We’ve had a really. busy. week. But just so you know the latest exciting news from marie-madeline studio, here it is…. our trunk show debut! A special "thank you!" to Anita from Sew to Speak in Columbus, Ohio, for these great pictures.
By the way, don’t forget to take advantage of our free shipping offer… it ends tomorrow!!
Sorry we’ve been away so long… lots has been going on around here as we had dear friends visiting! We’re giving you this yummy dessert recipe to cook while we work on "cookin’ up" our next project. Enjoy!
Deluxe Chocolate Marshmallow Bars
3/4 cup butter or margarine
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons baking cocoa
1/2 cup chopped nuts, optional
4 cups miniature marshmallows
TOPPING:
1 1/3 cup (8 ounces) chocolate chips
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 cup peanut butter
2 cups crisp rice cereal
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; beat until fluffy. Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa; add to creamed mixture. Stir in nuts if desired. Spread in a greased jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes. Sprinkle marshmallows evenly over cake; return to oven for 2-3 minutes. Using a knife dipped in water, spread the melted marshmallows evenly over cake. Cool. For topping, combine chocolate chips, butter, and peanut butter in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until melted and well blended. Remove from heat; stir in cereal. Spread over bars. Chill. Yield: about 3 dozen
Alright… this may sound a little funny, but I like army sacks. The shape, size, and feel of them just seem perfect. Except for one thing: they’re a bit "boyish" looking for a girl. So, I got the idea that if I ever found a cheap army sack I would buy it and line it with a fabric, using the same techniques we use to put lining into our bags. Hadn’t seen one. Then one day…
We went to a flea market in Fairland, Oklahoma. (If you’re ever down that way look up Fran’s Flea Market!) Can you imagine what was there for $8? You guessed it: my army sack! I was so excited!! Home I came with the army sack in tow. Next on the list was to wash it.
At first it was a little blah (inside and out!)::
Now I made a plan of attack::
Cutting out (I made a rough pattern using freezer paper, as you can see). I chose an Amy Butler fabric from her new Midwest Modern line. There’s a bit of green in it that’s the perfect shade of army green!::
While putting the lining together I decided to add a pocket to help keep my extra little goodies "organized"::
Hand stitching the lining in around the top was the hardest part! (with the help of my wonderful partners I decided stitching around the top with the sewing machine was out of the question! I just set the lining in and hand stitched around it.) I ended up with a purple thumb from poking myself (and used up 2 needles in the process)::
Mission Complete! My army sack is ready for duty and officially done. Well almost. Now I plan to embellish the flap with a 1970’s applique from Mom’s cute collection::
posted by Achaia
B~ Beautiful
I~ Ingenius
A~ Always there!
H~ Helpful
Our dearest Abiah Bug,
Happy 14th birthday to our little Bugsie! You are so precious and dear to us. We wouldn’t trade you for all the other red heads in the world! May our Lord and Saviour continue to guide, bless, keep, and protect you forever. We’re thankful God has given us the blessing of being your family.We love you, Bug!!
Love, Dad, Mom, and the Kids
Hello Everyone!!
A week or so ago we got a custom order for a brooke shopper with long handles, like the ones featured on our brooke shoulder bag. Well… here it is!
What do you think? We were really happy with the way it turned out! 
This is another great way to use the brooke shoulder bag and shopper pattern (especially if you need a bigger bag, but prefer long handles!) The only thing you need to change is….
~Use the long handles from the brooke shoulder bag
~Add interfacing to both handles
~Place the handles 2 1/4" from the center of the front/back
Viola!
We hope you all have a wonderful day~ the Long Ladies (& family!)
Finally! Here’s our ‘rag rug’. We saw it first at a friend’s house and just loved it. All you’ll need is a piece of fabric measuring the size of the place you want the rug to go and little 2" squares. We weren’t particular about the square size….(translated, we eyeballed the squares and didn’t measure them all)
Our bright squares piled on our work table. 
And then sewing the squares on….
After you cut your 2" squares, fold them in half, (corner to corner). Then, sew straight through the middle, (over-lapping the ends of each square) securing squares to the base fabric. Continue sewing squares in a long row down the entire length of the fabric base. When you’re ready to start another row, hold the previous row back with one hand while you’re stitching the next row. Your rows of stitching will be about 3/4" apart. We started the whole process with a row of squares in approximately the center of the base. Once you’ve made it from the center to one side of the base, you’ll head the other direction. One of the nice things about this rug is that the sewing lines don’t have to be perfect. Once the fabric "fluffs" up, you’ll never see the stitching lines. If you want the rug to look even fuller and fluffier, sew the rows closer together. This is one rug that is made without any "perfect" way, and yet it is as cute as can be!
tada! Here’s the back and front of our new rug!
One of the sweet ladies who has purchased some of our patterns recently sent us pictures of her finished product using our brooke shoulder bag and shopper pattern. We couldn’t have been more delighted!! We love to see how others have used our patterns! So, we just had to get the "o.k." from her to let you all see how wonderful hers turned out….
The brooke shopper (front view on left, back view on right)
The brooke shoulder bag
Also, we’d love to hear from any of you that have made things using our patterns… and we’d absolutely love to see pictures!!
Well, well, look what we have here! We girls have been wanting a rug for our room for some time but never found the perfect thing until…..we saw a picture of a braided rug in an old decorating book.
Here are the strips (about 1 1/2"wide…the wider the cut strip, the fatter the braid) that we cut from all of our scrap fabric..notice all the bright colors!
The strips were sewn together (length-wise) and are now in the midst of being braided… I love this part! Since we’re braiding our strips, we made three separate, VERY long runs…then we braided them together.
(someone had to get a picture of our cute pincushion…. find more like this on our Etsy shop! )
Once you have all the strips braided and have one long braid, you start wrapping your braid around itself and sewing it together in whatever size and shape that you want. We didn’t want a huge rug and since this was our first attempt at braided rug making, we started our center about 6"in length. You need to keep your rug laying down when you’re working on it, or it will have a tendency to curl up (we found this out the hard way… thanks to Nanny for helping us with that little problem) into a bowl shape. We also found that a curved needle and clear quilting thread (easily available at some place like JoAnn Fabrics) work great for this job. Once you’ve used up almost all of the braid that you have made, but your rug isn’t big enough, stop with some fabric hanging free, and sew on more fabric scraps, braid, and then start your hand sewing again. Continue until the rug is just the size that you’re wanting.
The finished product! This was a lot of fun for us girls and we’re sure that you’ll enjoy doing it as much as we did.
We’ll try to post about our other rug that we made real soon…. so stay tuned!
For Mother’s Day we are hosting a special sale through the month of May!
All items purchased from our Etsy Shop or Custom Orders will be shipped for free! Any orders totaling $50 will be given a 10% discount.
