Ali stops procastinating and finishes an embroidery she's been working on forEVER

I am not, by my definition, an artist. I'm not saying I am not creative, but I have no talent for drawing, painting, sketching, carving. 

Julie Filipenko's "Veggie Friends"

However there are lots of artists out there who have art that I see and feel FEELS about.  I think a lot about the ethics of taking another person's art and turning it into an embroidery.  I feel OK with it because I make it to hang on my wall, but I know it's not an untouchy subject.

I've bought art from some of them. Some I'll never buy from because they are outside my price range, some don't sell their art even if I want it, or it's old or I find it uncredited and can't find the source.  Some I know I like today but won't like next year, and some... well I don't actually love the it in the media it was in originally, and have a twist I want to put on it.  
I've embroidered things from most medias - my success at translating isn't always amazing but enough of them turn out that I enjoy it.

 I always try to give credit and link to where the art can be bought if I can find it.

Julie Filipenko is from Israel, and has a charming slightly dark sense of style and a TON of talent and art to see on the internet.  I'm actually working on another of her sketches to, that involves a nifty bunny magician.  She used to sell on Etsy but the links to her store go to a dead link now - She sells some on Arsty, and it is very true I will not be affording it.

I made the kitty more happy-go-lucky, and the rabbit pissy as hell. I have this odd feeling I should've sewn actual feathers on the cat's head and I wish I'd been dinking around with watercolors or pastels when I started this, but I'm pleased anyway. I'm going to continue to be mystified at the art being titled "Veggie Friends" though, even if there's some random roots rolling around the original....

glittery eyeball doesn't show up so well on the Iphone!

Embroidery of the Month

I've been working on SO many embroideries, and finally finished a few of them recently.  I am not sharing all of them cause there seem to be a lot of topless ladies in them and/or they are neat but not impressive in my opinion, but I wanted to share this one.

This is from an art piece by Magicomora at deviant art.  He's a Spanish artist who has a lot of cool stuff, if you like that sort of thing, which I sure as hell do. It's titled "Innocent Bomb".  I plan on doing a second one with pencils and oil pastels for a lot of the coloring to save some hours.  A young lady of my acquaintance requested one without a bomb in it.  I think that's just asking for Bambi, but I'm not going to argue semantics!

Foxes, Mermaids & an Embroidery Wall

I finally finished a vintage mermaid tattoo type embroidery this week that I've been working on for awhile. I had a lot of fun shading this one with colored pencils, and am thinking it's time to upgrade from a 12 pack to something with more variety (fancy!).

It's been added to my embroidery wall, as we are in a rental and I don't want to fix the repairs dozens of little nails would leave, I've taken a slab of insulation that was too small to really be used as a quilting design wall, and made it into an embroidery wall. 

I'm liking this for a few reasons, I can move it around, and even the large hoops are held up by one, yes one, pin.  I will probably be getting around to covering it in fabric - perhaps a vintage sheet soon, so it is prettier.

On a fox note, there is a seven year old of my acquaintance that has suggested she has an interest in trying her hand at some embroidery.  I thought I'd start simple, and use the F Fox pattern from penguin and fish that I got as part of the Handstitched class I did last year.  I am grateful to have bought a Crayola light up box to trace embroideries with, it's such a time saver!

I also whipped up a couple of felt pincushions for her to choose from, and suppose I should pick a sampling of floss in both realistic and fantastical colors for her to pick from, as I probably shouldn't expect her to be traditional about this stuff, now that I think about it.

Embroidery & Marcelle Medallion Progress

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"Suck It" is a 7" hoop.  It tends to be something I say instead of "Screw Off" when I'm in a good mood.  Really, I usually mean it very lovingly!
It isn't particularly noticeable here but I used a darker orange at the centers of the petals and a lighter one for the outside edge and tips.  I used this nifty cursive font generator to plot my lettering


I also did one of the girls from a Natalie Krim picture, I didn't get the smile down, there's a lot of practice I need to do on learning fine detail.  She's got some really cool quirky stuff, and I wanted something fun to look at.





