Constant use will not wear ragged
the fabric of friendship. ~ Dorothy Parker

It’s week two of our Fabric of Friendship recipe swap. Time to check in with our designers and all of you. Just use fabric somewhere in your paper craft project to join the party.

• Include a link to us at Catered Crop or add our button, which you can grab on our sidebar or at our {button gallery}.
• Link up and link often, but be sure you link up by 8:00 PM EST on Saturday, May 25.
• Keep the party hopping by visiting the other players and leaving comments. (The InLinkz tool below will give you a blank to tell us which player’s site you visited and left some comment love.)
• Check back with us on May 26 to see if you’ve won an opportunity to be a guest designer.

Here are a few ideas I’ve curated in my Pinterest board: Fabric of Our Lives. And, our fabulous designers are here to amaze and amuse with their creative genius. (Seriously, Catered Crop has the best design team on the planet!) Just click on the pictures of their projects to visit their blogs.

Kim says she’s never worked with fabric before. Goodness, you’d never know it. She created two fabulous cards for our challenge.

Congratulations to our winners from our last challenge. I’m so crazy excited to have them join us as guest designers.

There is no gilding of setting sun or glamour of poetry
to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers’ wives.
~ Hamlin Garland

Have you seen the cover of The Oprah Magazine this month? Oprah’s got a new farm in Maui. She says: “It’s been a real aha moment to discover how delightful it is to create something fresh and fulfilling with you own two hands.”

Shoot, Oprah should have spent a week with my Grandma Black. And my Aunt Calita. And my Mom’s Cousin Helen Luth.

By the time I came along Grandma had leased the acres out on her farm and she had just a few chickens. I was so little, I only barely remember the few times she let me come with her to gather eggs in the barn.

What I do remember most fondly is how Grandma still got up at dawn and went to bed at dusk long after the farm retired. Her strong hands were always, always busy, usually doing something for us: darning the holes in our socks, making our favorite pie, sewing dresses for my dolls . . .

I know Grandma never heard of an “aha moment.” But, if all farmers’ wives are like my Grandma, they are the most selfless people on God’s green Earth.

Tips & Techniques

• I borrowed the wagon from the Cart Full of Friends stamp set and filled it with raffia and the little chick from this new Pure Innocence Farmer’s Girl stamp set.
• I used Michele’s gorgeous pointilism technique to color the chicken.
• I used the new Chicken Wire Die-namic as a cover for this card using a technique I showed you here.

Here are the Copic markers I used and the rest of the ingredients.

Finished size: 4″ x 5-1/4″. Other ingredients: Simple Stores Summer Fresh 6″ x 6″ paper pad, Paper Source natural raffia ribbon, DMC Embroidery Floss. Stampin’ Up! pastels. Memento Dye Ink, Curly Raffia.

The My Favorite Things design team is back to give you another look at the fabulous May release with the Release Rewind!  You can find all of the new release products HERE in the My Favorite Things Boutique.