Handmade Cards

Posted on March 16, 2017 by craftycreeky

Doesn’t time fly when you’re happy! It’s our tenth wedding anniversary tomorrow, we’re celebrating with a weekend in the Lakes, staying near Ullswater. After all the disruption at home it will be wonderful to escape for a couple of days for a bit of walking.

I decided a few weeks ago to make a special card and when the Sweet Roses card by Faby Reilly popped up on facebook I ordered the pattern immediately. The sentiments are perfect for the occasion.

Faby Reilly Design

I stitched it fairly quickly and then this week I made it up into a card. Faby has excellent tutorials on her website about making up all the cross-stitch items she designs, cards included. I backed it with a square of felt but I felt it needed a bit more, probably because my card was a little on the big side and I haven’t got any fancy scissors to make my felt look pretty! I found some decorative papers and cut squares using my die cutter, it just lifts it a bit. I added the ribbon down the side and a little heart button. I’m really pleased with it, we’ll probably frame it afterwards.

Next weekend it’s Mothering Sunday, so I’ve stitched another of Faby’s designs,the Lavender card. I love lavender and I’m hoping to finish the co-ordinating lavender bag to go with the card. I’ve stitched the card, I’ve just got to mount it.

It’s a lovely design, I love how Faby uses lots of different stitches, there’s eyelet stitch, tied long cross-stitches and TINY cross-stitches for the lettering – it tested my eyes but it does give a lovely effect. I particularly liked the french knots on the lavender sprigs, it gives a sort of 3D effect. I’m tempted to give my mum a picture frame as well so she can frame it afterwards as there was a lot of work in this card!

I’ve just started stitching the lavender bag so I will hopefully get it finished for Sunday, if not she will get it for her birthday three days later!

 

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Tealed with a Kiss

Posted on March 14, 2017 by craftycreeky

It’s not as easy as it looks to design your own quilt block!!

I wanted to make one more block for Kate Chiconia’s Tealed with a Kiss quilt, it’s going to raise money for ovarian cancer charities, hence the teal colour as that is the colour that represents ovarian cancer, a bit like pink for breast cancer.

With my first block I’d struggled to find teal coloured fabrics in the local shops, so when I went to the Harrogate quilt show it was something I was keeping my eye out for. I ended up with five potential fabrics.

The 12.5″ block needed to have a X incorporated in the design and my initial idea was to do two large log cabin blocks, cut them in half diagonally and then rearrange to make a cross shape. I drew it out on paper, however I decided I preferred to have squares in the centre with log cabin borders going outwards. In the end I decided to make four squares using a sort of log cabin, stitch them with the cross in the middle and then trim. OK it meant wasting the other half of the triangle, but I can save them to use another time.

Trimming the squares

I measured diagonally across the squares, added another strip and then thought it was big enough. I stitched the squares together with the ivory X, unfortunately I didn’t allow extra fabric at the end of my strips for the corners, I was still in log cabin mode!!

When I came to trim it two of the corners were short!. I debated whether to put another border round the whole block, but in the end I decided to add a triangle to the corner of each block, it might be that after quilting the corners are trimmed off and disappear, if not at least they all match!

Both squares are going in the post tomorrow, flying off to Australia, hoping they look OK with all the others! It looks really blue in the photo below, but it is teal coloured, I promise! I’ll keep all my teal fabrics together so next year I can be a bit more organised.

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Stitch-a-long 8

Posted on March 12, 2017 by craftycreeky

It’s three weeks since I last posted photos of my flower lattice, this is what it looked like then;

Since then I’ve spent a morning at Embroiderers Guild and an evening at home working on it. It’s surprising how quickly it grows once I concentrate on it, I think there is an element of procrastinating when flowers look hard as it’s all pretty new to me and I don’t want to spoil it, I keep putting it off until it’s nearly time to post and then wonder what all the worry was about!

At Embroiderers guild I embroidered the basket. I’m really pleased with the main one, even though I’ve realised this evening that I’ve not done the stitch quite right, I prefer my version! It’s created with whipped spider web stitches. The thread is basically woven with something a bit like a half hitch knot along a framework of threads, so it only goes through the fabric at each end. I couldn’t work out how to do it in reverse to go back again, so I started at the same side each time. The stitch is meant to have knot lines down each thread whereas mine looks more like a basket.

