Double the Fun Crafts - Yvette's Petitpoint Blog

Updated Photo Albums Completed

11/3/2025

After more than a week gathering and laminating photos, I now have our new photo albums assembled ready for our next miniature show in May.

Several customers will be able to browse at once now through our albums since we now have 7 to choose from.

It was a lot of fun assembling these and reprinting all of the photos to make them consistent with our color theme. Many of the old photos printed by a photo show had cropped either the sides or ends of the patterns and I had no choice but to use them at the time. I am very lucky to have a good printer and all of the photos came out very clear with excellent color.

I am looking forward to seeing how these will be received next May!

Two Little Pillows Finished

11/1/2025

In an earlier post, I showed you a little Christmas pillow that I began stitching after the MET show.

I have now finished the little Teddy Bear pillow and was on a roll, so I stitched this little Bunny pillow as well!

The Bunny pillow pattern will be available shortly, but the Teddy Bear pattern is available when you click on the orange words above.

Improving our Photo Album

10/29/2025

Last week my youngest daughter loaned me her laminating machine so that I could begin creating my own photo albums to take to any Miniature Shows that I sell at. I have decided that a regular album doesn't work anymore and the pictures are not displayed to their best advantage.
I have never used a laminator before and am really enjoying the results I am seeing. For those who haven't used one either, the sheets are slightly opaque as seen at the top of the first photo, then turn very clear once they have passed through the laminator. I purchased sheets large enough to laminate 2 sets of photos on each page.
To further make my albums more user friendly, I have made up a description card for each page with details about each rug.

After 3 days of printing out my own photos, description cards and laminating all, I am finally done laminating the main pages. In total, I laminated 111 pages of photos with 2 photos per page. That is a lot of patterns!

Next, I need to create covers for the albums and cut each page down to a better size. I am also debating whether to use clear acrylic sheets for the back of the albums or another laminated page. I will have to decide soon!

I intend to have separate albums for each group of sizes. For example: 4" x 6" rugs, 5" x 7" rugs, etc, similar to the categories in our shop. I am also toying with the idea of creating tabs to separate each style of rug within the album, but am not sure that will work out for me yet.

Yesterday was Day 4 working on this project. Little did I know it would take so long, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. I have set up my cutting mat with guidelines for cutting out the pages so that they all turn out the same size.

I was able to cut out 1/2 of the pages in the afternoon and will cut out the rest today. As I cut them out, I arranged them in order of size. Below shows some of the pages trimmed and sorted.

Today, I will re-set my guidelines on my cutting mat to trim the other half of the photos. I need to do this because the other half have much more space around the photo that needs to be trimmed off. Once I get new guidelines set, I should be able to finish the trimming today.

This has turned out to be a great project and I am very much enjoying the planning and execution of it. I think having different albums will give more people a chance to properly browse our patterns instead of feeling that they are taking too long. One album limits the amount of time people can browse because they feel they are holding others back from viewing the patterns. I could not find store-bought albums that would allow me to include everything I wanted, so, being the craft-minded person that I am, I am creating my own. Such fun!!

A New Christmas Pillow

10/25/2025

After getting everything sorted and put away from our MET show experience, I finally have some time to stitch again.

I decided to continue stitching little pillows both for new inventory and for test stitching my new patterns waiting in the wings. I began with this little cutie. Pattern located here: Teddy. I now have only the background to fill in and am loving how he turned out. My next one will be a little bunny before I turn my attention to more test stitching.

Yesterday, I added a few new patterns to our store and updated some of the ones already there. While designing a new Christmas stocking, I noticed that I had forgotten to chart the letter "U" in my alphabet offered with some of the stockings!

That, of course, triggered a whole new set of patterns for each of my stockings that could have names! In the process of updating them online, I also added my Christmas Stocking 4. You may see it by clicking on the name, which will take you to the pattern.

Recovering from the MET Show

10/23/2025

Last Saturday I attended the MET Show in Toronto, Ontario. It was a long day but a lot of fun. At the last minute, my youngest daughter was not able to come with me so my husband volunteered. Many thanks to him!
Here is our table, set up and ready for the show to open.
During the show, we met many new people, talked with old friends and had a great time. The table had constant visitors throughout the day which

made the time go quickly. The display set up outside the main room had some truly inspiring pieces and I very much enjoyed browsing them before the show opened. After it opened, I had very little down time (which is a good thing!). My husband took advantage of one slower period to browse as it was his very first miniature show. I think he was impressed!
During the show, we received some good suggestions regarding new items to carry for our next show. I am happy to say that this past week, I have been working on some of those suggestions and will be bringing them to our next show in Fergus, May 3rd, 2026.
Before putting away our storage bins this year, I have been busy replenishing our stock, including some new stock and organizing the inventory so that when I put them away, they will be ready to go for May. I have spent hours at the computer every day and am looking forward to putting all of the bins away this weekend. I am itching to get back to my stitching!

A Nod to Halloween

10/16/2025

A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter requested I design some Halloween pillows since it is fast approaching. The Halloween Witch pillow is the result. I stitched it on 40 count silk gauze, but it would be just as good done on 48 count gauze.
For this little pillow, I stitched the dark blue background first so that I could easily see the outline of the moon. The witch was the second

element to be stitched with the moon being last. After stitching so many pillows lately, I am getting to be an expert at turning them after stitching the backing fabric on! The pattern for this delightful little pillow is now available in our shop by following this link: Halloween Pillow

Christmas Stockings Finished

10/13/2025

Stocking 5 (left) and Stocking 6 (below) are now finished and will be offered for sale at my next Miniature Show - The MET Show on October 18, 2025. The patterns are also available for purchase by clicking on the above stocking names.

Some Christmas Stockings

10/9/2025

I have decided to work 2 Christmas stockings at once in order to make the best use of my silk gauze. These patterns are Stocking 5 and 6 with Stocking 6 almost completed here.
I filled in all of the background white stitches first so that none of the dark blue would show through the white when the stocking was finished.

I was a bit surprised that the stitching took me longer than I imagined it would since it is so small. However, when I checked how many stitches these little stockings had I found there were 2552 stitches! That is more than some of my little pillows.

Here is Stocking 6 finished and ready to sew the backing on.

Third Tammy Test Pillow

10/5/2025

This is the last of 3 pillows that I have stitched to test motifs and colors for my Tammy Rug. The colors have turned out well on all of my tests, so I will be posting the rug pattern shortly, along with some of the pillow patterns.

Next on my list are some little Christmas stockings that I designed several years ago but am only now getting around to test stitching. Hopefully, they will also turn out well.

Second Tammy test pillow completed

10/1/2025

At long last, I have completed stitching the second Tammy test pillow and stitched the backing onto it. Still needing to be stuffed, the pillow turned out well and I only needed to change a couple of things to be satisfied with the design.

I have also been working on the third pillow and will post about that one soon...

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