Poppy Treffry inspired washbag

I got this pattern from the Love Embroidery magazine, which is one of those craft bookazine type things, it’s meant to be machine freehand embroidery but I don’t have a darning foot for my machine and was a little daunted about getting the right one (I have a Janome machine and there seems to be two different darning feet, depending on what type of Janome you have and I wasn’t completely sure, but I think I’ve figured it out now, so I definitely want to try some machine freehand embroidery in the future). But for now this was hand embroidered. I made a mistake with the pattern and should have continued the bottle tops and the toothbrush head over the top of the applique and I made a mistake putting the bag together, hence the ribbon at the bottom hiding my mistake. But overall I’m pretty pleased with the bag. I’ve made plenty of drawstring bags in my time but none using this particular construction method and I think it’s pretty cool.

(You can also get the same pattern, apparently, in Poppy Treffry’s book Freehand Machine Embroidery)

Wind and Water purses

Embroidery patterns by SeptemberHouse.

Beanbag cushions

We used to have two very grotty floor cushions, we still have one actually but I’ve grabbed it off Boy Lacer’s bed and hidden it in my bedroom, he was quite attached to it but put it this way, ‘grotty’ was describing it nicely and it wasn’t the sort of cushion you could wash. So, with a spot of inspiration from some similar cushions in John Lewis, some spare fabric left over from making the kids’ curtains (which I still haven’t blogged about as I still haven’t hemmed them, even though they’re up) and some bean bag filler, I made these up. The embroidered labels are from the book S is for Stitch, which I’ve just reviewed over on Feeling Stitchy (head on over, there’s a competition!).

Guitar Girl

I wrote a little while ago that I had lost my embroidery mojo, it did come back (this is the third piece I’ve stitched since then) but it came back laden with conditions, the foremost one being that the embroidery I was doing had to, in some way or another, stretch my skills, the first piece (the florophone) was about using colours I have a tendency to feel uncomfortable with, the second piece (the coloured flowers) was about using applique in a different way and so is this piece. All three pieces have also been about me practicing my mounting skills and they’re still not that good, the floor’s crooked on this one and it’s completely and utterly screaming at me, trust me, it wasn’t crooked before I mounted it Also believe it or not but the guitar and the boots are meant to be colour tinted, the colour faded really quickly on this one. But ignore my whinging, this was a brilliant pattern to work with, by Lucky Jackson, whereas florophone and the coloured flowers weren’t quite my style, this one definitely is and I definitely plan to stitch some more of Lucky’s patterns, it’s inspiring me to have ago at stitching up some of my own Lucky Jackson style patterns to.

And PS, I so want that red dress

Coloured flowers

Another Urban Threads pattern. For those that don’t know Urban Threads (probably not that many crafters in that category), I would say that Urban Threads are primarily a machine embroidery company but they do offer most of their patterns for hand embroidery to. Obviously it can sometimes be a little difficult to directly translate a machine embroidery design to hand embroidery, so they just offer the hand embroidery designs as line drawings, whereas with the machine embroidery patterns you’ve obviously got colour and everything. With this pattern, the machine embroidery design had the flowers (which were stitched in black, like mine) with a sort of water colour style, painted, incomplete fill, I thought I’d try and replicate that, in my own way, with a spot of applique. I quite like how it turned out (although again it’s quite difficult to really tighten the fabric across the frame when I mount it, think I did a bit of a better job than last time though), however this is me being sort of experimental and although I’m glad I did it (being itching to try this design for sometime) it’s not actually really my personal taste ….

Easter Boxes

My kids eat too much chocolate at Easter and it never makes me particularly happy, after all I spend all year trying to make sure they don’t eat their body weight in the stuff and then twice a year (Christmas is also bad), I’m meant to give them free reign? Anyway, I know I can’t win on that one but this year I thought I’d tone down the amount of chocolate they were getting from us (grandparents are a law onto themselves). This decision came at a point anyway where I had to switch what sort of Easter eggs I was getting them, they’re too old for the little kiddy ones and I’m certainly not getting them full size ‘adult’ eggs, you know the sort of branded ones for Dairy Milk, Maltesers or whatever, as I definitely don’t like them eating what I term ‘grown up’ chocolate, as the portion sizes are too big (actually Maltesers aren’t that bad*, if they’re shared ….). So, anyway this year I got their chocolate from Marks and Spencer, it’s less obviously branded, has some nicely designed packaging and comes in a range of sizes, so I could buy smaller eggs. So I bought a small hen egg each, a tube of Jelly beans (after I succumbed to temptation in the queue in Smiths, WH Smith are getting increasingly annoying with their peddling of sweets and god knows what at the check out) and taking inspiration from Angry Chicken, I bought a few bags of various small chocolate eggs plus two little mini bunnies from M&S and made some ‘candy terrariums’.

Really I could have done with some bigger containers than the Kilner jars I used, as you can’t really see the rabbits in the middle but I liked how they kept the chocolate safe from the elements and I thought the kids would like a jar each of their own, as sometimes we have a family jar of sweets up on the shelf. I also thought it would encourage them to make the chocolate last longer. (I’m grabbing the jars back off them when they’ve finished with them).

To distinguish between jars I made a couple of embroidered tags, a vintage pattern for Boy Lacer and a free pattern from Lilipopo for Girl Lacer. They were embroidered on felt, I’m really pleased with how Boy Lacer’s turned out.

But no so much with Girl Lacer’s, I should have used white felt again but ran out.

The light’s also bad in these photos, I predict light is only going to be good some time in mid April (I hope).

Also in the boxes are a small present each; Girl Lacer was easy, a bubble writing book, she is obsessed with that at the moment, so should love it. Boy Lacer was harder, he’s always hard, as to be honest he’s not really happy with anything unless it’s electrical, but as he sometimes likes building thing in real life as well as on screen, I took a chance on some art straws, ah well if anything Girl Lacer will get her hands on them in 6 months time.

And finally I made them a softie each, well aware as I was working on them that a) I hadn’t made softies in a long time (the number of rookie mistakes I made with these!) and b) my kids really are getting too old, but it’s the thought that counts and I’m going to make the most of every last available opportunity to do things like that for them whilst there’s still a chance they might appreciate it. Unfortunately of my generation, in my immediate family, there aren’t many kids and certainly no babies anymore (actually there is one but I don’t really see the parents that much, if at all), so my small children crafting opportunities are non existant, will have to twiddle my thumbs for twenty odd years till I’m a grandma Anyway, the rabbit bodies were from an Aranzi Aranzo book but I changed the eyes and added the tummy detail.

(sneak peak of my new garden)

The rabbits were heavily inspired by my absolute Twitter favourite @MYSADCAT  , a cat with the most soulful, staring eyes.

*I read once, an interview with some master chocolatier and he said that of all the main stream branded chocolate, in his opinion Maltesers were the nicest, most ‘proper’ chocolate sweet, I could always see what he meant.

Florophone

I was moaning the other day to 5currantbuns that my embroidery mojo had gone missing since I’d moved back to the flat and hey presto shortly after the aforementioned moaning my mojo came back, hurray!

The pattern is from Urban Threads and it was pretty much a case of me daring myself to use some bright colours that are a bit outside my comfort zone but being safe in the knowledge or at least the hope, that the brown of the gramophone would help balance it out. I think it’s worked.

(Also my first attempt at mounting my embroidery on a canvas board now that a nice new art shop, that I am a wee bit addicted to, has opened in town. I think I could probably have mounted the fabric a little tighter, but it was a little tricky as I had been stitching through two layers of fabric, as the fabric I was using was thin.)