The final bit of stitching is my favourite, the ladybird. Isn’t it cute! The body is stitched with padded satin stitch, which means there’s an outline of stem-stitch and a few french knots underneath it to help give it a bit of body, a 3D effect. I put three black french knots on top as our ladybirds often have seven dots altogether, three on each side and one on the top. I think there’s a few ladybirds in the design so I’ll enjoy stitching those.

The daffodils are stitched with ribbon with french knots for the centre. The pattern calls for a soft mink coloured ribbon, I didn’t have anything similar so I decided to go for proper daffodil yellow, it stands up well against my tiger lilies anyway.

 

I’ve finished three blocks now, the next one is called ‘Agapanthus, hollyhocks, delphiniums & beetle daisies’ It’s a really pretty block so I’m looking forward to stitching this one. Just to give you an idea of scale, the sides of the diamonds are about 3.5″.

There’s quite a few of us taking part in the stitch-a-long now. It’s organised by Avis, so if you fancy joining in just drop her a line. There’s some beautiful projects being stitched so please have a look what everyone else is creating. We’re all different time scales so if there’s nothing there do have a look later.

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Mothers Day Card

Posted on March 9, 2017 by craftycreeky

Lavender Card; Faby ReillyHere in the UK it’s Mothering Sunday on 26th March and three days later it’s my mothers birthday as well. I’m always in a bit of a quandary as what do you get someone in their 80’s, I thought I’d got it sussed when I suggested a day out at the quilt show in Harrogate, she loved the idea, but unfortunately she was poorly on the day and couldn’t come…so I was back to square one!

On facebook a couple of weeks ago a very pretty card designed by Faby Reilly popped up. I’ve stitched a couple of her designs now and I’ve patterns for a few more in my to-do pile. I clicked over to her site and decided the Lavender card would be perfect for my mum, even better, if I don’t quite get it finished for Mother’s Day, she can have it for her birthday instead!

 

Lavender Sachet; Faby ReillyI then noticed the co-ordinating lavender bag and sachet, so I ordered both patterns with the idea of giving her the lavender bag on Mothers Day and then the sachet on a padded coathanger for her birthday. I was even given a lovely bag of lavender in my goodie bag at the #sewdowndewsbury day, so I’m all organised!

I’m about half way through the card. It’s a lovely design with a nice variety of stitches, as well as cross-stitch there’s diamond eyelet stitch, tied oblong stitch, french knots and petite stitches. I did get slightly perplexed by the ‘petite stitches’, as I wasn’t sure if it was tiny cross-stitches or what I would call petitpoint, which is like a half cross-stitch. I know if I had messaged Faby she would have replied pretty quickly, but of course I was too impatient for that so I studied the photo on the website closely and decided it was mini cross-stitches…and when I say mini, I mean MINI! The linen I’m using is 32 count, so I get 16 standard cross-stitches to an inch, the mini ones are over a single thread, so that’s 32 to the inch! You do have to be careful too when it’s just over one thread not to pull the thread firmly as it is very easy for the thread to slip into the hole next door! The petite stitches are growing nicely and they do give a lovely effect, I just need really good light!

For the beady eyed amongst you, yes there is a slight colour difference half way through ‘for’ I’ve spent ages trying to suss out what colour I’ve used for the first half, one thing is for sure, I’m not unpicking it!

I’ll hopefully finish this over the next few days, so I’ll have time for the lavender bag and the sachet too, there’s not as much stitching on those so they shouldn’t take long.

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not follow the link and see what everyone has been hand-stitching.

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Jenny Wren Embroidery

Posted on March 8, 2017 by craftycreeky

I’m feeling well chuffed with myself, I have designed and stitched a proper embroidery all by myself! I even remembered to take photos of my progress!!

At Embroiderers Guild we are doing a Travelling Sketchbook project, we’re in groups of six, we each picked a theme for our sketchbooks (mine is mountains) and we swop books each month so we all embroider something for everyone’s book over about six months. At the last meeting we swopped for the first time…

I have to confess I was a bit overawed when I saw the book I was doing first, it’s beautifully presented, it even has an exquisitely illustrated page for us all to sign! The theme of this book is garden birds…I had a good mooch on pinterest for a bit of inspiration and finally decided to stitch a wren, one reason being that it has quite a recognisable shape! We also have wrens in our garden, one year they nested about 6″ above our back door, under the carport. The singing at dawn and in the evening was glorious but loud, they are known to be one of the loudest songbirds but it seemed to be magnified under the carport! It was very sweet when they were learning to fly as if you opened the backdoor at the wrong moment and put them off they plopped onto the doormat!

