Vintage doily name plate

I have a little collection of embroidered doilys stashed away for a rainy day and when a friend of mine recently had a baby I picked out one of my favourites to embroider her new daughters name on it.

Here's the drill if you want to have a go at one of these yourself.  You need:

• One lovely doily
• A wooden embroidery hoop (mine was a 15cm one)
• Embroidery floss
• Computer and printer
• Scissors, needle, sharpened lead pencil

First give the doily a good press with your iron so its starting off nice and flat and crisp.  Next, print out the name you wish to use in a font that you like from your computer. I chose Palace Script MT font and printed it at size 120 (from Microsoft Word).  Place the doily over the name printed on the paper, centering the name as you like depending on the embroidery designs on your doily.  You might like to use a light box or a window here to help you see through the doily fabric, but I found I didn't need one.

Take a well sharpened lead pencil, or one of those disappearing fabric markers if you like and trace carefully over the name.  Then take your embroidery hoop and centre the doily inside the hoop, make sure the metal hoop tightener is at the top of your work, this will be where you hang it from when you are finished. Tighten the hoop.  Now you are ready for the embroidering.

After looking through the purple and pink threads I had in my embroidery box I chose a light purple.  

I used a simple back stitch.

 Once you are done with the embroidery, tidy the ends up on the reverse side by trimming them and then trim the edges of the doily close to the hoop frame.

Tada!  You are done.  Hang on a nail or pin board pin using the metal hoop tightener.  

Simple and sweet.

Dinosaur day

Its got a little cooler and I went over to the local Target store to stock up on some tops for my boy.  Seems like everyone else needing his size had the same idea in mind - they had no stock at all of anything half decent above a size 4.  Super frustrating!  Nothing like a crappy department store experience to get me fired up about sewing.  Hence, this week is dedicated to making for the boy. 

I ended up buying a few cheap long sleeve tops in plain colours, but really you have to admit that plain is boring.  This top found itself attacked by a dinosaur - GRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

It was pretty easy to do, the hardest part was drawing the design, then I just used double sided fusable interfacing to set the shape onto the fabric, then blanket stitched around it by hand with two strands of embroidery thread whilst half watching an evening of television.  Both meditative and satisfying.

Next to come is an experiment in pants making and something to do with pirates...

Friday arvo

Reclining on the day bed on the back deck having a meditative stitching session.

Creating a little bit of decoration for my new sewing space.

And thinking about the fact that I had better get a move on with it all as I have to make a gift for a birthday girl for next weekend.

Creating a scene

Hello from Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand.  Never been to Wanaka? You really must.  Its just over the mountain from Queenstown, close to the ski fields...of course you now know what we are doing here. 

The scenery from my window over Lake Wanaka is really spectacular.  Its like an ever changing postcard, today was quite misty and dull after a few days of beautiful sunshine and clear skys.

Of course I never travel without a few things.

I wanted to try something new.

And this tree fascinated me.

I have stitched the following interpretation of the scene before me.  Next time I travel over here I must remember to bring more greys and soft colours, no reds, pinks or brights needed.

Back next week.

My creative space: where there's a will...

My creative space has been full of improvising this week. Here's the story.

Three days after arriving in Bulgaria we were to attend the wedding of my husband's cousin, Nadya, to her partner Vichren. There was some discussion, planning and shopping for the wedding gift to be given by our side of the family. I have met Nadya several times and I wanted to give her something personally, without being swallowed up by the larger family present and being a name on the communal card.

I didn't have a lot of resources to create a wedding gift, or did I? I had along with me embroidery thread and hoop, needles, pins, scissors and just by chance a cotton placemat my mother gave me the other week. I brought it along as a bit of material to do some stitching on if the mood took me, so I decided to stitch a design on the placemat with the bride and groom's names and the date of their wedding. Good idea, but then my problems began.

To sketch the design I needed a piece of plain paper, couldn't find any in the apartment so I ripped off the bottom of my travel itinerary, found a pencil in my husband's backpack, got the Cyrillic spelling of the names and date off the wedding invitation, and a heart and flowers design from this website

Now to transfer the design I would normally stick everything firmly to a window and trace the design to the fabric. Plenty of windows, plenty of sunshine, no sticky tape. Nothing adhesive at all to be found. So I drew the design as dark as I could on the paper, pinned the placemat to it to keep it all steady, laid it down on the table top and kind of traced/sketched onto the fabric with pencil. I couldn't see the design exactly but I pretty much knew what went where.

Then I got down to work and did the stitching, just backstitch in red. I worked through the evening up to about midnight, and finished it off the morning of the wedding with a dashed border on two sides (to try and distract from the fact that the heart and the names ended up a bit off centre)

The day of the wedding was Sunday and so card and wrap were not easily commercially available. To make it a presentable package I folded the placemat in the cardboard envelope from the wedding inviation, and made a small card from paper that I decorated with hearts using the red crayon from my son's crayon roll. Finally I tied it together with a yellow ribbon taken from a bouquet of flowers from the kitchen.

Nadya was touched and I had a great sense of achievement and satisfaction, the gift was a little bit of me, made with my hands, all the way from Australia.

