She is so precious!  I love her… wish I had time to take my photos over though… just didn’t quite capture her charm! boohoo! I will forever be trying to get better photos! ugh!

This is Tilda with Straw Hat from the Butterfly Dreams Collection!  I colored her with Distress ink refills on cold press watercolor paper.  The pattern papers are from the Stella Rose line from My Minds Eye called Mabel… they just…go together!  EASY! gotta love that!  whew!

I used the new Lacy Oval Nestabilites die to frame her and back stitched between the loops… can you see it? I also hand stitched and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from trying this a few times now.  I emailed some bloggers but didn’t get replies or else their products weren’t in the USA.  So I will share what I’ve found from trial and error as you’ll see here!!! haha! I love to sew and hand sew.  It’s just therapeutic I guess.

• Finally found the thread I like… Coats and Clark Button/Carpet thread.
• pierce your holes with the needle you’re going to sew with,  then your holes won’t be so huge!
• figure out the size of your paper with the ruler/tool you are going to use that has the holes guide for piercing in it… notice here that I didn’t do this and I have extra holes in a few places and had to cut my layers down…all of life is education…that’s my excuse and I’m stickin’ to it! : )
• the other trick is keeping the pierced holes straight… gotta work on that! haha  But,  you’ll notice on commercially made items that their stitching isn’t always perfect either,  so go w/the charm of crooked! lol

To dye the seam binding,  I was in a hurry,  so I just cut off 3 yards (yes, I cheated and measured the nose to stretched out arm length way),  laid the cut length on my craft mat in a loose scattered pile and started pouncing on it with my Rusty Hinge Distress ink pad.  After I had ink pretty much on most of it,  I spritzed it with water to blend the ink but leaving dark and light areas.  Not sopping wet though.  Squashed it in a plastic bag to get it good and wrinkled.  Pulled it out and dried it with my heat tool.  Worked great!

Linking my Tilda card to the new German Magnolia Mania Challenge blog – Happy Easter!

Getting ready for stamp club this afternoon…looking forward to some fun with my stamping friends! Thanks for stopping by !

Here’s the links to the products I used on my card…