Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

Visited Bonnie Hunter’s site this morning. Found this link to a clip about making scissors by hand. Would love a pair of these! Click here. Bonnie is just home from a recent quilters’ trip to Great Britain. That girl sure gets around–she’s home right now, but before she comes to us in mid September, she’ll be spending time in Alaska teaching.

Weaving modern cloth on old looms (found in side bar at link above): click here

Here’s a bit of trivia for you. The roots of modern-day computers are linked to weaving. Joseph Jacquard came up with a system of punched cards for weaving patterns which eventually inspired the binary code of ones and zeros representing the punched or unpunched holes in the cards. Those ones and zeros were linked to electronic circuitry being on (the one) or off (the zero). And the rest is history. Binary code became the foundation for most of the systems of coding used in computer programming today.  (Very oversimplified history for you, but those of you with math phobia can perhaps still appreciate the connections!) Read more about it here: click here.

I have a lot of burlap scraps remaining from the flowers I made for my wreath class at seminar. I’m going to make it up into little treat/gift bags. I’ve done this many times, with all sorts of fabrics, so I don’t really need a pattern. But…this pattern is a cute and very easy one. (click here) Let’s call it another installment in the Christmas in July pattern sharing, shall we?