I'm just slowly making progress on my Marcelle Medallion plusses.  Finally put up a quilt wall this week on a 10 foot tall wall since pinning a bit of batting to the wall wasn't very satisfying. This one is out of range of my cat's claws, but kinda out of mine in a lot of ways at 5'2"...

My cats remain highly amused that I'd been laying out my fabric on the floor in the interim, and I'm tired of their smug looks every time I walk in the sewing room to see the mess they've made.

Embroidery - Kaylee from Firefly

 
I love Firefly. And I really love Kaylee, she's my favorite character on the show.  If you haven't seen the show Firefly and the movie Serenity, there is probably something wrong with you.

Or maybe you just don't like Sci Fi and Fantasy, but you're really missing out (and something just might be wrong with you...)

I found this awesome art by Karen Hallion while browsing around..

She's a fantastic artist,  my husband and I like a lot of her art and we rarely agree on art.  I love her takes on Dr. Who.  She's at a lot of conventions and happens to be one of the artists I see pinned on pinterest most often, which says a lot about my life I guess... This one though - I almost just got the t-shirt, but I thought this one should be embroidered.  Cause if I didn't mention it, I love Kaylee.  Karen's combination of Kaylee and the Morton Salt Girl is just adorable.

I am pleased with how it turned out, with some colored pencil here and there... although I didn't realize until now I didn't replicate the tear in her parasol - fail, but ha!  6" hoop.

Karen Hallion on etsy

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

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.

Lucrative Embroidery Weekend and Sew Mama Sew! Winner

To get the important news out of the way so I can go back to talking about making stuff again, the winner of my Sew Mama Sew! Tsuru giveaway was  comment #249/266, Shirley of Simplesew. Yay!
I was also lucky enough to win some pretty Anthropology and Kate Spain fabric from Karin at Lovin' Life At The End Of The Dirt Road.

This is where the vacation magic happens!

I just spent five nights on the Oregon coast, which I'll speak more about later.  I managed to get a couple embroideries finished, a couple started (when will I learn?) and a bit of progress on the one that is causing me a lot of trouble.

Above is Jack Skellington from "The Nightmare Before Christmas".  My husband is fond of Jack, so I may as well indulge him.   I'll probably add it to the flickr group when the Tim Burton stitch along hosted at Follow the White Bunny happens as well as doing another one (an Edward Gorey stitch along is winding up).

I also managed to finish what I think is the first embroidery I started.  Think it was going on nine months or so now - a vintage birdie tattoo inspired one. 

I'm a bit grumpy because whatever I used to trace the design on the fabric isn't coming off, I think it was a Pilot Frixion pen, so lesson learned about letting things sit around for months before using the iron to erase the marks!  I've also learned a lot about embroidery since then that could've made this better, but I'm just glad to have it done.  Don't ask about those weird color choices for the wings...




I finished stitching around the center squares for all the stars for the Wonky Star quilt, there's about 6 places where some reinforcement mending needs to happen, and it will finally be off  to the rightful owner!

Doctor Who? Embroidery

Excessively geeky post here.

I was lucky enough to be invited to be the guest of a guest at a wedding last weekend, and although they requested no gifts, I really thought "whats better than giving an overly personal handmade gift to somebody I met once briefly two years ago that asked for no gifts?" Thats not too weird!

It probably isn't too weird actually, as the wedding was Doctor Who themed, with a Tardis and all! (And there were men in kilts, which is totally unrelated but still welcome)  I love Doctor Who as a whole, though the episodes can be hit or miss.  My husband got me to start watching it as part of his sinister plan to make me geekier and geekier with each passing year.




I'd repinned an image awhile back from deep in the bowels of tardisadventures.

I'd thought it might make a good embroidery - one of the weaknesses with the bit of embroidery I've done is doing too MUCH & I thought this would be a good challenge to try to decrease the detail since I couldn't manage to copy it exactly.

