Pillow

A dear friend of mine asked me to make one of these pillows to hang on the door of her new niece’s nursery. Cerys was born quite prematurely but is, happily, home with her parents and doing great. I, on the other hand, have not been doing great! Been so busy that this project has been put aside for far too long and I am feeling very guilty about that – I hope that finally having it in her own two hands will make her forgive me .

I haven’t done any sewing or embroidering for what seems like forever! Almost forgotten how to thread the machine! The first picture shows the satin fabric in its true colour, I’m afraid the subsequent ones are a little washed-out.

Anyhow, it’s all pretty obvious how I made it – satin for the front; sulky embroidery threads in the most part for the design; pretty patterned cotton on the reverse and my wonderful ruffling-foot for the fluffy bit!

Hmm, that reminds me of an apron I made several years ago for a WI competition: I was sitting with the judge at the County Agricultural Show and not letting her know that the apron she was examining was mine (you’re not allowed to let the judge feel pressured in any way to mark higher than she might have!) and she stated that the ruffle around the edge must have been purchased like that as it was far too neat to have been made! Only after judging was all over (and my apron had won first prize!) did I explain about the fabulous ruffling foot on my Husqvarna Designer 1 machine. The fabric was a poly/cotton blend which, when ironed, held the ruffles beautifully.

Shhhh.....

Reverse

Ruffles

25th Anniversary Card

I haven’t blogged for ages – I do apologise. I had hand-surgery in June of this year and my crafting and my typing both suffered as a result. I am now almost back to normal, just need to keep exercising to increase the strength and mobility and it’ll be as good as new. I did get some cards made before I went into hospital but didn’t get around to blogging them. Here’s one I made earlier

In May of this year my eldest sister and her husband celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary so it was the perfect opportunity to go a little over the top with a card. They are very fond of cats, always have a couple, sometimes four, and they’re nearly always ginger!

I haven’t done a lot of embroidery lately so I wound up the machine and dug out this cute image of two cats – changed the colours of the original so that they reflected their penchant for ginger cats and stitched it on a neutral colour of felt. Although felt is very stable I used a couple of layers of stabiliser as well just to make sure it didn’t distort. I love the way their tails make a heart

Basic embroidered design

Trimming to size

My machine will stitch a long basting stitch around the design area before stitching which helps keep it stable and also shows you where the design will be sewn (should you be putting it on a garment). I used these stitches as a guide for cutting, measuring equally all round and then cutting out with a craft knife. I love the Fiskars Fingertip Knife – find it very easy to use and control.

Measuring

Trimming

Neat and ready to go

Shaping the card

I uncovered this lovely silver cardstock in my stash so folded it into a tall gate-fold card base. Using my Fiskars Shape Cutter I cut out the heart shape on the front, half on each ‘gate’ and again on the slightly smaller piece of card I’d chosen for the liner.

Shape Cutter

It almost matches!

Faffing

I wanted to mount the embroidery onto some patterned paper and flowers seemed a good choice (they are avid gardeners) but the pretty paper I found was a bit garish so I toned it down by layering some pale-blue vellum over the top. I adhered the felt onto this and then anchored it down with a ribbon border and some brads, and them some hearts into which I glued a couple of gems.

Papers

Embroidery attached

Lots of hearts

Front of Card

Oooh, time to play! Eyelets inserted using my trusty crop-o-dile; lilac ribbon to lace the front together over a piece of acetate which was cut slightly larger than the size of the card so that it would ‘bow’; peel-offs all round just to add a bit of colour; a cupid topper from my stash and then a few elements cut from a metallic tray using Spellbinders Dies.

I had to make a box to post it of course. I used some darkish card and sprayed with gold Glimmer Mist over a mask and then added a couple of flowers I made. I never really trust glue on corners so, being a ‘belt & braces’ type of girl, I used some silver studs on all sides.

Faffing!

Tag on the back for greeting

It needed a box

Flower

Flowers

We have quite a few parties and unofficial meetings at our house and some visitors like to drink wine! Not me, of course, anyone who knows me will confirm that I never touch a drop!!!

One of the problems I find is that people tend to put a glass down somewhere and then can’t remember which one is theirs. So, I made a bunch of coasters which slip onto the bottom of each glass and every one is slightly different – if only people could remember which colour/gem they are it would be a great idea!

