Tammy Tutterow

Silk Ribbon Embroidery: Baby to Bride Bonnet

A sweet baby girl is being christened today.  I am flattered that a special friend of her parents chose one of my ribbon embroidered bonnets to give her parents as a special keepsake of the day.

From my studio: Ribbons and Flowers and Papers OH MY!

So much to do today!  I need to finish this little hanky bonnet project so I can deliver it tomorrow.  It is for a sweet wee girl who is going to be christened soon. And then I need to head over for For Keeps Sake with my Graphic45 accordion book to find a date on the class calendar for it. It is totally packed to the gills with posies, pockets, tags, cards, and even a mini book stitched right in to the accordion.  I think it is a pretty cool book project, if I do say so myself!  Tomorrow I will share some more images of the inside. Stay tuned for dates of when this one will be available at For Keeps Sake.  If you don't live in St. Louis but would love to make this one, it will be available in my class offerings for stores outside of St. Louis to book.  If you want me to come, drop me a note with your favorite store's info so I can contact them, okay? Once I get back from the shop, I need to get seriously busy with this thing: But I can't tell you why.  How is that for a tease!

From my studio: Silk Ribbon Embroidery Felt Baby Slippers

It is always such a treat to get to make a pair of these for a sweet new wee baby girl!

From my studio: Baby to Bride Bonnet in Peach

I have been so busy lately!  There are a ton of things I have wanted to blog about and share, but just simply have not had the time to.  They say being busy is a good thing, right?  I think so too, but only if the day had a few more hours in it so I could get a little more done. I wanted to share a custom bonnet I just finished up.  This is one of my Baby to Bride bonnets.  It features silk ribbon embroidery and beading on a vintage handkerchief that is folded and sewed into a bonnet.  It converts back to a bonnet by removing the stitching.  On this bonnet, I added some vintage pearl beads salvaged from a broken antique necklace.

From my studio: Fabric Journals

I am always looking for ways to combine all of the different crafts I love into one.  I have finally come up with something that lets me combine beading, silk ribbon embroidery, vintage embellishments and notions, sewing, and paper crafting.  I call these Shabby Scrapbooks.  They have a heavy chip/mat board covers that are covered with batting to make them soft and then covered with fabric.  The fronts are embellished with vintage images from my personal collection that I have scanned and edited and then printed on fabric.  I then embellish those images with silk ribbon embroidery, beading, vintage notions, papercrafting embellishments, or whatever strikes me at the moment. On some of the books I add extra embellishments to the covers in addition to the image.  This book has a bit of vintage lace that is fashioned into a flower and centered with a vintage rhinestone button and bit of ribbon. On this book, I added a new flower from Maya Road combined with a piece of vintage jewelry and vintage handmade lace. I really love this one.  First off, I love that image.  It is a vintage store trading card advertising Acme Soap.  Way back in the day, stores and companies made trading cards to give to customers to advertise.  People would collect them and place them in photo albums.  The thing I love most about this one though is the fabric.  It used to be a vintage baby girl dress coat.  I bought it thinking I could do a little embroidery on it.  It ened up being too damaged in a few spots to use as it was so I disassembled it to salvage the fabric.  I really love it combined with this image.  I have several more of these books planned and will have them available at both Candid Gifts and Show Me Handmade as well as my shop here and on Etsy.

From My Studio: Fabric Journals

I haven't blogged in a bit!  Oops.  I rotated to the dreaded night shift at work which has me completely out of sorts and off kilter.  It the time that I manage to stay awake, I have been so focused on some design assignments for BasicGrey and with creating new items for my various shops, that I have forgotten to blog! Right now I am way over due to go to sleep so I will skip writing much, I am just too tired to try to make sense!  I do want to show you a little something though I created last night though. I have started making a whole collection of these fabric journals/scrapbooks.  The covers have a heavy chipboard base that is padded and covered with fabric.  The covers have vintage images printed on fabric and embellished with embroidery and beading.  They also have bits of vintage goodness like fabric, lace, ribbon, jewelry bits, buttons, etc.

Fiskars Summer School: Embellished Fabric Postcard

I am so excited to share that I had the pleasure of doing another project tutorial for Fiskars Crafts.  This project is a part of their Summer School series of tutorials on their website.  The line up of projects is so fun and vary from sewing to paper to more. For my project, I did a tutorial featuring a vintage image printed on fabric and then embellished with embroidery. The tutorial includes step by step instructions for completing the project.   I hope you will stop by and check it out.  If I do say so myself, I think it is a fun little project that is both fun and easy. The image I used is from the free image section of my site here.

New in my shop: Rosevine Bridal Bag

I actually added this a few days ago and completely forgot to blog about it!  My mind has been on over drive lately with all things ribbon, daydreaming of new things to make and new variations.  So much so that I kind of forgot to blog about a project completed! I have been getting inquiries about monogrammed items which was good prompting to finish up a couple of half done samples that happened to feature monograms.  The problem with offering mainly custom items is that you need samples of everything.  I love making the samples, but they often take a back seat in getting finished when I have actual orders to make and send off.  That is why it took a really long time for this poor bag to actually get finished.  No complaints though, I love getting orders that make samples go unfinished! This bag, like my others is available on a variety of fabrics and is fully customizable as far as choice of letter and colors of flowers. I really love the ribbon used on this sample, it is all hand dyed silk.  I don't personally dye my ribbons, I think some day I might like to learn to do that, but for now I will just continue to support a couple of really amazing ladies who make what I think is the best hand dyed ribbon there is. It is probably a little hard to tell, but in addition to the tiny petite seed beads I normally bead with, I also added in 3mm Swarovski Crystal Bicones.  I absolutley love Swarovski Crystals and use them in just about everything I do.  I am thrilled to have found then in such a small size so that I can now include them in my embroidery. You can find this bag in my shop on this site or on Etsy.

Road trippin '

I tried to post this a couple of days ago from my phone, but I couldn't get enough of a signal in the Ozark Hills to connect and upload. This week my hubby and I took a quick trip to my home town of  Springfield, Mo for a funeral.  I get car sick, more and more so every year.  It makes the idea of a four hour car ride one that I don't relish!  I try to take something to do to keep my mind and eyes busy to hopefully distract me, but it usually just makes it worse.  I can't read, I can't write, etc.  About all I can do is sleep and as a over anxious passenger, that isn't exactly easy. For this trip I threw a little bit of needlework in my bag incase I had a little downtime during the visit.  As we were driving I decided to give it a try.  My hubby said "That looks like a bad idea".  I thought so too, but what the heck! So anyway, guess what, no problems at all!  It turns out that stitching didn't bother me at all.  Best of all, I kept myself busy, didn't have to look out the window, didn't have to nag the Hub about his driving or speeding,  and finished two projects.  Hmmm, who would have thought?! Next time I will have to rig me up a little desk so I can have a full workspace!

Custom Bridal Bag

I had the pleasure of creating this custom bag for the upcoming wedding of Kim's daughter.  She requested ivory satin with the floral heart motif in golden oranges and sage greens. The bottom is adorned with a lovely piece of vintage lace that matched the fabric perfectly. The embroidery is accented with hand beading that includes petite seed beads and new to this bag, tiny Swarovski Crystal beads.  I love the extra touches of added sparkle that they add.  I don't think anything can rival the sparkle of Swarovski. Thank you Kim for allowing me to create this piece for your daughter's wedding.  I hope that it becomes a special token to her to remind her of her special day and that she has a perfect day!