Ten years ago or so, this Coffee & Cream clothing collection was one of my signature designs inspired by Irish Crochet and was featured in 85th addition of Duplet Magazine.

To create this collection, I made different leaves and flowers using 2 contrasting shades of cotton / bamboo yarns, which I then joined together into garments. There were always hundreds and hundreds premade motifs in my craft room and I was ready to assemble them at any time. Ten years later, guess what I found in the bin with my crochet threads? Of course, a whole bag of those beautiful coffee & cream floral motifs which were just perfect for the project I was working on last summer…I was beyond excited!

As you might know, sewing is another passion of mine. This gorgeous Singer 15 sewing machine was one of my restoration projects in summer 2017, I was so thrilled to see how it turned out! Please don’t get me wrong, I love technology and modern sewing machines…but I also love, appreciate, and respect history. I enjoy rescuing vintage sewing machines, they are truly beautiful and stitch amazingly.

When I found this machine, the original case was in such a horrific condition…I could have cried because I wasn’t sure how I would have restored it.

Taking one step at a time, I finished cleaning this case and the decorating Ideas were coming slowly. I have finally decide to decoupage this case using my floral motifs from the Coffee & Cream collection. I placed flowers & leaves (group by group) around the case with WS facing up, creating a balanced composition between contrasting colors. Just like in classic Irish crochet, the motifs needed to be joined, so I used a regular sewing needle & sewing thread to sew them together across the contiguous edges on WS, leaving the edges under the handle unattached. When the entire piece was sewn together, I took it off the case for steam blocking, and then put it back on with RS facing up. Decoupaging was fun and easy using Mod Podge from Michaels. I even glued a few extra flowers onto the finished surface to create a 3-dimensional look. It took a lot of time to complete this project, but I could not be happier with the result!

Here are some close up pictures of the process and the finished project 🙂