This was a good chance to try a variety of stitching techniques, thank the stars (pun!!!!) I've the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Embroidery Stitches as a resource.  I used DMC floss & metallic floss.  I may have gone a bit overboard, some of the embroidery there is the first initials of the bride and groom in uh... the Gallifreyan alphabet as well as the word Love.  I figure any Who fan should get a kick out of that.

This was quite the undertaking, but I was happy that although I love how it turned out, flaws and all, I'm not regretting it being meant to find a home elsewhere.  (that's an 8" hoop, by the way) I suppose next time I better make something for the spouse - he's still waiting for his Dalek/Llama embroidery....

I was still finishing up a drawstring carrying bag for it last minute so I had something to put it in.  I also forgot to take a picture, but I used Madrona Road's Memoir print to cover the back,  it has all sorts of whimsical sayings that I thought were very appropriate for the situation. 

french knots, blanket pinwheel, stem stitches, satin stitches...

The wedding was great fun and their vows were everything you'd WANT vows to be.  It's good to know that I am still perfectly incapable of not crying in public during happy things!

They didn't have a gift table (that whole please dont bring gifts cause we don't want to have to cart shit home after thing I'm guessing ;) so this hasn't been passed along to them quite yet, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed it arrives in one piece and makes the bride and groom giggle a little bit.

Sublime Stitching "Review" and Embroidery

A couple of months ago I won a pack of Sublime Stitching's new line of embroidery floss in the color scheme "flowerbox"  from Feeling Stitchy.  I didn't go and actually open or USE it, I spent two months just gazing at the colors, cause they're so pretty. Winning something from a company is a great reason to buy something from them, so it was a perfect chance to get a gift for my sister (and some stuff for me, I admit it!).

cool but unusable wicket stepscissors

I got two sets of floss in the "parlour" color scheme as it's my favorite, a pattern for each of us, and a pair of their wicked step scissors for my sister.  For my pattern I chose the ones by Tara McPherson, she's done art for a lot of bands I like enough to have made the effort to see in concert so that was an easy choice, while my sister gots the zombieish/monsterish/skaterish set by Michael Sieben.

I tried out the super cool looking "Wicked Step Scissors" to see if I should get some for myself too.  The way the blade is curved pushed both floss and pearl thread right out when I tried to cut it,, and if it managed to grab it at all it just gnawed it a bit.  Even holding the thread taut didn't result in a clean cut.  My husband tested them too in case it was a left vs right handed issue with the same results.  As scissors should make your life easier not harder, this obviously wasn't going to work.


I wrote about returning them & I got a fast response and great customer service from Stephanie and managed to get a pair of their less cool but still neat looking "black scissors " instead, which worked beautifully, so I'll be getting another pair for myself, none of my smaller pair of scissors has worked so nicely.

My favorite embroidery on the sheet was this one -  a lot of people have done it already so there was lots of inspiration.

I got some almost white DMC floss for part of the hair, but all the rest were colors from the parlor floss set. I love the floss, it didn't tangle at all, and the colors are very crisp and bright. (As in that balloon is more purple than I was able to capture in a photo.)  This was a fun piece to make, and I'm looking forward to trying out more of their patterns.

Finished embroideries, yay!

I have a confession to make.  I can't wait until Christmas is over.  The tree is taking up precious sewing space!  I guess that's what happens when you turn the living room into a sewing room.  I've also already made Christmas dinner earlier this week so I don't spend Christmas day in the kitchen and can opt for something simpler to make.  This means today was a day of delicious grilled turkey and smoked gouda sandwiches. 

I finished two embroideries I was making for gifts, First was Heart o' Flowers.  After I put a backing on it I realized I hadn't finished the outer part of the leaves all the way, and so ripped out the stitches rather than dissemble it. I wanted to embroider EVERYthing in it, but apparently there's a fine art to not actually covering things 100% with floss, and I am trying to figure out how to accomplish that.




Also I made an impromptu toasty one when a friend who I haven't seen in months popped back into my life - they are very fond of toast and I thought something fun was in order.  The pattern is from a digital stamp by someoddgirl.

