Toms Diner

My last post featured the piece I made for the &Stitches swap and this is the piece I received in return. It was made by the fabulously talented Broidrage who in her own words is a New York pop culture junkie so it was fitting that she stitched me a NY icon; Toms Diner- y'know the one from the Suzanne Vega song and from Seinfeld.

It was a perfect choice for the 'Places' theme and I love it!

Battersea Power Station

Over at &Stitches there has been a swap going on. The theme was places and I was assigned a lovely partner who makes the most awesome things. After much ummming and ahhhhing I decided to make an embroidery of a British landmark- Battersea Power Station but given a bit of a twist. I have stitched it as a silhouette filled in with fossils for no other reason than 'fossil fuels'. Now I know that these fossils probably aren't the type commonly found in coal (a quick google suggests coal has mainly fossilized ferns) but I chose ones I liked and thought would look good. The main part is using silks but I switched to white embroidery floss for the famous white chimneys. When I first finished it I wasn't all that sure whether I liked it but looking at it now I think it was quite successful. 

I had to send it a bit crumpled because the purple fabric pen was taking a long time to fade out - you can see it round the chimneys above, and I didn't want to risk 'setting' it with a hot iron (I have know idea whether it would does anyone know?). Hopefully my partner won't mind a few wrinkles

I'll be back soon to share what I received from my partner.

Wasp

A while ago I signed up for a Phat Quarter swap... erm quite a while ago actually, I had to contact my partner (the very cool Mr X himself) and ask for extra time because I was making something odd that I had no idea how to make.
Behold the 'sort of' stumpwork stiletto wasp:

The main part of the body is embroidered in floss, the face is fake leather appliqued onto kid leather, the legs are wire and the wings are tracing paper stitched on gauze with paper covered wire stitched on for the veins. It is huge because stiletto wasps are a mythical beast from the Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies - it's a great book, the second in a series (the first The Lies of Locke Lamora is even better)- I used a description of the wasp in the book to design my version.

 I was pretty pleased how it turned out - not bad for a first attempt at something like this. It was very challenging, as I was making it up as I went along. I had to make the wings twice as my first set didn't have the tracing paper and were awful- they needed something to give shape to the gauze.

Next on my embroidered object list is either a fish or something like an urchin or starfish (think french knots and plenty of em) whaddya think?

Honeycomb 5 by Olisa

This is the piece Olisa created for me in the Phat Quarter swap- Honeycomb 5.

Isn't it beautiful?

 Olisa has stitched over a watercolour background. Different colours of floss spring to the foreground depending which colour they are lying on. The yellow floss demands attention against the purple but recedes against the green.  I like the contrast between the repetitive grid and the watercolours blending into each other.

It's one of a series of stitched grids that Olisa has made;

http://cocoaeyesthestitcher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/scenes-demaking-marks-with-paint-and.html

http://cocoaeyesthestitcher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/so-many-colors-so-many-grids.html

I love Olisa's abstract stitch experiments- each one is so different. The stitched grids would be amazing on their own but with the addition of the painted backgrounds they come alive.  I was so pleased that she made one for me!! 

To see all the swap pieces have a look HERE!

bee hummingbird embroidery

Bee hummingbirds are the worlds smallest bird- 5-6cm from the tip of their beak to the end of their tail. I made this for jessicakelly for a Phat Quarter swap on the theme of 'tiny'. He may only be small but I packed in loads of different stitches and detail by using only 1 strand of floss.
Playing with scale enabled me to really play around with different stitches. I often try and make my birds as lifelike as possible so it was good fun to get creative with some pattern and I like the effect. I'm not sure how this would work on a bigger scale but it would be interesting to try- the textures would look nice in crewel wool in linen I think.

mega needlework swap post

This is going to be a long one, seriously you might want to go fetch yourself a cup of tea or something...

I already posted about the Anything Goes Needlework swap I participated in on Craftster, well as the swap was wrapping up the organiser let us know that a couple of people had gone missing without sending anything and asked for volunteers to pair up with their partners. I couldn't resist the opportunity for some bonus needlework swapping so I was partnered up with Spidermom - and can I just say how glad I am her partner flaked because it meant I got to swap with her!

She made me a great retro mermaid hoopla- what is that mermaid up to? I like to think she is about to bludgeon the lady in the boat with that fish! It was hard to get a photo of this the colours are much brighter in real life. I have quite a collection of mermaids now, most of them are displayed in the bathroom, which is predictable I know but the ones that are in hoops are on my hoopla wall. I don't want to risk them getting all soggy and mildewed. Every embroidery fan should start a hoopla wall - I love how my hoops look all hung together although there is a risk of it overflowing on to other walls at some point.

Spidermom also made me a crossstitched notepad to use for those lightbulb moments- or for my many lists!

 And how cute is this mini felt toadstool girl? I have a feeling this may have been based on something on my pinterest- I have a lot of cute felt things pinned. I think I will add a hanging loop and hang it in a window, she is just adorable and I love the little bead details

And here is what I sent her, one of her themes was woodland critters. I made a little felt fox picture based on an ornament from falalafelt. I've had the mini brass frame for ages and this was the perfect project to use it. I think orange, teal and lime green might be my new favourite colour combination :) I didn't change the pattern much but it would be fairly easy to create similar designs to do in felt- I think a selection of critters with victorian styling could be cute; a badger with a monocle, stoat with a pipe, bird in a top hat etc... very quick to make too, will have to get sketching some ideas

 The main item I made was this stumpwork owl hoop. I designed this myself but aimed to learn a few new stitches along the way. The owl is a padded embroidered slip and the branch is raised stem band with raised leaf stitch for the... ummmm... leaves  The raised leaf stitch is very easy to learn and looks very pretty, maybe I should have added more leaves to this piece. The raised stem band didn't turn out all that raised- I'll pad it with felt next time. I was a bit unsure about the blue cotton I stitched it on but I think it turned out to be a good choice as white would have looked wrong and I think black wouldn't look as nice. I need to get some fabric paints so I can tint or crate a backdrop on my fabric prior to stitching I think.

