Carousel wins!

I've decided I'm going to do the carousel first. I want to do the radish in a smaller hoop, probably around 4". I have a 4" hoop, but I want to have that hoop available for the swap. Until I'm assigned a swap partner I won't know the design I'll use nor the hoop size.

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.

Pirate Santa

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.

Chrysanthemums

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.

A new obsesssion

My newest obsession is embroidery. It's so much fun! It's very zen, repetitive and so much less expensive than all my other hobbies. Floss is less than a dollar, and "nice" flosses like silk are usually $2-3. It's fabulous.

This was my first project. I really like it. All done in backstitch except for the eyes.