The Coasters

Now I take no credit for coming up with this idea, there are many of them available around the world – but I did design these myself to be stitched completely in the embroidery hoop with no extra sewing steps needed.

I used some black fleece fabric and the edging is all done with a variegated pink thread. The flower design is a different colour on each coaster and – when I ran out of obviously differing colours – I added some large stick-on gems.

The coasters also serve as…well, coasters! Guests can put a glass down on any surface without worrying about leaving rings etc.. very useful really even if they still don’t remember which is their drink.

Glasses

Close-up

All unique

3 of many

Same three

How to store them

This was the next issue, how do I keep them in the glasses cupboard neatly? Have you seen those dispensers they have for cups in cafeterias? That’s the sort of thing I wanted but on a much smaller scale, of course.

I wandered round the workshop looking for inspiration and found it in the guise of left-over drainpipe from the plumbing work we’ve just had done. There were a few pieces about 9″ long and a perfect diameter for the coasters so I grabbed one, got out my hot knife and cut a wide slit down the length of the pipe. It wasn’t easy and it’s not as neat as I would like but, as it’s hand-crafted, I decided it would be OK.

I also found a sweetie tin (travel sweets) which was a good size for the pipe to fit around and then dug out some braid, my alcohol inks and good-old crop-o-dile.

Pipe and Tin

Supplies

Decorating

I didn’t take any photos during the making of this but if you’ve used alcohol inks at all you’ll know to put them on the applicator with some blending solution and just dabble all over the item in question. That’s what I did, both inside and out and also on the braid to take away the contrast and on the brass paper fasteners (brads). I punched holes around the top of the tin, marked where the pipe sat on top of that and punched the holes to correspond and used the brads to hold it all together. The braid is just stuck on to hide the rough edges along the front and inside to hide the brads.

I know that the top of the pipe seems to fold in on itself, I guess that’s because the tin is just slightly too big and is stretching the bottom outwards. Never mind, it works and it looks quite nice sitting in my cupboard amongst the wine glasses…..which I never use myself, honest!

Back and brads

Braided

Inside

In use

Easy access

Sloping!

Oriental Box

Another entry for that agricultural show I mentioned (Christmas Angel) was for a fabric box. I have a wonderful embroidery machine and so decided to utilise that. The fabric I chose was a gorgeous, purpley brocade onto which I embroidered several different oriental designs. It’s quite subtle but very effective. You can see a couple of close-ups showing some of the designs – there are a couple of different fans around the sides and the foliage is quite evocative of the Far East. I stitched the bird for both the top and the bottom of the box and hand-stitched the side panels together to form the hexagon. The bottom was stitched to all sides and some lovely brown beads glued on to give it ‘feet’.

The lining was a real chore! I lost count of the number of times I gathered the silk and then tacked it in place – decided it wasn’t neat enough so took it out and started again! The W.I. are very picky and I knew it needed to be perfect.

The lid is lined in the same silk and hinged just at one side with a couple of large beads to show where to lift it – it doesn’t need to fasten. The gold braid around the edges was hand-stitched (recognise it from the Christmas Angel?) and I twisted some embroidery floss to make the ‘stay’.

It won first prize!

Base & Beads

Fan

Fan & Foliage

Floss Stay

Lid

Base

Beads

Silk Lining

Leafy Box

Leafy Box

Another year, another box. This one is my own design again, I drew out the shape of the panel and then embroidered different leaves onto the cream fabric. I kept the card tempates behind the embroidered panels to give it ‘body’ and then lined each one with that lovely paisley fabric. They were stitched together with several strands of embroidery floss in a large stitch which needed to look just as tidy on the inside as the outside! The same floss was used to make the tassel. This ‘box’ is an octagon and each panel is different from the next and, as you can see, the inside has a ring of leaves stitched in there just to make it more special.

I’m ashamed to say that I can’t quite remember what this one won – it did place!

Inside base

Stitching

Another side

Inside

Close-up

The fabric I use varies, sometimes it’s just a cotton/poly mix and sometimes a felt-like material. The latter is easier as it doesn’t distort but the colour choice can be restrictive. A couple of the examples below are stitched on aida even though they’re not cross-stitch patterns – that’s also nice and stable to work with. Velvet is a nice medium to embroider on as long as it’s quite a dense design otherwise the stitches get lost in the nap; silks and satins are lovely for weddings etc. but very tricky – they pucker easily!

