Tarantula Time Embroidery

Ok, I made this for an awesome guy I know who has tarantulas, and likes them enough that he just got a giant tattoo of one last week.

I cannot do photo realistic embroidery, not that this was an easy first attempt at one... hopefully someday I might get the hang of it, I'd love to learn to, and have been searching for tutorials or help sources.  Nevertheless I kinda like it and he did too - it's a 5" hoop, and that's an Orange Baboon Tarantula, not one of the nicer beginner tarantulas to own. It has teeny french knots for eyes, not that you can see them to tell (but that's how it should be ;)



After getting to know his 6 Tarantulas a bit (uh, OK, I look at them, they sit there or run and hide, sometimes they eat a cockroach... :|) I started getting these motherly urges.

All of his are still pretty young so small, aka not scary) I couldn't resist anymore and ended up getting a spiderling a month ago.  I opted for an Avicularia Versicolor, who is a little blue thing about 3/4" that will grow into a 4"+ multi colored pretty creature.  That will be years though, so he (well, or she, TBD) still seems adorable.

My cats are all named after condiments/sauces (Wasabi, Tzatziki, Ponzu).  I'd really wanted an orange tabby to name Catsup but three is our limit, so I've named this cutey Catsup.  I DO have the tarantulas I want picked out already in case I go for a mayonnaise and a mustard of course... but I'll see how this goes first.

Catsup

Zakka Along - Happy Hexagon Trivet

Ok, my sewing room in the new place is all up and running, and I actually have time to sew for the Zakka Along 2.0!

I decided to go with a center and back of Summersville - Brush Strokes in Seafoam, and solids from my scrap bins.  I figure there's a chance the person I made a laundry hamper out of Summersville might end up needing a trivet any moment now, and if I can make his house look ridiculously matchy, I'm not sure why I wouldn't try it ;)

This was an easy project, and I think I'll make a second one for me in Kaffe Fassett shot cottons.  My machine managed to suck it up and sew through all the fabric and the batting and insulated layers.  This might be the tidiest binding I have put on a project to date too!



 

Summer Embroideries - Cartoon Version (vaguely NSFW)

If you add warm weather, a broken sewing machine and moving together into a food processor, apparently the end product is lots of time to embroider.  Again, not being artistic or having a creative bone in my body, I browsed around for some other people's talent to appropriate

Sebastien Millon - he has great/fun/mildly psychotic art, with lots of adorable bunnies, bears and kitties.  My husband is a Disney lover all the way, but I couldn't resist this one fun poking at Mickey. 3" hoop.

My husband also has a coworker who is getting married next month, who I haven't met, but they are having an Adventure Time themed wedding (to   think I'd never heard of it a couple months ago) and made the gender switched version of the main characters grabbed from a picture somebody posted of an invitation to another wedding somebody had on their fridge (aka source - kinda beats the hell out of me).

It's a fantastic cartoon, if you haven't seen it and have a sense of humor, you should really do so.

Originally I had a much more cluttery plan - The bride and groom also worked on Magic: The Gathering, and I had some elements of that in there too.  This is one place the Pilot Frixion pens really failed me.  I made the mistake of sketching all of it at the beginning, and couldn't get all the traces of shiny white off the fabric for the elements I didn't use, even though I hand washed it twice :(

Had issues stretching it really taut too, but all in all I'm not unpleased with how it turned out. 10" hoop.

Zakka scrappy box - first after move project!

After all the moving labor of the last two weeks I realized that I haven't sewn at all, not even made time for embroidery.

I'd planned on doing the Zakka Along 2.0 - Patchwork, Please sew along, and really wanted to do the scrappy box - of course I'd put the book aside so I could sew along during the move but it managed to get itself packed anyway, dammit.  I finally found it, and got my patchwork sides  put together for this project and then found that I wasn't able to make any sense of the directions

First thing organized of course!

I tried reading them from the book & the guest blog post about it at Poppyprint, I read the tips at LR Stitched, and still wasn't making sense of it (admittedly I was in the middle of unpacking still) and since I have plans all weekend, I just winged it after it became clear that it wouldn't come together right.

What I was going to use as chipboard was still at my old house, and my firmest interfacing was still pretty floppy sadly, but here in all it's totally incorrect glory is my scrappy zakka box!  This sew along is the only thing I'll be working on in the near future - my feed dogs stopped working again & I'm using my backup.  Time to google the nearest local UPS to ship it off to be fixed so I can finish my king sized quilt!

Bright side is my sewing machine (the living room of the new place) is nearly set up, I just need more time to use it!