I decided to use some lovely ivory cotton fabric I won in the raffle last month, it’s really soft but firm enough to embroider. I sketched an outline on some scrap paper before using a soft pencil to draw on the fabric. I then used silk paints to colour the background. I’ve only just started using silk paints with embroidery, I really like the effect but I really need to try it out on lots of different types of fabric as it does behave very differently to normal silk painting. The advantage of these silk paints is that they are set with the iron, so it’s pretty quick. Having painted the fabric I then decided I preferred the colours on the back of the fabric. This actually worked quite well as I could follow my outline from the back and not have the line on the front of my work.

I started outlining the wren with stem stitch, I stitched all the way down the front before deciding to do the rest with a tiny running stitch so it wouldn’t have such an obvious outline and it would also be easy to cover up with other stitches.

Next I had to work out how to embroider and embellish my wren. I used DMC varigated threads for most of it with a couple of their standard ones too. I started with the wren’s breast, I used feather stitch in creamy variegated one and then added another row with a thread with hints of pink in it, adding some french knots as well.

I chain-stitched round the wing next, added some fly stitches, but it needed something else so I had a rummage in my bead box and found some perfect soft gold beads.

At this point I felt I needed to create the eye and the beak, to give me a bit of focus, initially I just used a french knot for the eye but I later swopped it for a tiny checked sequin (also in my raffle prize!) with a little dark bead on it.

Wrens have quite striking little tails, I tried using spider-web stitch  but it didn’t really have the effect I wanted, it looked a bit messy, so I added some more beads!

It took a while to decide how to embroider his head, they have quite dark heads so I used a richer brown thread and just did neat rows of running stitch, very simple but I think it’s worked pretty well. His back was the next puzzle, I had another look on pinterest and noticed someone had used lazy daisy flowers for a birds breast and I decided it may work for his back. I picked a variegated thread that has brown, olive green and deep pink, I love it, it picks up the other pinks I’ve used whilst blending in nicely.

Having stitched my wren I felt he needed to be standing on something, a bit of grounding! This is the only bit I’m not 100% happy with, I started off with brown straight stitches, it needed a bit more so I used the thread from his back to do some french knots and more straight stitches…and some beige threads…and some green…I think if I do another I might try just a light green/beige thread. These things are all a learning experience!

I stabilised the embroidered with some vilene before blanket-stitching round the edge. The finished piece is about 3″ square, so Jenny Wren is just about 1.5″ from beak to tail.

I just need to write a little piece about wrens and attach my embroidery.

I found a lovely poem about wrens to end my piece;

And then at dusk as evening fell

the trilling voice was heard,

of tiny mouse-like Jenny Wren

the Queen of all the birds.

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not follow the link and see what everyone has been hand-stitching.

Posted in embroidery, Serendipity, The Travelling Sketchbook | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Looking back at February

Posted on March 1, 2017 by craftycreeky

February seems to have whizzed past, I know it’s a bit shorter, but even so! We’re knee deep in decorating at home at the moment so sewing has pretty much been restricted to evenings when I collapse in a heap in my sewing room! This month I’ve painted the office and the conservatory, stripped wallpaper off the kitchen and half stripped the dining room…and in the middle of all that I had the flooring changed in my sewing room which meant emptying it, and no, it still hasn’t quite recovered!

In the midst of all that I did manage to make a skirt, a button back one and it’s been worn quite a few times, my concerns about it popping open were unfounded, it’s actually really comfortable to wear, I think I’ll be using that pattern again.

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I was hoping to make a dress as well that would have covered both the monthly stitch challenge of something from the decade you were born in (OK so I was going slightly earlier to the 1950’s) and the dress-makers bloggers challenge of making something with love. I was hoping to make a dress for our wedding anniversary, but as it’s in 2 weeks time I don’t think it’s going to happen, it’s a shame as I’ve got the lining, the zip. thread…maybe I’ll try!

I’ve done quite a bit of embroidery this month. We’ve started a travelling sketchbook with embroiderers guild (EG), this month we had to do our introduction and first piece, my theme was mountains so I embroidered a picture of Catbells, my favourite fell. I’m really pleased with this as this kind of embroidery where I have to design it is well out of my comfort zone. We’ve now swopped books so I’ve to do an embroidery of a garden bird this month for someone else’s book, I have a few ideas going round…

Catbells embroidery

I finished my rolling landscape which we started at a workshop at EG, Catbells starred in it again. I had a beautiful bobbin made by The Turners in the Church at Bedale to put it on.