The ‘Congratulations’ card was made for our son who had just graduated with honours; the dinosaur for our great-nephew who loved the creatures and could name a whole range of them! I often edge the aperture with peel-offs and sometimes stitch the design into place using a decorative stitch on my machine (as in the #1 Dad). The shapely lady was for the son of a very dear friend for his 21st birthday.

I didn’t think to photograph most of them, I have made scores of them for many people but didn’t bother to record it! Oh well, I shall endeavour to do so in the future.

Misc embroidered cards

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Christmas cards

A couple of years ago I embroidered all my Christmas Cards – by machine, mostly, but some by hand. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember to photograph every single one of them, my overseas ones had already been posted (as had a whole bunch of UK ones) before I’d remembered to do so.

The hand embroidered ones were done with Form-a-Lines templates, a nice craft to relax with in front of the tv – you don’t need to concentrate too much.

There’s a random selection here if you’d like to take a look.

Christmas embroidered cards

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Form a lines

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Bedspread

If you can see the carpet at all on these photos then please ignore it! We did some major re-working in our house, added a corridor through the end of our bedroom, moved an en-suite loo into what was the old corridor, etc., etc, so the carpet was a real patchwork for a while until we finished all the building. We’ve now got a lovely heather grey carpet all through the upstairs which goes with just about anything.

Anyhow, I saw this Rennie Mackintosh style wallpaper and fell for it – well, I would with my surname wouldn’t I (actually, I don’t think it says anywhere that that is my surname!, well, now you know)? I realise wallpaper borders aren’t really fashionable anymore but I liked this one and the large expanse of wall needed something to break it up. The artwork in the photos below show the first set of canvasses I worked on, there are two other sets on this site which I’ve done since (Bathroom and Art Nouveau).

The canvasses were gessoed first and then the squiggles were done with pva glue sprinkled with powder and heat embossed (not my idea, I read it on the Internet!) before wide stripes of pink and gold acrylic paints were added.

Top Left

Top Right

I cut one each of the four patterns from the wallpaper and triple embossed them, they cracked when I mounted them onto the layers of wallpaper and card but I believe we call that ‘cracked glass’ and not a mistake!

The puzzle pieces were coloured with inks, stamped  with a Mackintosh stamp in red and then triple embossed. A couple of them had gold ‘bits’ stuck into them whilst still wet. I used alcohol inks on dominoes, wrapped them with wire and added a ladybird and a cat bead and a couple of crystal hearts.

The shrink plastic bits hanging from them are the same Mackintosh stamp I used on the puzzle pieces.

Bottom Left

Bottom Right

Now, as well as a paper crafter I am a bit of a sewist and an embroiderer, I used to do a lot of needlepoint and cross-stitch but love my embroidery machine and do a lot of things with that. I scanned-in the images off the wallpaper and then digitised them (converted them to stitches), made them applique designs mainly except for the leaves which have an embroidered fill pattern. I stitched them out once or twice (……or ten times!) to make sure they worked and then made blocks on a neutral textured fabric and with various applique fabrics.

Rose #2

First Rose Piece

I found a beautiful, heavy, burgundy coloured fabric at Abakhan (it’s not far from me) and made the bedspread out of it then played around with the layout of the blocks for ages!

These were then all stitched on with a decorative stitch – very heavy work but the machine I have (Husqvarna Designer1) is able to stitch in various directions so it will go around a square without having to turn the whole piece of material – a big help when working with a lot of fabric like this. Our bed is a superking size so it is a lot of material.

Just leaves

3rd Rose

Unfortunately, I can’t keep it in place whilst sleeping – it’s far too heavy and I can’t turn over with it on top of me – and it’s too hot as well!

Oh, I cut a bit of the dusky pink wallpaper to go on top of our bedside units, under the glass, just to draw it all together, and covered the headboards in the same fabric as the bedspread. The chaise longue at the bottom of the bed was given to me years ago by one of my sisters and I re-covered it. You can see a couple of the needlepoint pillows I made sitting on it too. The window that you can see through the double doors is no longer there, we had a wall built there and a doorway into a guest bedroom with an en-suite shower room. The whole place looks a lot nicer now and I’ve got to admit to not missing builders at all!

