Still working on the hope chest.

As the title of the post would suggest, I continue to work on handmade items to add to Ri's hope chest.  These are my newest offerings:

I took images from free coloring pages to do this one.

I just used my printer to scale everything to the size I wanted and then arranged them the way I liked before transferring the design to the towel.  After stitching everything, I decided I should have made the ring for the measuring spoons red in order for the colors to balance better.  Instead of ripping out some of the stitches and reworking that section, I just added the little dash-of-love heart.  I think I like it better this way than if I had just done the ring in red.

I saw a picture of some sort of kitchen linen done up like this in a magazine, but when I tried to find out where to get the pattern, I discovered they only had it available in a card (disk, or whatever it is they use) for an embroidery machine.  Since I don't have an embroidery machine, I had to do my best to draw this out.  I think it turned out well.

This is another image I got from free coloring pages.

I altered this one a bit more.  I changed how the steam, rising from the two pots on the stove looks (sorry - it's kind of hard to see the white thread on the cream towel in this photo), added butter to the potatoes on the plate to the right (again - hard to see the white, but you can see it better if you click on the pic), changed what was a completely out of proportion chicken/turkey leg that was on the plate to the left into a roasted chicken, and added the clock.  I thought it would look better to have something high on the right to balance the height of the refrigerator.  Since the appliances had a retro look to them, I did them up in teal and made a stylized clock.

Next project, hand towels for the bathroom.