A Little Pink Zebra

I've spent the day at CFQ doing a bit of embroidery whilst running the stall so thought I'd share. I used a piece of screen printed canvas that I'd printed in hot pink waterbased ink and embellished it with some crazy pink thread that has a gradient in the colour to it and various blues for the french knots and scallops. Will soon be up on the wall in the shop for sale!

 

Very 1st Embroidery!

Here's the very first embroidery I did. I used a Sublime Stitching pattern that I transfered using the ol' iron on to fabric that I'd dyed myself in uni years ago. I'd picked up a stash of embroidery floss from the charity shop and went to town =)

It now lives on the wall of my workroom! So you get a little of my view today!

 

Craftster Swap

I use a crafting forum called Craftster on a regular basis, I mainly like looking at all the things everyone has been making but it also hosts a huge amount of tutorials and nifty 'how to's'.

One of the girls I chat to about screen printing and embroidery asked if I would be interested in making some work to swap. What a fun idea huh! So I can finally share what we've both done as everyone has received their surprise packages!

This is the package I sent to sheepBlue; two screenprinted and embroidered hooplas a screen printed handmade tote bag and some mesh for making your own silkscreens.

I made a tote bag with some polka dot handles using fabric I printed with a lion repeat. Its an old drawing but I like the effect of the repeat.

 

 

The space hoopla is very similar to the last one I did, although I used a purple print on the line work instead of navy, there had also been a second layer of colour print in my original one as I'd mixed in some halftone texture that we had on another screen in a light blue. I wanted to try and give it a more 1970's feel with psychedelic rainbow colours =) 

Mr Zebra hoopla was just a bit of fun really. It's only a 3 or 4" hoop, so really small, I had a few scraps of the zebra repeat after making a knitting tidy for my mum ages ago. (I posted about it on Craftster). So I decided just to do some fun fill stitches into the zebra and a bit of scallopping too.

It was my first attempt at putting a felt backing on the hoops. It's not quite perfect for my liking but not the worst thing either.

sheepBlue loved her package, I'm super happy as mine was pretty awesome too! You should definitely look at her blog and Esty shop. I bought cat cards from her in the past that are a beautiful print.

Here are my beautiful gifts! A stunning printed embroidered flamingo print hoopla and some brillliant jaw bone printed pillowcases. You can read more about how she made the pillows here. She's a nutter and did each print indvidually, but she's working from home rather than having a studio so big ups to home diy crafts!

 

 

 

So I will end this post with something special as it's a long one and I'm impressed you're still reading =) Thanks to Lulu from A Vintage Daydream for this one! I can't wait to see my gift!!

What's going down:

The first three people to comment on this post will receive a little gift - something personal from me to you.

Within 2 months I'll create something unique to share with the first three people to comment on this post.

But in order to receive your present you have to play along.

Spread the love on your own blog promising to send a little special something to the first three people who comment on your post. You get 72 hours to re-post, or I'll have to move on to the next person. Please only comment if you're willing to pay it forward. If you want to receive something unique from me in the mail and if you are willing to do the same for others, leave a comment below!

Please leave your email address so that I can contact you directly! And blog URL so that I and others can visit your blog! Again, I want to emphasize that please only comment if you're willing to pay it forward. Nobody likes a taker.

Who's down for paying it forward craft style?

Smoking Caterpillar

I just wanted to quickly share another piece I've done to go with the other Alice in Wonderland themed embroidery. I've taken the character of the caterpillar (of course one of my favourites from the story) and have appliqued him onto a old rose printed pillow case that seemed to fit the theme. You can read some more about the other pieces I've completed so far in an older post.

I started by using some Bondaweb to secure him down and then back stitched around his outline in a matching orange. I added texture to his hair with split stitches and his big moustache with long filling stitches. I thought it would be fun to add some free hand smoke in some funky colours. It was a chance to try some different stitches! What do you think??

