hand stitched

Monday Night Football and embroidery? Sure, why not! I went rummaging through the little storage ottoman in our living room and found this gem at the bottom. I had the felt flowers attached and embroidered a little bit of the chain stitch vines, but not much else. It was looking sort of empty, so I got my creative juices flowing and added some more while the game was on.

I'm pretty sure I started this before this blog even started... 2011? 2010? At any rate, a long time ago. The background is just three scraps of fabric I sewed together and the flowers I cut out and embellished freehand. The embroidered curlicues are a fun whimsical finish, and I even managed to stitch a couple of flower buds in them. I just need to trim and fix the fabric in the hoop and then decide if I want a ruffle around it or not. Maybe? Not sure yet, but super happy with the stitching! A fun relaxing evening.

Petals, leaves, and vines

I said I'd take this slow in March, and I sure kept that resolution. I've got a little shopping bag under my desk with a few handwork projects in it. It got lost in the shuffle the past few months, moving from place to place and never getting emptier. Since I've been home and 'relaxing' post-PhD, I took this wall hanging out a couple weeks ago to have at it again, and I've been slowly adding to it and finishing up.

The flowers were all cut out, they just needed to be sewn on. I fiddled with it a bit to see if I wanted to add more felt pieces but I decided I like just the three big dimensional flowers. Instead I'm adding in a lot of embroidery on the background. I've got lots of colors to play with!

Because I {felt} like it

I'm playing with felt again. This project will be a combination of a few different things that have been kicking around in my head: 1) felt flowers 2) embroidery and 3) fabric in a hoop.

When I first started crafting in earnest last year, I started out with small hand-work projects. I made a few needlebooks for myself and as gifts by playing around with felt flowers and a bit of embroidery. I really liked how they turned out, and have always intended on making more, perhaps to sell, but haven't really sat down to do so. Since then, things have snowballed into quilts and other machine-sewn projects (as well as knitting... always knitting) and I haven't revisited my felt stash. How time flies!

I'm making myself a wall hanging to put over the towel bar in my bathroom. Hopefully this will end up being a collection of hangings, but I'm at least starting somewhere. I picked a few scraps that match the general aesthetic, and am now auditioning flowers and color options for leaves. The leaves are the hardest, it turns out. I don't have many options for green and I don't really want to use "bright" green, so that double leaf is going to have to go. I like the combination of the oranges with the denim. I'm going to try to work in a few more colors through the embroidery, which I haven't thought up yet. I'll likely just stitch on the fly and see what turns out. It worked that way with the needlebooks. 

I'm going to take this relatively slow and steady, stopping every so often to contemplate what to add and what to leave out. I'm not yet sure how dense I want to make the felt component. Likely not much more than I have here, but I'm sleeping on it. 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Riding in style

Haha its better than I thought it would be! 

Here is my pile of riding equipment. Helmet, gloves, half chaps, and - wait, where are my boots? Ah. They're hanging out in that nifty bag over there. I got this urge to make a lined drawstring bag to keep my boots separated from the rest of my equipment because boy they get dirty! Shavings and arena dust on (or in!) my helmet is not my idea of a good time. And when I stopped putting them in the duffel bag, I was getting said shavings and dust all over my trunk. Even less good. The car gets dirty enough on the outside without bringing it inside, too.

I used Jeni Baker's lined drawstring bag tutorial as a guideline for steps and sort of winged it as far as the dimensions go. I lined the bag with cuts from an outdoor tablecloth I picked up. I liked the paisley design, the colors, and the price! Reasonable for such a big piece of 'fabric'. A good chunk of the rest of this tablecloth is waiting to be transformed into a garment bag. The best part? It's coated. This way the dirt, dust, mud, shavings, what-have-you will be easy to clean out of the bag periodically.

Here is a picture from this weekend of the front panel embroidery in-progress. I had this vision in my head of a horse contentedly grazing underneath a tree, but wasn't sure if I would be able to accomplish it in felt. I tried anyway, and am pretty pleased with the results. I might go back and do some more detail on the horse, but I originally had a silhouette in mind. (Turns out I have no black felt, so he's a gray.) I don't want it to have too much in the way of long satin stitches or anything, like for a mane or tail, because it's going to get thrown around the car, tack room, and just generally abused so it would end up pulled and looking like heck anyway. It will probably just stay this way.

I am definitely tickled at how the tree turned out, though. I just cut out the leaves improvisationally and put them all down where I wanted on my sketched out tree trunk. Then I took a picture and referred to that as I went back and sewed down the layers in the proper order with running stitches. 

This was one of those projects I had in my head before thinking about whether or not it would be achievable, but it turned out really nice. I'm pleased. It is something that I will likely be using just about every day, and I am doubly happy that I will be able to take a little piece of creative whimsy with me to my "other" hobby.

Linking up to Free Motion by the River for a new (to me) link party and Finish It Up Friday. If you're reading this from there, thanks for clicking through!

The Running Stitch and I

The running stitch and I are not friends. Indeed, we are old acquaintances, but we will never be close. I have this impression in my head of what size, spacing, and evenness I should be able to achieve with the running stitch, but it never works out. Sorry running stitch, we just weren't meant to be.

I think my issue is precisely because I have a predetermined vision of stitches in my head that are too small and closely spaced for the mechanics of stitch to actually work when I am sewing through two layers of felt and 4 layers of fabric. Or a quilt. Or pretty much anything except a single layer (and how often does that happen???).

This angst has been brought on by the fact that I finished up my scissor cozy. I'm actually really happy with it! I even taught myself a new embroidery stitch for the stem (the threaded herringbone for the curious). I love the way it turned out with sloping curves rather than sharp points, and the extra dimension it adds to the pattern I drew up is great.