Wall arrangement

Bedroom view

Bedroom view

Art Nouveau Display

My second set of canvasses were inspired by some lovely embroidery designs I got from Embroidery Library. Absolutely gorgeous designs but far too big to be embroidered on any articles of clothing – though they’d probably look really good on something like a shopping bag.

Anyhow, I stitched them out onto some heavy white felt-like material, took a long time as my machine is just a home sewing machine, nothing industrial with lots of heads etc.. So everytime I change colour I have to re-thread the machine and that does take time. Still, I think they were worth the effort involved. I was going to hang them in a guest bedroom but decided they wouldn’t be seen enough there so I hung them in the upper hallway.

Lady Lida

The canvasses were first painted with white gesso and then I swept thick bands of other colours of acrylic paints across them.

I glued some plasterers joint tape in places (like Magic Mesh but much, much cheaper, especially when you’ve got builders/plasterers/electricians all over the house!) and then painted over the whole lot with some glitter paint meant for walls. I also squiggled some glitter glue on each panel.

Lady Aria

Lady Ana

Decorative Maya Road celtic shapes glued in the corners were firstly embossed with a few layers of powder and then I twisted some electricians wire (as described in ‘Bathroom Canvasses‘) and added beads here and there.

A hot-glue gun works really well for attaching this heavy guage wire and left some lovely cobwebs all over the place – as it always does! Horrible, stringy stuff but very effective.

Small glass mosaic tiles were glued here and there and then I thought about the embroideries themselves.

Lady Kati

I had been given some green velvet paper a while ago (thanks Gloria) and it added just a nice bit of contrast and texture to the ‘girls’, they were glued onto the canvasses and also held more firmly by some dragonfly and jewelled brads. The names, I guess, were given to the girls by the designers at Embroidery Library so I printed them out onto glossy photo paper in different font styles and then picked the uncial ones which looked most in keeping. I stared to colour them a little which made the ink smudge but I quite liked that – isn’t that what we always say when we make a ‘mistake’! I gilded the edges a little and glued them in place.

Four-square (almost)

To mount them on the wall I carefully made card templates so that I could hang them in a perfect square – they’re not too bad.

NB: After a little over 2 years, Embroidery Library have published photos of this project in their Stitchers Showcase. I presume they are sent hundreds of photos of projects made with their fabulous designs which explains the long delay. Still, I am thrilled that they’ve chosen to feature them at last.

Embroidered bag

Maybe this should be under embroidery rather than sewing? Oh well, it’s a bit of both I guess.

One of the mailing lists I subscribe to had a digitising competition a few years ago and this was my entry – didn’t win anything this time but had a lot of fun doing it.

Digitising, by the way, is the term used when converting an image – bitmap, jpeg. etc. into stitches. It’s a complicated process which takes a lot of learning and differs with each sewing machine’s software. I have a Husqvarna Designer1 and the software for that and, although I haven’t done any for quite a while, I find quite easy to use to make my own designs. Years of practise! I actually do quite a lot of my own digitising for clothing my husband and I wear on our motorbike. We have a Honda GoldWing and I’ve stitched many a motorbike onto polo shirts for us.

So, back to the bag. I saw a Lulu Guiness bag in a sunday supplement and it was gorgeous and really, really expensive but I thought I could perhaps use the idea. I sketched the outline, divided it like a fan and then added various stitches into each panel. It is stitched onto black velvet dress fabric which had raised gold motifs on it, and on one side it’s done in variegated pink thread, on the other it’s beige. I made a hanging loop to go around my wrist and lined it with a pretty fabric. I do use it quite a lot as it’s light and yet quite roomy.

Inside of bag

Beige side

Close up of lily

The embroidery on the back of this sweatshirt jacket was a free design from Singer some years ago. Very stitch intensive it needed lots of stabilising on the stretchy fabric. You are supposed to always stitch-out a test design before putting it onto the intended final garment but, at almost 33,000 stitches, that’s a lot of thread to use up plus, you end up with a sample lying around with no obvious use! So, I went for it and, luckily, it turned out beautifully. That’s the benefit of professionally digitised designs – they’re usually so well done that they’re ‘almost’ foolproof. As long as you use the correct stabiliser for the fabric etc. then it should be no problem.

I have had some lovely designs from Embroidery Library in the US too, there’ll be a post about my latest project with their stuff later.