Being Martha

Over at CSIproject.com this week's challenge is to create a "Martha Stewart" craft. Now when I think of Martha Stewart I think of: organized, good things, perfection, east coast, creative and monograms. Call me crazy but that's what comes to mind.

Another item: I bake our bread. We rarely buy bread in the store. The only problem (or used to be problem) was how to store these loaves of homemade bread. Zip-lock bags are too short. On the rare occasion I would buy store-bought bread I would save the wrapper and reuse them for the homemade loaves. A friend (over a year ago) gave me about 75 plastic bags for bread which she purchased for her daughter's bread making business. I am down to one. I went on line to order some more and then had an idea: why can't I make my own bread bags? So googling "sew bread bags" I found many ideas - some using new fabric, some using tea towels, some using pillow cases. I looked around to see what I had - tablecloths. I pulled out this linen tablecloth and cut in down to the size of my last plastic bag. Just sewed up the edges (I got 4 bags out of the one cloth) and left a 1/2 inch hem for the cord to close the bag.

Now how to embellish the bag...





Back to Martha Stewart and her monograms. I searched the MarthaStewart.com website and found many items which she monograms - bibs, glasses, pillows, frames...the possibilities are endless. I choose B for, well, Bread and Buns and Baking and Barbara! The first B I zigzagged stitched on was way to complicated, too many curly cues - not showing you that one. I found a simple B and blew in up to 650 font, laid it behind the fabric and pencil-traced it. Then with coordinating thread zigzagged stitched it on. Voila! Homemade monogrammed bread bags. No more relying on plastic. There's something homey and right about storing homemade bread in linen bags. Don't you think?