Prismatic Mountains

Inspired by various projects like this: my take on prismatic mountain with french knot stars

Curled Up Cat

I think cats are most adorable when curled up to sleep-their paws clutching their tail or back leg. This particular cat is based on ours who always ends up trailing tinsel.

Learn & Never Quit

Learn & Never Quit

This is another Femme-broidery design offered free through DMC patterns. I've seen those fluffy flowers all over and wanted to try them out.

In the Space between Chaos and Shape

"In the space between chaos and shape, there was another chance." Jeanette Winterson
I added colors (reflecting my coloring) to Jess Wariorka's design, In Bloom, offered as part of DMC's free patterns and Nice Girls Needle Club.

Fake It Till You Make It

Fake It Till You Make It.

One of my life mantras combined with the succulent flowers learned from my tea towels project

Mountain Souls

8" hoop- "We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states other lives other souls." Anaïs Nin

Heart Seeker

I've always loved this poem by Adrienne Rich and this free DMC pattern designed by Femme-broidery seemed perfectly suited

French Knot Buffalo

At the end of every piece my friend watches me stitch up, she runs her fingers over the surface and tells me she likes the dots the best. I got the message. It was a no brainer to stitch this up for her birthday-her favorite animal outlined entirely in french knots in increasing size (inner are 2 stranded/1 wrap knots, the outer are 3 stranded/3 wrap knots) in her favorite color (greens and greens and greens x9 and a gold for contrast).

Floral Field

This is not my own pattern- I got it from Threadfolk who designed it in collaboration with Lauren Merrick - but I really love its simple but dense style and wanted to see if I could possibly have the patience to stitch it up. I changed a few of the colors around-made the couple brown rather than white, swapped a few colors for very similar ones in my stash- but otherwise stayed more or less true to the pattern. It was a learning experience to stitch since instead of tracing all that (my pen/hand not being fine tipped enough, it would've been a mess) I used the renowned Sulky Sticky Fabric-Solvi to print the pattern and then stick it on. Unfortunately I don't have a color printer so I used markers to mark out thread colors and...some bled through which is good to know even if it irks me a little when I look closely at this piece (but few would really look closely at this piece and not be dazzled by how many little lines are here).

Embroidery

one of Sarah K Benning's advanced patterns-she leaves a lot of scope for your own choices in those

 "I'm not sorry about your fragile masculinity" paired with the Midnight Anemone pattern from DMC

Embroidery Quotes

5" hoop-"Nothing is more abstract than reality". Giorgio Morandi

6" hoop- "I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." Louisa May Alcott
(I believe this is hand lettering by Lisa Congden) 

6" hoop-"It always seems impossible until it's done." Nelson Mandela Hand comes from Tusk & Twine.

8" hoop- "Though we may travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or find it not." Ralph Waldo Emerson
mountain comes from Femme-broidery via DMC threads

Lino + Embroidery

Angeliki with her feather stitched shirt and french knot button

Nicole with her satin stitched bow

Lino + Embroidery

Jo with her straight stitch geometry

Leila with her cross stitch shirt

Lino + Embroidery

Soo-jin with her laid stitch with couching shirt collar

Valéria with her satin stitched stripes and hair ties

Lino + Embroidery

Rosa with her french knot bar, satin stitched hair tie and fern stitched shirt

Sasha with her whipped running stitch shirt and satin stitch earrings

Lino + Embroidery

Catharine with her backstitched earring and couched lace collar

Corinne with a chain stitched coat, straight stitched scarf and back stitched head wrap

Blooming Succulents! (Mostly cacti)

It's now a very safe interval after I gave this gift.
I present: how I learned to embroider!

I'd never really done embroidery on a serious scale before. Well, I've embellished but nothing where the embroidery is front and center (I've not really owned hoops...). So naturally, that's what I decided this big deal present should be.
Embroidered tea towels-a set of them.