 Then I made a simple crewel wool hoop. Again my own design, stitched mainly in gorgeous appleton crewel wool- look teal and orange again, just missing a splash of lime green! I was inspired by a design on my sons jumper and stole  based the tree on that. I haven't done any wool embroidery for a while and had forgotten how quickly it stitches up.

And now a confession- I did try to make a mini spiderman felt embroidery but had to bin it halfway through- he had wonky eyes and his web was all over the place. I think the fox I ended up doing instead is cute though and embroidery shouldn't be too stressful should it? (says she who is constantly doing battle with knots and who cannot finish any piece without much cursing and bodging). In the past I hated to abandon things I'd started as I'd already invested so much time but now if something starts to feel too much like hard work into the bin it goes (wheeee!)- life is too short!

You still here? I told you it was going to be long didn't I?  sorry about that- but thanks for reading xxx

in the hoop

This is what I'm working on right now. It's an embroidered slip for a stumpwork piece. Am loving trying to capture all the colours that gleam on a magpies black feathers.
I've been doing lots of embroidery lately but it's for swaps so I can't show you yet but I can share the gorgeous goodies I received in the Craftster 'anything goes needlework swap' ;

 better photos and more info
here and here!
I was so lucky to get such a great partner for that swap and as a bonus I am getting to swap twice as someone dropped out so I volunteered to be a replacement partner. I'll be posting my swap package this week so can share what I made very soon...

Day of the dead owl

This is the other item I made for the Craftster needlework swap. My partner had lots of owls and lots of day of the dead stuff on her pinterest and so I designed this. I sketched out a very basic owl on graph paper and then added loads of decoration. I then used a sulky transfer pen to transfer my design onto my the felt. He is backed with a sugar skull design fabric and stuffed with toy filling. I might try and scan my pattern and add it to this post as a pdf if anyone wants it?

I like the teeth/beak the best - I was very pleased with how that looked - I was feeling very smug as I was stitching that bit up !!

The boys loved it too- all those bright colours they thought it must be for them right? I managed to rescue it before Rory dribbled on it!

stumpwork sparrow

This is part of my swap package for the Anything Goes Needlework Swap on Craftster. My partner loves sparrows so I knew I wanted to do make a sparrow embroidery. I also recently bought the RSN guide to stumpwork and so the two fused together pretty nicely. I have to also give credit to this tutorial that I found incredibly useful, especially as it uses a bird for the example so it showed me how to add details at the end.  As a first attempt I think this worked really well  and I was pleased with my stitching on the bird, I wanted it to look realistic. The twiggy branches are tapestry wool couched on with embroidery thread, this looks really nice but the wool shows through a little from the back of the linen so next time I'll hoop up some cotton or calico behind the linen to avoid this.

Here is a detail to show how the bird is three-dimensional;

Please excuse the creases in the photos- I did iron the piece before sending and mounted it in a flexi-hoop but I don't have any photos of this.

swaps

This is a busy embroidery month as I'm doing two swaps. The first is organised by Wild Olive, it's huge there are over 100 people taking part! My head spins when I think of poor Mollie trying to keep tabs on all those swappers. We are swapping one 4 inch hoop, I used a pattern from this book but ignored the stitch guide as it wasn't a filled in design.
The chest on the bird is my first ever attempt at needlelace it was semi-succesful but some of the holes are a bit bigger than others. Overall I'm pleased with the finished piece although it's not really my style. I picked a design and colour palette that I thought my partner would like and it's a bit too pale for me. I wish I'd tea dyed the fabric because I think that would have looked nicer. You live and learn.

As a little extra I made this Wild Olive style badge- too cute!

The other swap is on Craftster and I'm not going to post photos yet as I think my partner might just look at my blog and I don't want to ruin the suprise. I'm really looking forward to sharing what I've made though- I challenged myself a bit and it really paid off. Stu wanted to keep it and has told me I have to make him one.


I used to do a lot of swaps, in fact some of the best things I've made have been for swaps. I like the way it forces you to do something different. it always makes me focus on getting my stitches neat too, when I know someone else is goung to inspect them! The best swaps for me are themed because you end up making things you'd have never made otherwise. A while back I did a Phat Quarter swap (the flickr group from Mr X Stitch) which had a movie theme. I ended up doing this Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me piece which was so much fun to do that it was actually quite hard to part with. 

Invite your partner swap

I was lucky enough to snag Lily (Lilyvanilli on Craftster) as a partner for this swap. She sent me an awesome package- which will feature in my next post (I have yet to take photos) but if you can't wait to see the amazing goods you can see them here . Fellow Craftsters take note- next IYP be brave and ask someone you admire to swap with you- it is well worth it!
This is what she got from me in return:
ready for your close up?

Somewhat predictably it is based on an Angelique Houtkamp image (well her artwork is amazing). So much fill stitching- I like how the shading on her dress turned out. Her hair is done in lines of satin stitch to add texture- you can't see that on the photo as it's black so you'll have to take my word for it.
I also made an embroidered handbag mirror - which I'll post pics of at a later date and these little extras;
Lily has been a great partner (as you'll see when I post photo's of the beautiful embroidery she sent me) and this has been a fun swap, and guess what the best thing about the swap is? It's not over because I was greedy and signed up with two partners! I'm also swapping with Amy from SwellStitches (Amyracinrose) so there are more of my crafts to post once she receives (don't want to ruin the surprise).
Thankyou Lily- it's been fun we should do it again some sometime!
Night all!
x