Merry Christmas, one and all!

Today, let’s wrap up A Stitcher’s Christmas for 2018, shall we?

Then I’ll show you one way I use embroidered flour sack towels to wrap gifts, for those of you playing Santa this year!

This morning, bright and early, I randomly drew the winner for last Wednesday’s installment of A Stitcher’s Christmas, these gorgeous specialty silk & metal threads, courtesy of Access Commodities.

The winner of the threads is Jackie Ayres.

Then, I randomly drew the winner of Friday’s give-away, an exquisite pair of embroidery scissors courtesy of The French Needle.

And the winner of the scissors is Kathy M!

I’ll email both of you today. I know you’ll love your new needlework treats!

Wrapping a Bottle with a Flour Sack Towel

I love using embroidered flour sack towels as wrapping for gifts. They work especially well for pretty much any small household or kitchen gadget, they can serve in place of tissue paper inside a gift bag, and they can line a gift basket or even a plate of cookies.

Around Christmas time, when a bottle of Christmas cheer in the form of wine or liquor makes a good gift for the dinner host, an embroidered flour sack towel can come in pretty handy!

It’s easy to use a square or almost-square flour sack towel to wrap a bottle.

Lay your embroidered towel with the embroidery face up out on the table. Place the standing bottle in the middle of the towel, and draw all four corners up, to meet at or over the top of the bottle. At this point, the back of the embroidery will be facing outwards.

If you happen to have a new soft pony tail elastic or something similar, this is a great place to use one! I didn’t have one, so instead, I tied a wide, striped, grosgrain ribbon around the neck of the bottle, as shown in the photo above.

No need to tie a fancy bow, because it won’t be seen.

Stand the bottle up and fold the corners down over the ribbon. You might just fold the embroidered corner down, to display the embroidery, leaving the other three corners standing up and somewhat hiding the top of the bottle. Or you can fold all four corners down – just make sure you fold the embroidered corner in such a way that it stands out and gets all the attention!

If you’re using a ribbon, snip the ends to make a good presentation, and if you want, you can slide the wrapped bottle into a plain gift bag (remember: you want the embroidery to get all the attention!) to make it easier to carry.

Voilá! A nice little gift for whoever’s hosting Christmas dinner!

Merry Christmas!

I’ll be taking a short blogging break until the end of the week, to celebrate Christmas with my family here in Kansas and to get ahead on a few things for you, for the New Year.

All my warmest wishes to you and your loved ones for a joyous, peaceful Christmas, filled with an abundance of blessings that will carry you through 2019!

Happy Christmas!