The button is a find out of my random bags o' buttons from Britex; it matched the lining fabric nicely and is simple enough it doesn't detract from the design on the front. I also purposefully kept the string closure simple. I might change my mind and add on a new one with some more personality later, but for now I like that it isn't really noticeable. 

The scissors fit in it nicely with an extra pocket to keep them from slipping out while in my project bags. There certainly are places to poke needles into should the need arise, so I guess one could still call this a needlebook as the pattern was intended. I thought about putting an extra pocket on the left side but nixed that idea in favor of a larger area of the pretty lining to view. I wasn't really sure what I'd use it for, anyway. I think my knitting stitch markers are going to live in the left pocket, though! Now I can stop misplacing them. 

Back to my running stitch issues. The stitches around the border and up the spine are, obviously, running. But I didn't sew them in the usual rocking motion/loading multiple stitches on the needle way. Instead, being the overly meticulous person I am, I stitched each one individually to keep them even. That's kind of cheating. And slow. And this is what usually happens when I use this stitch. That or I give up and use the sewing machine instead. I really do have high hopes that by the end of this class I will feel more reconciled with doing this stitch the right way, but I was pulling out way too many stitches for this to be relaxing this time. Maybe with a project that has thinner layers.... 

Cozy Scissors in progress

This project-in-progress is from Week One/Two of class, reverse applique, and is my second project I chose for this technique in addition to the dogwood blossom panel. It's meant to be a small needlebook/scissor holder, but I decided to change up the measurements a little and make it a place to keep my larger scissors I use to cut yarn while I'm knitting and crocheting. I got some pretty green-blue felt from Rachel in the student kit for the class; I wish I remembered what the color name was because I'm quite liking it. We were able to choose our color, and at the time this was my second choice but I'm glad I ended up with this one!

I am really making every effort to make most (if not all) of the projects for this class pulling from fabrics I already have. So faced with this choice and such an unusual color to match, I was pleased as punch to see that I had a print that coordinated perfectly with not only the felt but also with the pearl cotton threads I already have on hand. It is also nice because the print is small enough that some of the detail shows through the design on the front. I have many more fabrics around that have large scale prints compared to little details like this one. Serendipity! I obviously was meant to make this.

I sketched out a few design ideas before settling on this one. I was inspired by a few motifs from traditional Dutch embroidery designs I had 'saved for later' on Pinterest. Aha! Finally the usefulness of all those inspiring images is coming to fruition. While drawing on the felt, I had a couple challenges with spacing out the shapes properly, so those attempts will be hidden behind the fabric lining. Perfect.

I'm very much needing to force myself to put this down and do other things so I can enjoy (i.e. get used to) the slower pace of hand stitching. I tend to do things in large blocks of time so I can finish, or else I don't tend to come back to small projects and complete them. So this is a new challenge I've put to myself - put it down and save some for later!

Linking up to Freshly Pieced for my first Work in Progress Wednesday in a while!

pin(wheel)s and needles

I made another needlebook! This is where spending hours surfing the internet helps. I was inspired by pinwheel wall art I saw and decided to miniaturize it. Also, I learned a new embroidery stitch: the wrapped stem stitch. I used this to create the pinwheel sticks and make them look like striped straws. Add in some buttons and a little more stitching and voila!

Naaldboek

Happy Easter! In celebration I thought I'd share my own little bouquet of spring flowers. 

I've been working on these little guys on and off for the past few weeks. I was so happy with how my first one turned out I decided to keep on going. I have several types of needles (embroidery, quilting, yarn), so why not? As I've mentioned previously, felt projects are one of my favorite things to do. Hand embroidery is newer to me. I worked lots of counted cross stitch projects since I was a kid, but have not ventured into this freehand type of stitching until now. 

Here are my happy little companions all lined up on the card table. (The one on the right was a work-in-progress at the time this photo was taken). I really like these because they are portable projects. For sewing the book pieces together I use the machine, but all of the fun detail that is worked first is done by hand with little pieces that 'travel' well. This means I can sit on the couch next to my husband (and under my cat) rather than spending solitary time in the other room. 

This one is Dutch-inspired (hence the post title, needlebook in Nederlands). I tried to stick with blue/aqua/red to keep it in line with the more traditional designs I saw while in Amsterdam, but I couldn't resist that pop of magenta for fun. It will likely hold my quilting betweens. 

This little pretty was inspired by the colors in the fabric collection Summerlove. I had a lot of fun working on this one, though I must have gone through 3 or 4 layouts and color combinations until I was happy. It has been sent to another home! 

I'm sure more of these will be popping up here in the future. They're like little pieces of sewing candy. 

Needle

Title inspired by Game of Thrones. :o)

When I got home on Saturday evening after being out in the rain all day watching a riding clinic I wasn't really in the mood for doing much besides getting warm. But, knowing I'd feel better if I did at least a little bit of sewing, I picked up my scissors and felt and made myself a needle book.

In going through my sewing basket(s) recently, I realized that I have a lot of needles. Well, there are a few in a lot of places, at least. I'd like to get organized a bit more since I'm apparently sewing with gusto, so I think a few needle books are a good way to do so; I can use one for hand quilting, one for yarn projects, and one for general hand sewing. Really I could just put them all in one place, but it's more fun this way - I get to make more books.

I love felt projects. I like making felt flowers especially, so after looking online for an idea of a simple pattern I found some great inspiration for what to do for embellishments on my first book. I'm a believer in imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, so the flowers are very closely related to a pattern I came across in my browsing.

The color combination is what really makes it look great, I think. I'm also happy about it because the felt I used for the large pieces of the book was all material I bought in Amsterdam when we lived there last spring. It will be a great reminder of how fun it was to live in The Netherlands. (Though I found it hard to find good craft stores nearby...)

This was fun! I think I'm going to be making a bunch more...