Rolling Landscapes

I embroidered a very pretty card for a certain anniversary too, it’s a design by Faby Reilly, I’ve just got to make it into the card now.

Sweet Roses

I made another sketchbook cover from an embroidery I did a few years back, this sketchbook is a working one for my own ideas.

Sketchbook Cover

My progress with my Flower Lattice has been slow but steady, I’m half way through my third block. I’m still struggling to find the best time to do this embroidery, so it does tend to be in the few days before I’m due to post again!

Quilting wise, I started my new block of the month, ‘Down the Rabbit Hole by Sarah Fielke, a circle made from forty wedges was a bit of a challenge to say the least. I’ve still to add some homemade bias binding and then this month I add lots of round flowers.

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My biggest achievement this month was finishing the final blocks for my Splendid Sampler quilt, a hundred 6.5″ blocks, all sashed and quilted. I’ve started sewing them together now, I’ve done two blocks of sixteen squares, so I’m a third of the way there. I’m happier with the mixed fabric backing now, I got cold feet at first, but I think it’s going to look OK!

Highlight of the month has to be the #sewdowndewsbury, a fabulous day fabric shopping with fellow sewists.

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So, my plans for March, apart from stripping, lining and painting three rooms…hopefully my SS quilt will be finished and I’ll be well on the way with Helen’s elephant quilt. I’ve a little bird to embroider and my entry for the Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbook, it’s in France now, so I think it will be with me soon. It’s Mothering Sunday here soon too so I need to make a little something for my Mum, maybe a Lavender bag from Faby Reilly…and you never know, I might actually get that dress made!

Fabric Stash

fabric stash

After last weekend’s shopping spree it has somewhat crept up, though when I emptied my sewing room, I looked at my stash laid out on the spare bed and I didn’t think it looked that much 🙂

13645348_1265772793463288_4222454598765578193_nStash at end of January 2017      54 lengths

Lengths used          1

Length given away 1

Lengths bought      8

Stash on 31st January 2017            60 lengths

I’ve just worked out that if I only make one item a month my stash will last five years! I need to up the ante!!!

 

 

 

Posted in Crafts, Dressmaking, embroidery, Fabric shops, Quilting, Serendipity | 6 Comments

Fun, Friendship and Fabric

Posted on February 28, 2017 by craftycreeky

What more could you want for a perfect weekend than fun, friendship and a bit of fabric retail therapy! I had a great time!

#sewdowndewsbury

On Saturday it was #sewdowndewsbury, a sewists meet-up in the nearby market town of Dewsbury. Ali, AKA Thimberlina is the amazing organiser, this is her third one now, so she is getting a bit more chilled about the day and enjoying it herself too instead of worrying whether everyone else is enjoying themselves. If you get lots of sewists together in a fabric shop, we are bound to enjoy ourselves 🙂

Handmade by Chris

Handmade by Chris

There were about thirty of us this time, we met in Wetherspoons, it was a great time to renew friendships and make new ones. People had traveled from all over, but the person who won the Brownie points for travelling the furthest definitely went to Chris, of Handmade by Chris, who came all the way from Nuremberg in Germany, it was great to meet her and have a chat after all this time following her blog.

There were too many of us to all go round together, but we kept meeting up in the various shops before meeting up for a late lunch back in Wetherspoons. Ali had organised a goodie bag swop which was a lovely touch, we all took a present of sewing goodies, some had made bags, lots had made sewing accessories.

Goodie Bag Swop

Goodie Bag Swop

I won a gorgeous bag made by Eleanor of nelnanandnora, I love the fancy zip. Inside were lots of goodies, including a pretty fat quarter, a lovely purse clasp which is a perfect size for a new purse I need to make, some labels for gifts I make and a bag of lavender which smell divine. I’m thinking of making my mum a lavender bag for Mothering Sunday, so it will probably be used pretty quickly. There was also a cute hedgehog pincushion and a mug cosy which will be very useful as I’m forever getting distracted and letting my tea go cold!