For more creative space pop on over to Kootoyoo.

The Quilt Project comes together

The fabulous Kirsty from Kootoyoo has brought all 66 redwork squares together into one fine looking quilt. Its really satisfying to see the fruition of her project, seeing how it looks both all in one complete quilt, and to see all the individual squares in detail. The pieces have such an amazing diversity, from simple to fabulously detailed. You really should check it out here.

My design "Winter Fox", and accompanying instructions are almost ready for linking to this website. I almost have it ready and was researching how to load it on this blog and discovered that Blogger doesn't allow direct links to files, so I have to investigate using a file sharing thingy-ma-jiggy. Just give me a few days to sort this out. Thanks.

You really should check it out, go on!

(image via)

***Embroidery pattern file can now be found on the side bar under "Free Stuff".

A little bit of culture

I have to admit that I haven't been up to much sewing lately. I have just come into possession of a new sewing machine and apart from unpacking it, reading the instruction booklet, threading it up and sewing a few centimetres of a test run I have had no time to do anything more. I just don't feel liberated from other things going on in life to let myself free with spare time for sewing right now. That will rectify itself, just not in a good spot right now to be enjoying craft.

So, instead I thought I would share something a little bit different. I went with my husband to a little Bulgarian cultural evening last Saturday night. My husband is Bulgarian, I am Australian. So we have family and friends there, visit when we can, and we are raising out son bilingual English/Bulgarian, so the language and culture surrounds our lives everyday. Its a lovely and unexpected plus in my life in particular.

I have seen Bulgarian traditional costumes before, but never really concentrated on them. I was looking at the dancers' outfits and started talking to one of them about the traditional embroidery patterns on their shirts. Bulgarian embroidery is characteristicly very geometric in pattern, and is dominated by bright colours of reds (lots of red!), pinks and oranges. Different designs originate from and represent different regions of the country. Something for me to look out for next time I go visiting over there. Hope you enjoy a couple of examples.

Completed quilt block

I have finished my block for The Quilt Project. It was very rhytmic, mesmorising and almost addictive stitching backstitch along all the lines I had drawn. It was my procrastination, my relaxation, my enjoyment, I stitched in bed, on the couch, in the garden, when I should have been attending to my child, when I should have been attending to life in general...and now its done and gone to Melbourne to be part of the completed quilt. Now I will have to re-set myself to normality, maybe. You can see the progress of others over here.

The Quilt Project

I am a little snowed under with a uni assignment right now (I am a sucker for punishment I think) so blogging is a little low on my agenda. However, I am making time to have a break and talk about my participation in The Quilt Project, as I promised to.

I stumbled on this project one evening in late July as I was perusing through various interesting websites. Kirsty of Kootoyoo was organising 50 participants to each sew a panel for a redwork quilt. After a moments deliberation about having time, being up to the challenge etc. etc. the community spirit of it all got the better of me and I threw caution and insecurity to the wind and decided that I wanted to take part. I then spend the best part of an hour trying to make my computer scan my completed application form to attach to email, so much for empowered and confident - but I made it.

I received my little package in the mail, beautifully presented, tied up with red string (brown paper parcels, tied up with string...). My friend was collecting my mail that week while I was on holidays, she must have wondered what I was getting such great looking mail.

So, I had the material and two skeins of the appropriate red embroidery floss. What now? The maximum design size is quite big, and all I can think of are these little flowery designs (ok, I like flowery designs), I tried enlarging a pattern of some pj pants of mine, but that just ended up looking like a bad doily, and boring. Then when I was walking down the hallway at home, the little fox above the spare bedroom door whispered in my ear - use me! Inspiration was found, a design was made and I began stitching.

I'll leave you with a few pictures, more later, I'm off to bed.

Something I have finished

I started this embroidery a while ago, and I actually finished it a while ago too. I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with it. I sewed it on a piece of cotton sheet offcut and stitched it with this red thread that wasn't even actually embroidery thread, but it was a good colour and thickness so I just went for it. I really like the end result. Taught me a thing or two about tracing designs on windows and using fading markers. Let's just say that the fading marker was a bit too fadey too quickly...

It was actually a fortuitous practice piece for undertaking work on the Quilt Project, hosted by Kirsty of Kootoyoo.

But more about that later...

OMG - I just noticed that there are three french knots missing off the left hand side near the swirl. Damn that fading marker!!!!

Another thing in progress

Some embroidery! I used to do a lot of this when I was little. Its like riding a bike, you don't forget. Besides, its very easy. I bought a fading marker that said it would fade in 2-8 days, but after about 12 hours I can hardly see my design anymore! Have to retrace that tomorrow in the daylight, in the afternoon so its strong enough marking to work on in the evening.

The design is from Andrea Zuill here.

Feeling Folky

Today was raining a lot. Not a cheery softy making kind of day, and besides I have to do some considerations about what to do with my new fabrics. I feel an attraction to folk art so just sat down and sketched up this little bird and made him up with some felt and embroidery thread. I think I am going to look into developing some products along a european folk artsy theme in the future.