Rashida (of I heart Linen fame) contacted me a long while back to see if I would contribute to her new book, Zakka Style. Of course I said yes! I remade this project, so I could fix the pattern and change the colors a bit. I never did get around to making and selling these pocket pillowcases, but yay for my laziness because now you can make them!

The pattern really is quite easy and makes for a lovely gift. The diamonds are fiddly, I won’t lie, but you could skip them and sew any sort of patchwork your heart desires.  The whole book is filled with simple and clever little things to make. And they are designed by some of my favorite people: Holly, Amanda, Leslie, and a good deal more.

I actually made two projects for the book, but the second one didn’t make the cut. Remember this towel I made? Well, I reworked that project as well: a little bigger, nicer patchwork, and in linen. This continuous towel doesn’t fit in my bathroom and though it does look kind of nice in my kitchen, I think it would look better in yours.

That’s right, a little giveaway for this Tuesday: Zakka Style and a zakka stylish linen towel. To enter yourselves in this giveaway, I would like it if you’d answer a question for me. How do you read blogs? Do you use google reader, links from facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest, old fashioned bookmarks, something else entirely? I want elsie marley to be easily accessible to all of you, which is easier if I know how you are all accessing it :)

psst: if the answer is facebook, well wouldn’t you know elsie marley’s got a facebook page.

Ok so leave your answer before Thursday Feb. 23 at 9am and I’ll let the robots do the picking. This giveaway is open to all my lovely readers, no matter where you live. Good luck!

 The giveaway is closed! 

I’ve been thinking about making another kind of bag for my shop and I came up with this one. It’s a little wonky, but it’s just a prototype so whatever. The bag is a lot smaller than my other ones (here a photo for scale) but I’m thinking it could be even smaller. I embroidered some details on the bag that I really like: a running stitch along the whole strap and a hand sewn buttonhole.

The button I wanted to use didn’t fit in my automatic buttonholer, so I had to do it by hand. I was going to do a hand bound buttonhole, but that just looked too complicated and too fancy for a kid bag, so I just used a blanket stitch to go around the buttonhole. Ta da!

I was thinking the bag could be for all those tiny treasures little ones find walking down the street. But “tiny treasures bag” is a little twee, so I need your help. Leave a comment with a better name for the bag and whoever comes up with the best one wins the bag. Sound good? Go.

I’ve made up a new batch of kiddy messenger bags for my shop, but the one you see above (on my cute little girl) can be yours for free! Cassie at the awesome Crafty Crow is giving it away and you still have time to put your name in the hat.  Just in case you don’t win (I never do) you can hop over to the shop and take your pick.

and remember there are only a couple more days left to sign up for mobile swap 2009!

It’s giveaway day (thanks to sewmamasew) and I’m giving away this little people bag. It’s a drawstring bag made of muslin with vintage inspired little people appliqued on the front.  Tell a joke, tell me what you ate for breakfast, ramble on and on, whatever, just leave a comment if you’d like to win the bag. There are a ton of blogs giving away all kinds of stuff today, so go forth into the internet and win all your christmas presents.

*edited to add: the drawing will end at 8am central time tomorrow december 4th.

THE CONTEST HAS ENDED, BUT STICK AROUND THERE’S LOTS TO SEE HERE.

Here it is the 100th post.  It’s a nice tradition in this crafty blog world to have some sort of contest or giveaway on occasions like these.  And even though I’m crap at responding to comments, they really do push me to do more and better things.  This sewing book is a great example . A year ago I would have thought up this idea, but probably never got around to making it, and then proceed to mope around because I never do the things I say I will.  No more!  And it’s all because of you.  So the sewing book pictured above is yours (sans supplies) if you win.  Just leave a comment on this post–a joke, a recipe, a book recommendation, the name of your dog, whatever–and Monday I will pick a winner (by random).  If you’ve never left a comment before, go ahead and do so. Click on the comments and write your email in the space provided (no one can see it but me) and if you don’t have a website just leave that space blank.   There are more pictures of the book on my flickr site if you’d like to see.  

Because I’m almost up to 1000 comments (it’s at 984 right now) there will be a secret prize for the 1000th commenter! Good luck! And I’ll see you on Monday.