#sewdowndewsbury

Of course I bought some fabric! Having arrived with the mantra ‘Mustn’t buy wools or shirt lengths’ as I do have a few waiting to be made up, I fell for a simple white cotton shirting which just feels gorgeous and also a pretty length of soft blue/grey with feathers on it. A length of Liberty cotton also caught my eye too! I did get a couple of lengths of jersey for tops though…and that was just in Fabworks!

We then went round to Lucky Fashions where I first fell for some love fine teal cotton, what I loved with this one is that it looks pretty opaque when you hold it against the skin, but it’s acid etched in a pretty design which makes the pattern more translucent. The lady then showed me where there were some more in different colours and I fell for the white one too, it’ll make a lovely shirt for the summer. I did manage to find some stretch jersey heavy enough for some trousers, that was on my list of things to look out for!

It was a great day and judging by the photos I got from Ali, I seemed to be laughing all the way round!

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On Sunday I went to the Spring Quilt Festival at Harrogate showground. There were some beautiful quilts on display. I particularly loved the one piece quilts, what I would call Durham quilts. They were hand quilted and the stitching was exquisite.

Of course there were lots of stalls too, I picked up a few more fabrics for my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt as I felt I needed more greens and purples, I also spotted some brighter ‘Teal’ fabrics, so I’ll quickly make another block for Kate’s Tealed with a Kiss quilt as I’ve not posted my other one to her yet. I’ve sussed out how I’m going to make it, so hopefully it won’t take long.

Just got to find a home for everything in my sewing room now 🙂

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Sweet Roses

Posted on February 26, 2017 by craftycreeky

str070-crd-pfi01I wanted to make a wedding anniversary card and when this design popped up on facebook I immediately clicked over to the webpage and bought it. It’s perfect!

It’s a design called Sweet Roses by Faby Reilly, I discovered her designs just before Christmas last year, I made a Mistletoe Humbug to hang on our Christmas tree. I love her designs, they’re straight forward to make but very effective. There’s several designs in the Sweet Roses range so you can even make a present to go with the card!

As usual, despite a box full of DMC threads, I had a few to buy, but I used some Belfast linen that was left over from another project, once I started it really didn’t take very long. If I was that organised it would probably be one of those designs that’s easier to do with a needle threaded in each colour so you can quickly swop from col0ur to colour.

One thing I like with Faby’s designs is that she doesn’t faff about with half and quarter cross-stitches, it’s all whole stitches, leaving the back-stitch to give shape to the image.. The eye follows the back-stitch rather than seeing the cross-stitch below. I managed to get a photo just before I back-stitched the last two roses…

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I finished it this evening, I just need to make it into a card now, on her website she has excellent tutorials on making up all her designs, including cards, so I’ll be popping over there for inspiration. I’m tempted to make one for Mother’s Day now as well, there’s a very pretty lavender one.

I really like the quote on this design, I’m planning another cross-stitch and embroidery project and I’m very tempted to incorporate this into it, so watch this space…

I’m linking up with Kathy’s quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not have a look what everyone else is hand-stitching.

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QAYG

Posted on February 24, 2017 by craftycreeky

Well I have finally started to put my Splendid Sampler quilt together. I’ve been prevaricating a bit, partially because I’ve not done it before and having spent the last twelve months making the blocks, I don’t want to ruin it at the last stage.If I’m honest I’m also feeling a bit snowed under with our house decorating schedule, trying to organise workmen, together with trying to keep up with challenges I wanted to keep up with, like the monthly stitch challenge.

I’ve decided to forget about the challenges until after the decorating, concentrate on finishing my Splendid Sampler quilt, I’ve then promised my daughter Helen an elephant quilt…and I’ve a charity quilt to make for the end of May…then I’m going to catch up with lots of dressmaking!

I decided fairly early on in the Splendid Sampler journey to try quilt-as-you-go or QAYG as it’s known. I knew I wanted to quilt each block individually, according to the design, rather than doing an all over design like I’ve done before. There is no way I could do that on my domestic sewing machine, with a 75″ quilt I think I would struggle to quilt it anyway. With QAYG each block is sandwiched and quilted separately, then the blocks are joined together. There are a couple of ways to join them, but I decided to follow the tutorial on Tall Tales from Chiconia Kate’s instructions are excellent.

The Splendid Sampler

Once I had quilted my blocks I trimmed them all to 7.5″, my original plan was for 8″ blocks but as Kate stressed how important it was for all the blocks to be exactly the same size I decided to trim them a bit more.