I decided to try some shading with oil pastels after seeing the idea at Wild Olive.  I didn't tint it until afterward the fact since I wasn't sure about it, and it turned out OK but next time I'll tint ahead of time.  It has some imperfections but I was still kind of sad to give it away!  I also tried combining fabric and embroidery.using a bit of Anna Maria Horner flannel stitched on for a countertop - too stretchy for it I think, so next time it will be regular old cotton.




 

I'm working on a bunch of new projects again, my sister rummaged through my stash for some fabrics for a chevron pillow top I'll be sewing together for her (she seemed drawn to Art Gallery fabrics, I love so many of their prints that I was happy to see she felt the same).  It was fun to watch somebody else work through their placement process.

Hopefully this next holiday week I will finish a pillow cover of my own I've been working on, and the all solids quilt top I started spontaneously last night.  I'm using some bright Kaffe Fassett shot cottons and Kona in Coal, and it's looking good so far.  I must say, I am really happy I decided to get interested in quilting earlier this year!

Spiced Peach "Jam"

My mom canned quite a bit during a couple of summers when I was young.  We had a pear tree and there were rows and rows of white red and green tinted quart jars full of vanilla, mint and cinnamon pears along the shelves.  Sensible or not to be eating home canned goods so far down the road - as the the seals held we had the last jars almost 15 years after they were canned, and they were as good as ever.

I've been meaning to try my hand at canning since I was a teenager (which is currently like a really really long time ago).  I keep hoping to grow enough produce of my own to can, but our yard is very shady and the weather's been bad the last couple of years - even with new raised beds not much wants to grow - not even zucchini!   Since I could be waiting forever for a "need" to can, I decided to get around to it the way I do most things - which is to get the "props" first.  A canning book for Christmas, then jars a few weeks ago. (side note, that list should've included jar lifting tongs, I don't recommend canning without them unless you like splashing yourself with boiling water!!)

Add caption

Last week we were at Trader Joe's and my husband pointed to a 3 lb box of peaches and suggested I get them so I could actually, you know, make some jam.  It wasn't until the next day that I remembered I don't like peach jam - well I've never had it, so I assumed I don't like it.   I love canned peaches but I dislike fresh ones, I'm a devoted nectarine girl.

Since I found myself in possession of a box of peaches anyway, I went ahead and did it.  I made the Sure Jell recipe (mostly).  It called for 5.5 cups of sugar to 4 cups of fruit (!!!) but I added another 1.5 cups of chopped peaches.  1 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cloves, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, an extra tablespoon of lemon juice, and a bit of rum extract.

Ziki wasted no time claiming the empty box

Apparently in lots of fruit jam, especially peach, the fruit floats up to the top, and it can take up to a week to set.  I'd been flipping it over now and again to help disperse it.  However I can quit that since my jam did NOT set up.  From reading around it looks like you should cook the fruit for awhile to let it's natural pectins release before adding additional pectin, but since the directions just said bring to a boil then add pectin, that's what I did.  Nevertheless I've ended up with 4 pint jars of a nice thick spiced peach sauce which will be great on ice cream and French toast.

I'm almost caught up with the Handstitched Class quilt (well...to the last lessons stuff at least!) but I needed a break from intensive stitching so I thought I'd do a nice quick fun embroidery project so I could regroup.

 Mollie from Wild Olive was nice enough to make a download of cute stuff available on the day of her blog's 8 year anniversary which I managed to grab (and her stuff is just so cute!!) so I cobbled together two of the images to make some commemorative jam art.   Maybe I should make a second one that says syrup. ;(

Handstitched Class - Progress on the Modern Medallion

Ahhh, it's exciting yet terrifying when you deviate from a pattern.  You might end up with an amazing unique end product, or you might end up spending an hour tearing out stitches.  I'm not quite sure where I am with this one - my plan was to incorporate some additional embroidery designs into it, that led to the "Moroccanish" feeling I'm aiming for with this quilt. Thinking though that it would've been accomplished anyway the way it was designed.