OOh and some exciting news! - I'm going to be selling my treasures down on St Mary's Street in Cardiff on a market stall every other Saturday on the run up to Christmas starting on the 22nd September. Come and say hello if you're in town =)

Wonderland Embroidery

I've started a personal project. I've fallen in love with the hoopla craze; I blame Crafster for this! Also there are a few large blank walls left in the house which are just asking for decoration =)

I bought a beautiful pair of vintage Alice in Wonderland curtains from eBay many moons ago and had (with hindsight now I'm gutted) chopped them up and made handbags and purses galore to sell at craft stalls. I remember they sold really well as it's really unusual fabric. I was in my early 20's and was eager to use good fabrics I guess; I'm so much more precious now. Going through the crazy fabric stash the other day I came across scraps of the curtains that I'd saved - go me not throwing anything away!! I decided it would be fun to applique some of the characters and use big enough pieces to fill my hoopla need!

Here's what I've done so far and some progress....

The Queen's announcer is in a 10" hoop and the Tea Party is in an 8". I've bought a selection of other sizes too for new ones.

The edge of the tea party is the actual fabric and the rabbit is appliqued onto the pink stripey background. Its a lightweight cotton that I thought matched quite well. The pictures below show a closer view of the stitches I've used. The pink stitched line work is back stitched to secure the fabric as well as decorate. You can just make out little french knots in the whites of his eyes. For the fur I've free stitched to give him texture but kept it to the outline for a more minimal feel. I've created stripes on his tunic and outlined the heart in split stitch as it's nice and neat. The screen print itself is terrible, the registration (lining up) of the colours is well off but it adds to the quirk I guess. I like the effect anyways.

The Tea Party was really fun to embroider into. The wonk on the print meant there was lots of bits I could tidy up. I've been wanting to do a pile of french knots for ages, what a perfect fit for a bunny tail, eep!

I've since added a few more stitches across the bridge of his nose to hide that yellow bit of print.

I made a little cross stitch pattern to his jacket to try and give a tweed impression and I satin filled in his lapels too. His waistcoat buttons have little french knots. I'm thinking of trying out some chain effects on the pocket watch.

The tea cup was originally just plain white, so I thought it'd be fun to put a little pattern on it!

So once again the running theme of the dodgy registration meant that Alice wasn't too pretty. You can see in the photo below she was missing a nose and her eyes were doing something funky haha. I used a split stitch to add different shades into her hair and then with just a single thread from the skein I stitched into her face to add more detail. I hope I've done her justice!

It was fun doing the little scallop on the bottom of her apron; I've enjoyed using new stitches.

There's still loads to do on the big rabbit one and I want to do more so I can have a big wall of hooplas but this is a work in progress so I guess I'll just keep showing you updates along the way =)


 

You've Been Framed

So this week has been more about looking after the cat and getting him sorted. My sister's cat Zorro came to stay with us about 5 weeks ago and after 3 days managed to escape out the cat flap and that was the last we saw of him for 4 1/2 weeks! He'd come down from London and people kept saying maybe he'd tried to go home which wasn't helpful! But he was sat on the kitchen table last Saturday morning when I got up. We've been to the vets quite a lot this week getting him checked out and sorted with antibiotics and painkillers; he had a weird limp :(

So in between all that chaos there's been a slowing down on the craft front. I have managed a few bits so I thought I'd share them now whilst enjoying a lazy Sunday at home.

I picked up some old annuals for the Green Living Festival workshop that I took part in a few weeks ago and had a brainwave of other fun things I could do. My first project for them was picture frames. So I got the ol' Mod Podge and Stanley knife out the box and set down in front of the telly yesterday having a fun Saturday play afternoon!

I used a pack of cheap Ikea frames that I'd picked up ages ago ( one of those stupid shopping moments when you don't want to come away empty handed; yes I realise I'm being a slave to consumerism). They had a good wide frame though which I thought would be better for showing off the comic strips.

Check out how lovely the two colour screen printed pages are.

I used the craft blade to cut around the edge of the comics and shape them to the frame. I used the Mod Podge to stick the strips and to varnish over the top. The one I have leaves a lovely matte finish but you can get others in different finishes. It's good that you can finally get it in the UK, I've always seen so many lovely projects on crafster.org using the stuff and have always wanted some; pretty  pleased with the results so far.

Finished frames. I ended up making four different ones; it was great that they used to use different colours for the two colour prints to keep the annual interesting and define different stories.

There was a final story in one of the books that had a full colour 'Tarzan Jane' story that I couldn't resist using too.

After my last embroidery piece I wanted to do another screen print/ embroidery mix up. This time I used the carousel horse repeat that I'd printed onto a pink and white polka dot fabric.

I think it needs just a tad more before its finished but I thought I'd share anyways :)