The purple flowers remind me of the wisteria we had at the house I grew up in. My dad built an arbor in front of the house and planted wisteria. Within a few years wisteria had completely taken over the arbor and the surrounding fence. I love the smell of wisteria in the summer. The flowers were simply beautiful.
I love how the detailing on the body of the carousel horse turned out. It took me a lot of hours to do, but I think it will really pay off when I stitch up this carousel. I just could not find any carousel embroidery patterns that I liked. This is a time when being an avid horse lover and rider works against me. I wanted something that was cute and fancy, but that also had the conformation of a real horse. Many of the carousel patterns I found were very distorted or over/under stylized. This one suits me perfectly.
The full size pattern is 6 1/2 inches wide by 7 1/4 inches tall. If anyone is interested, I can send you a smaller or larger size.
Feel free to take bits and pieces of the pattern, to mod it out or simplify it. I'd be ecstatic to see different interpretations of the pattern. I do ask that if you use this pattern that you:
1) Give me credit for the design and 2) Don't use it for commercial profit.
- Start a Hoopla Wall - a wall decorated solely by finished embroidery pieces in hoops - or frames if I figure out how to do it. I love the colors of the first photo, but the like the tight placing of the hoops in the second.
- Incorporate buttons into an embroidery project - I certainly have enough buttons! Look at the pretty purple! I would love to do something like this, except I'd probably make the design take up more of the hoop.
- Embroider a linen handkerchief. I'm not sure what it is about handkerchiefs as I've never had one before, but I'd really like to make one. A tasteful one of course.
- Do a stitch of the week - Choose a new stitch each week to highlight and experiment with. Do a sampler with all the stitches of the week?
Here's a preview of the design. The full design will be coming soon.
For the fabric, I'm going to try to use cut up the large white flat sheet I got at the thrift store. I bought it because the texture reminded me of flour sack towels. I didn't try the needle test on it, just eyeballed it. Hopefully it will work out. If not, I'm down all of a $1.50. I'm really glad I found that specific thrift store. Their stuff is actually thrift store priced, unlike Goodwill who often charges more for a used item than you can buy it for new. So far I've found a fabulous black polka dot peacoat, the flat white sheet, and I went there on Thursday and found some more great stuff. I'll post that tomorrow, when I can take photos in the sunlight.
So, carousels. I've done quite a bit of Google image searching in the past few days. When searching for a new project, my design background really comes in handy. I find a lot of images, but none of them are the 'perfect' carousel horse. At the least they need a color change. However, most times I want to take bits and pieces from all of them to create my version of a carousel horse.
So far, I like the head on this one the most. I love the bridle, but the reins ending at the crest of the neck really annoy me. If I brought them down to the base of the neck while maintaining that style I think that would be pretty.
I love the saddles, saddle pads and extra stuff on these two. What on earth do they call all that decoration? Even as a rider I don't know. It's pretty, but it's also fake. It looks stenciled on. Clean lines with no dimension. I think I like that. In the photo above it looks like a real horse. That's fabulous, and I think eventually I'll make one like that, but right now I want something stylized. I'm not sure if I want it as clean as it is. I don't know if I want a little more realism.
So now I just need to combine bits and pieces of these, convert them to line drawings, and then make a transfer pattern out of it. Or I might just get lazy and just use one of these drawings instead of combining them.
I spent several hours today making a needle book! I found a really basic pattern by Martha Stewart, and I picked up felt yesterday to make one. I spruced the pattern up quite a bit by using a great button, embroidering the front, and using two colors for the cover and interior pages.
I used royal blue felt for the cover and a great lighter blue for the strap and the inside pages. It made six pages total. I really like the contrast between the lighter blue and the royal blue. When I started it I debated using the contrasting color for the strap and I'm glad I did. The cover is embroidered with lazy daisies. At first I was going to do the whole cover, but I really liked how the triangle looked instead. Plus, I think a whole cover of lazy daisies would be too much.
The binding is lime green floss, all six strands. I used a large tapestry needle to do the binding. While it was blunt, it was the only thing that could go through 8 layers of fleece easily.
Here's a closeup of the button. These were a major influence on the color scheme I decided on.
I purchased a few embroidery supplies today. Two cheap 8" hoops (1 from Michaels, 1 Mill End) for my soon to be hoopla wall, and a small red 2.5" plastic hoop because I couldn't resist its cuteness. I also found a couple pieces of felt and some adorable buttons so I can make a needle case.
Evidently, Delia thinks that embroidery hoops are delicious.
See hoop.
Want.
Attack!
Yummy. This tastes good!
She attacked one the second she saw it. It's the strangest thing; I've been embroidering for several weeks now yet she ignores the hoop I'm working on. I don't know if she just likes the "cheap" hoops I purchased today, or if she has decided that embroidery hoops should become a part of her daily diet.
I thought about it for several days. Money is very tight, and I'm still trying to find a job. When I do find a job I'll be working a lot of hours, leaving less time for crafting. Add in the holidays and needing to make Christmas presents and I wasn't sure I could commit to a swap. However, it's a mini-hoop swap. The hoop has to be between 2"-4". A regular sized hoop would be too much, but a small one I can definitely do!
Photo by http://www.etsy.com/shop/beckarahn - Check out her stuff, it's adorable!Here's what I've been working on this week.
I got this pattern from UrbanThreads, which is incredibly awesome. They have some great patterns. I had a heck of a time trying to transfer this pattern onto the navy. I use my black sulky transfer pen to transfer my embroidery designs, but the navy is too dark for the black pen. So I tried my white sulky pen for the first time. Yuck. I spent over 10 minutes just trying to get the ink to start. Once I did, I traced the design and then ironed it to the fabric. It did not transfer well at all. I spent more than double the time ironing the design than I do with the black, and it still didn't work. The lines were jagged and so interrupted that it was unsuitable for embroidery. I tried going over the lines in chalk, then I tried a blue wash out pen. Still no luck.
In the end I used my trusty black transfer pen. The lines were clean, but the navy is so dark that it was a lot harder to see the lines. I need to find a white transfer pen that works. Until I do, I'll be sticking to lighter fabrics.As soon as I finished my owl, I wanted to start another project. I decided to start a pillow with chrysanthemums running up the edge. I did stem stitch for the leaves and satin stitch for the petals. This was my first time doing satin stitch.
At first my satin stitch was a little wonky.
But it got better as I kept working.
