I couldn't get to this point  because of this:

Ok. Ok.  He's adorable.  Don't I know it!  He also likes to eat paint and poop in the driveway.  And before you can say anything just let me tell you that I know it was crazy to let a 3 year old play with paint unsupervised.  I KNOW!  And yes, it was also not very smart to let a naked 3 year old play outside when he hasn't pooped yet. I KNOW these things.  I know.... I know..... I know....

Where was I?  Oh yes,  Day 2:

This again?  Yes. Because this is where I was around noon today.

And then (ta da!) I was here! Actually there were a lot of steps between these photos but the pictures were boring so I decided to jump to the conclusion.  The back side is all green floral and the inside is....

this gorgeous blue and yellow floral that I've been hanging onto FOREVER!  Every once in a while I would pull it out and try to think of something to use it on but I would always end up putting it back.  Now I know why.  It was waiting for this bag.  I love the way the blue brings out the blue of the birds.

So, that's it.  Ms. S.'s bag. I hope she enjoys it and I hope she knows just how much we have appreciated having her in Gl's life this past school year.