I chose a soft teal colour for my sashing, I cut 1″ strips and with quarter inch seams either side, the blocks lay perfectly together.I used my walking foot and double-checked my quarter inch seam before hand. The underneath sashing is made with 1.5″ strips folded in half, I machine stitched one side at the same time as stitching the front strip on, and then hand-stitched the back down. If you’re confused, check out Kate Chiconia’s tutorial, she makes it very simple!

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This is my progress so far, I’ve a couple of pairs and one set of four. I’m really pleased so far. I’ve decided not to stress over my sashing squares not meeting up squarely, if they do, great, if not, I’m chilled! I also think it will be easier to lay them out on the table in 16’s, decide on the arrangement before sewing them together and then moving on to the next sixteen, I can’t cope with trying to arrange 100 blocks at once!

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One factor that has made arranging them a bit more tricky is my decision at the beginning to use a variety of floral cottons to back. A decision I’m still hot and cold on, but once I’d started I had to continue! In the end I’ve done half patterned and half plainish with the idea of chequer-boarding them. I never thought it would be so confusing trying to get the patterned and plain in the right place!! I got myself in a right muddle last night. It didn’t help that I hadn’t sussed out that as long as the design wasn’t directional, I could just turn the blocks the other way up!! Once I thought I’d stitched them the wrong way round, but actually they just needed turning!  I had a bit of a brainwave today during my lunchbreak at work, I’m going to put a pin on all the patterned ones at the front, so I don’t need to keep turning them over!

I think now I’ve started it and got a bit of a system going, it shouldn’t take me too long, just 96 blocks to go…

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Stitch-a-long 7; Flower Lattice

Posted on February 19, 2017 by craftycreeky

It’s three weeks since I last posted my progress on my Flower Lattice. It’s a design by Di van Niekirk which uses ribbon embroidery and stumpwork. I’ve done a little ribbon embroidery before, but I’ve never tried stumpwork, so I’m learning lots to say the least!

This was my progress three weeks ago, I had just finished my second diamond;

Flower Lattice

I’ve not managed much this time, but I have stitched a bit. We’ve just started major decorations and work on our house, so in the last couple of weeks I’ve painted one room (ceiling and woodwork today!) stripped wallpaper off another two rooms, prepped another… hopefully by the beginning of summer I will have redecorated eight rooms, have new doors and floors and be all sorted, back to normal…the chaos when you start decorating is just not conducive to sitting peacefully embroidering!

Panel three is ‘a lily, narcissus & a ladybird’. I’m trying to be strict with myself and stitch them in the order of the book, so I don’t start with all my favourite ones and leave the tricky looking ones to the end!

The lily is meant to be stitched with silk organza ribbon, I’ve only got the normal silk ribbon, so I used that instead. My silk ribbon was quilt a bright orange, rather than the rich copper shown in the book. I decided to try overdying it with my silk paints, I added some deep pink to a drop of water in a plastic cup and dunked my ribbon in it, gave it a swish and then ironed it dry to set it. I’m pleased with the result, it’s just softened the orange. It’s not quite as bright as it looks in the photo, but it’s probably more tiger-lily than copper coloured!

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The buds were stitched first, followed by the main flower and then the leaves. The centre of the flower is filled with french knots and pistil stitches. The long stamen is a cake decorating one. The book showed one big one which was stuck in with a dab of glue, I didn’t fancy that method. I used a smaller one, dipped it in very dark brown silk paint and allowed it to dry thoroughly before I folded it in half, made a hole in the fabric with the biggest chenille needle I could find before threading the stamens through the hole. I just secured them with a few stitches at the back.

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At the moment it’s not my favorite flower, but hopefully the daffodils and the ladybird will tone it down a bit! Maybe the cute little ladybird will take centre stage!

The next step is to embroider the basket which the plant sits in, it has like a woven effect using whipped spider web stitches…so that’s another one to learn!

Tomorrow it’s my Embroiderers Guild meeting so I’m planning to take it with me to stitch on in the morning, so hopefully next month you’ll see more progress.

There’s quite a few of us taking part in the stitch-a-long now, all around the world. It’s organised by Avis, so if you fancy joining in just drop her a line. Everyone will hopefully be posting today so why not have a look what everyone else is creating at the moment.

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Posted in embroidery, Quilting, Serendipity, Stitch-a-long | Tagged , , | 18 Comments