small scrimshaw test piece

I thought I'd do a tiny test piece for one of my scrimshaw embroideries I have planned. I stitched this using sewing rather than embroidery thread - it's only small, the whale is the length of my thumb. I think the embroidery works well. I think I will make the tea staining more textured when I work this up bigger. I may even paint on additional levels of tea stain to make the tooth background more dimensional. 

This piece is appliqued onto a blue cotton I think canvas or the reverse of some denim might look better. Or perhaps even a bright white background... I have some more playing to do :)

Uh Oh

This piece is far from finished but I'm sharing it now because I have had a bit of a mishap with it. As you can see there is some cross stitch on the woodpecker and I used soluble  canvas to achieve it (LOVE that stuff!) unfortunately when I rinsed away the canvas the thread I've used for the wood has run creating a pinky brown halo around the stitching.
Is it salvageable? Maybe. I think my options are a) bin it, b) paint in the background to conceal the stain c) have the piece completely filled in with stitching including the background - it isn't a huge piece so doable. My gut instinct is that I should go for option c but I'm not feeling excited at the idea of all that fill stitch. Any better ideas?

By they way the woodpecker is complete there is shading to do and detail to be added to the face- he will hopefully look a lot better once that is done, and once he has some legs of course! I also plan to break up that big expanse of tree with some details but not sure what I'm going to do yet.

Has this ever happened to you? Were you able to save the piece or not?

DOTD skull and scrimshaw sketches

A little finished embroidery. I bought this fab book of transfers, it a bit of a bargain as you get quite a few patterns and most of them are very cool. Some are very detailed though so would take a long time to stitch. The pastel colours on the skull are from sublime stitching floss- I am pretty pleased with my colour choices on this one. 

I thought I'd share some sketches I have been doing- these are destined for embroidery- they will be framed in a tooth/tusk shape as you can see on the whale. I want them to look like scrimshaw, I'm thinking probably a tusk shaped tea dyed cotton with the embroidery on, which will then be appliqued onto a dark (navy) background or possibly just a large piece of cotton lightly tea stained with a darker tea stain applied with a brush around the tusk.

I might do some mini ones to try it out- it's nice to be thinking about doing something of my own again rather than working from a pattern. I have a couple of other WIPs nearly done, I might not have blogged much recently but I have still been stitching!!

Stick boy's festive season

I stitched this up for the illustration stitchalong on Flickr. It's a Tim Burton illustration and I though it would make a funny addition to our Christmas decorations this year! An antidote to all the glitz :) Slightly strange to be stitching something Christmassy quite so early (although I will be starting on proper Christmas stuff soon- anyone else starting to think about Christmas presents, eeek!!!???). This was a really quick embroidery because it's fairly small. I think the next one is a 'free choice' one so will maybe pick an illustration from one of my favourite comics or from one of the kids books for that one, although I'm tempted to do a quick Spike Milligan one as well! Why not join us?

Goldwork robot

I made this for my little robot boy! He decided that the robot should be 'all shiny gold'. I found some of the goldwork a bit of a chore. the couching down of the threads using fine thread is quite time consuming and is a repetitive task. However now it is done I do like the look of all the gold. I used a metallic thread for the guitar. The pattern is from Urban Threads they have tons of cute robot patterns.
To finish it off I'm going to buy a small canvas and stretch this over the frame.
It was Jake's 4th birthday recently and we had a robot party with robot cake, robot chocolates and robot biscuits. We had robot bunting and a washi tape robot on the wall, it was a very 'Jake' party - he was very excited by it all. 

PQ swap piece

P5140207, a photo by Sewphie T on Flickr.

This is my science themed piece for the recent Phat Quarter swap. It's quite detailed and was stitched using one strand of floss. I was contemplating using neon floss to fill it in but as it was for a swap thought it would be safer to go for a subtler finish with a hint of metallic floss- neon skeletons aren't everyone's cup of tea! I do sort of regret not going bright though I think it would've looked great - the vintage image plus neon combo will have to be used on something else.
When I was planning the piece I actually considered doing a stumpwork dissected frog. Which would be awesome, right? But I knew it would take way too long and I thought it was perhaps a bit too odd to send to someone I don't know well. Looking forward to making it now though - watch this space!

Baby presents from Sublime Stitching Patterns

 A close friend recently had her first baby I wanted to include something stitched in with the gift I sent her. I used patterns from sublime stitching (Black Apple and Kurt Halsey). They are embroidered on muslin cloths which was slightly tricky as they are a fairly loose weave so I had to be careful with the thread tension- also they are quite see through so these embroideries had super neat backs- a first for me!!
I'm glad I chose muslin cloths though- I used muslins loads with both of my babies and I think I'd have liked some cheerful ones. If you zoom in you'll see I used quite a lot of split stitch and tiny chain stitch as these seemed to work best on this fabric. I used the cloths to wrap the baby clothes I bought and tied it up with some ribbon- it looked very sweet. Another nice idea might be to dye some muslins or add applique, I think most new mums would appreciate some pretty muslins to cheer them up when they are mopping up dribble and milk!

And I just want to share this, the other day my robot-obsessed son (nearly 4-eeek!) was quietly crafting in the dining room so I went to see what he was up to and was greeted by this;

:D