Mini Doily Earrings

    I crocheted these beautiful doily earrings in less than an hour.  I found this free doily earring pattern on Ravelry.  You have to be a member (it's free to join) on Ravelry to get the pattern.  The pattern was written by Emily Forrest and it's a fun pattern for a miniature doily to put on your ear wires.  I used #10 crochet thread in white and a 1.5 mm steel crochet hook.  These were fun to make and I can't wait to wear them.  I would love to make some more and tea dye the doily to make it a more natural color.  Fun.

    I wet block* these mini doilies after I finished them.  They dried overnight and were ready to wear the next day.

   I have the faux redwork quilt top sandwiched and ready to quilt.  I bought a Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 crib size (45" x 60') batt and it was the perfect size to use with this small quilt top. I want to free motion quilt this quilt on my Janome 7700 and the last time I tried to free motion quilt on this machine it was not working for me, so I'm determined to figure this machine out and get this quilt done the way I want.   We'll see.

*To wet block my doilies I wet the doily in cold water, gently squeeze out water, 

place in towel and gently squeeze some more to try to get as much moisture

 out as possible.  Place the doily on a dry towel and gently stretch it, pat it, and shape 

it until it looks even on all sides.  For these little mini doilies, I tried to make sure 

all my loops on the edges were pulled out and visible. Leave it to dry.  

I don't use any starch because I'm afraid of bugs.

I learned this method from lacycrochet blog.   The link to her page is here.

Button And Cat Charm Earrings

    I finally made some earrings with the lever back ear wires I found at Fire Mountain when I bought my elastic cord for the elastic button bracelets.  For this project I also had to buy 24 gauge non tarnishing silver wire and I got that from an Etsy seller.  I found the cat charms on eBay a couple of years ago, they still sell them.  They come in a group of 50 and I have a bunch left even thought I've made other jewelry with them and given some away.  The cat charms are Tibetan silver and come from China.  They remind me of Laurel Burch cats without all the colors.  I found the blue and white buttons on Lots of Buttons.com.  I had the small beads and the jump rings in my small jewelry stash.

  To make the button earrings I had to have some on line help.  I used a tutorial from youtube by Potomac Bead Company to get me started.  The link is here.  The cat charms are just attached to the ear wires with gray thread.  So simple.

   These were fun to make, but they took me a couple of hours because I'm not very good at making jewelry and I had to take the button earrings apart several times before I was happy with the finish.

  I have a couple more pair of lever backs that I'm going to pair up with more buttons and I'm also in the process of making some button brooches with felt and pin backs.