Designs are NOT mine! These are some of the free patterns/designs available on the DMC thread's website. If you are interested in sparsely instructed but nevertheless great embroidery patterns that are free-check them out!

Style

I am not one of those people who can use style to keep life fuss-free. My coworker is.
Exhibit A: She announced her wedding date a week in advance.
So, I wanted to make something that would suit her (or my impression of her) in a very short amount of time.

The morning of the wedding came and her book was on my desk ready to be wrapped.

And I spilled coffee all over it.

In Greece, this is actually a good luck sign (brings money to the union) but in my personal culture there was no way I could give her a sodden book.
Besides, it wasn't her style anyway. The two quick books I made in record time were. Since time was short, the binding was kept simple-3 hole binding modified to give a closing tie.

but I added some style with hand-rounded corners (my first successful ones I may add) and embroidery on the cover

this is her favorite clothes color combination-she pulls it off. yes, for lack of anything else, I hand-drew the patterns on these covers

grid paper insides and the inside of the embroidery

Elbow Patches

This is one of my favorite sweaters. It started out rather like a granny sweater but it has been improved with a new set of mismatched buttons and upon the elbows...dala horses. Cut out of dressmaker's felt and embroidered to mimic the typical mane, saddle, and bridle decoration, they are were then stitched on (checking with the sweater on to make sure they're in the correct place). They have survived for two years and several washes so I can attest that it's a pretty durable but quirky change.

Felt Cases

I'm hard on my electronics. They all take dings and glue marks (part of the reason I do non-adhesive books is that I cannot use glue without getting it on everything) and get transported here and there. Instead of buying cases from the shop (or modifying one in the case of my graphics tablet) I looked at those pieces of thick dressmaker's felt in my stash and said to myself-yep, I'm gonna make them. De-stash bonus!

And since I made these before I had embroidered the rapper sashes, I fancy it's easy to see the progression of my nonexistant embroidery skills from my first attempt which is really just a book binding stitch to my bad-tensioned second attempt to crisp SSR. I love recognizing progression of skill mainly because I feel like I tend to hit plateaus and terraces in most things.

First off, my phone case:

So my phone already has one of those bouncy rubber cases so it's protected against the inevitable drops it takes but once it gets in my bag, that screen protector gets smeary and surface scratched (no idea how!) so I made this simple envelope style case. Inside it's lined with this odd water repellent fabric (shop closings-always end up with strange fabric from those things) that allows the phone to slide in despite the skid-proof rubber case. (I also like to think it'd repel water if I, say, drop it in a puddle.) The zig zag stitch you see is anchoring this lining-it was so slippery during sewing I sewed it down in frustration. Since neither fabric frays, the sides could be stitched and trimmed without edge finishing so my laziness does mean that there is a hint of the pinstriped lining fabric at the edges. It doesn't bother me one bit. The flap is pinked for decoration and held down with 2 snaps.

Of course, I couldn't leave it alone and decided to embroider it. Do I own an embroidery hoop or have any real previous experience with embroidery? Of course not. Did I let it stop me? Nah. So there is my personal logo outlined with blue (to match the lining fabric) in a backstitch filled with what my embroidery booklet calls a "seed" stitch in green. Is there puckering? Only minorly and it absolutely doesn't interfere with the case doing what it's supposed to-protect my screen from the ravages of my bag.

Next my graphics tablet:

I actually made this first but the construction was a bit more complicated. I constructed that outer pocket and stitched it down the sides to the outer layer of felt. Then I embroidered that T using a book binding cording stitch. (which makes it very nubbly) Then I stitched outer layer of felt to an inner layer which is why nothing ended up straight. Whoops, oh well. Those layers of felt don't fray so they got stitched into a simple envelope shape. Flaps pinked and buttons stitched on-mother of pearl for the cord pocket and bunnies for the main flap. The buttons are slightly too large but I actually don't have any smaller in my stash so whatever. They do their job with a tightly knotted trail of embroidery thread that gets threaded around them alá those interdepartmental envelopes.