The pearl cotton to the left I got from purlsoho.com (except the bottom left green which came with my student kit).  Although it didn't strike me so at the time, the dark orange and lighter yellow seem nearly glow in the dark, especially when I'm working on the quilt at night.  It's a wee bit scary!

extra detail

The black floss I'm using for for some of the embroidery really stands out too darkly - maroon or brown might work better.  I may redo it if I find it's bothering me, but I'll wait and see how it looks with the other elements down the road.

I got the Indian Spice Hand Embroidery Pattern from September House.  I am hoping I might have the chance to use more of it in different areas of the quilt, but I'll have to wait to see what Rachel has for us next week.



My strip for embroidery ended up about 3/8" short, so I partitioned  it differently than the plan. I think with the rectangular bits in the middle it becomes more distracting.  I might retry one of them diagonally instead.

I'd expected to zip along this embroidery since the first week of projects was relatively quick, but now I know better.  I haven't managed to get started on any other projects in the class yet. I'm not even half done with this part yet!

Pilot FriXion

I want to say that I'm in love with my Pilot FriXion Ballpoint pen.   I drew on one of my jewels off center, and a touch of the iron and I had a blank slate to redraw it.   It doesn't rub off, it's a nice fine line, and I can easily change my mind about where I place something.  One thing people have found is  that if you put fabric in the freezer the pen mark comes back - maybe a concern if you live in Alaska or are a perfectionist.  I'm not sure I'd want to live without it now that I have one.



Happy Independence Day to all!  I'm dragging out the ice cream maker and lighting the BBQ!

Bunny break

I am in the middle of a couple of time intensive embroidery pieces, but the dreary weather here has made me a bit gloomy and I needed to finish something to cheer myself up.  I spent a couple of hours working on one piece last night, but since both of them have hours more of work, I decided to start something new and simple that could be done quickly.

My bunny drawing skills need some work, but this only took about an hour to make.  I am content that it's springy/summery enough to make me smile.  I have a bad feeling if I'm not careful I'll be taking all the art down from the hallway and filling it up with dozens of hoops of embroidery instead. 

On another note, I never understood why Ryan Gosling was all sexy to women.  I hadn't heard of the "Hey girl" meme surrounding him until I saw somebody post a picture from one of the... subcategories, Handmade Ryan Gosling.  I have to admit Ryan seems a lot more attractive to me since I found that site.

from @SewHappyGeek

Embroidery - Party Cat!

It's Party Time

Besides doing a bit of needlework in Vacation Bible School when I was eight or so, I don't have any experience with embroidery or its ilk.  I remember we learned french knots.  I remember I made a super cool M&M's mobile out of felt, but that's about it.

I was seeing some lovely embroidery over at Aneela Hoey's website and started looking into it more the last couple of weeks.  Since I've also been seeing lots of sewing/quilting/craft books I wanted to get, but money is a finite resource, I figured I'd check out some of them out before deciding if I want to buy them or not.  So I finally sucked it up and got my first library card in 8 years.

My local library carries a pretty small selection of crafty books apparently, but I got the one embroidery book they had KYUUTO! Japanese Crafts Woolly Embroidery which wasn't particularly useful in the way that I find it unlikely I'll start using wool or making puffy little hedgehogs and flowers, but it had  a ton of different stitches in the back, and that along with web resources gave me plenty of information to work with.

I find some of the stitches challenging from a left handed perspective, but I was really excited that after spending about 20 minutes playing around with different ones, I felt ready to tackle an actual project.   I'm looking forward to doing something pretty at some point, but after thinking of line drawings I could go off of, I figured nothing could be more awesome than my favorite comic, Party Cat (!!!) Anybody with cats should appreciate the entire series. Anybody without cats should feel lucky after reading it.

So although I didn't get all the details exactly right, and I have no idea how I am going to frame or otherwise display this (though likely I'll attach it to a wood block), I had fun trying out a few different things, especially the woven wheel stitch for the eyes.  I am disappointed only in that  "It's Party Time"was perfectly legible when it was on the hoop, and it's a bit distorted now.  Then again perhaps I could've used something more appropriate than a leftover sheet to doodle on ;)