I got it at Ross

I'm on the computer and I look down and Madie has something on her beard I start laughing! She's always getting stuff on her beard and we just think it's hilarious the best part is she looks at us like 'why are you laughing?'! This one is even funnier because if you look it's a price sticker for Ross for $1.99 (compare at $4)! Hey you all better get down to your local Ross and pick up a Mini-Schnauzer! They are wonderful for laughs!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has a wonderful new year full of health! Speaking of health, I've joined SparkPeople.com and have found it very helpful in my beginning my journey to healthiness! (I've already lost 2 pounds!) It's totally free and helps to motivate, support, and teach you what is healthy. I love it and even though this holiday season I messed up more than once I've learned at SparkPeople NOT to give up but to pick back up and move forward, learn from my mistakes so I can aim to do better next time. I want to get and maintain a healthy weight and create lasting healthy habits. Just click on the link below to check it out or join for yourself.
Free Online Diet Plan at SparkPeople.com

Winter Fashion

Here is our dogs China and Madie in their brand new outerwear hand made by me and my hubby! Aren't they so cute! We worked together and finished them up in about an hour. Madie's got the jacket and China has a matching scarf. You can Click Here if you'd like to see their Winter 2006 Fashion Show and Faux Paux on their blog.

Christmas Stitching

This Christmas I worked on projects for my nephew Baby J (brother Aaron & Echo's baby). I had found remnant of some green fleece on sale and bought it to create 2 baby blankets. Here is one of the blankets I made. I hand sewed the hems of the fleece blanket since it was small and fleece tends to warp out of shape with the sewing machine. Then I took some tracing paper and traced the letters I found here and pinned it down and stitched it on. I found cute patterns in the book Sublime Stitching and traced the spaceship and planet from it onto tracing paper and stitched those on as well. Then I tore away the paper and stylized the spaceship with some stars, dots, and stripes.

This picture of me is on Sunday, Christmas Eve, after church working on the embroidery. I finished the blanket on Christmas.

The "grow" is stitched onto a onesie for Baby J. I used some lightweight stabilizer basted onto the back and then trimmed down when finished embroidering. I made it on the 26th and finished just in time for Aaron and Echo to take home with them.

His and Hers

Here is the last of my hand made Christmas gifts. These are for my brother Aaron and his wife Echo. Echo reads my blog so I couldn't put these up until after Christmas!
The pattern is from one of the iron on transfers from Aunt Martha's that I got at WalMart. The pattern is transferred onto some eggshell/ecru colored Egyptian cotton pillowcases. I used DMC floss in black and purple. One strand for the stem stitch for the thin lines and outlines, then I used 3 strands for filling in the satin stitch. 'His' is black with a purple heart and 'Hers' is purple with a touch of green (1 strand DMC floss) for the stem and leaves (stem stitch and lazy daisy) and some light lavender flowers in 4mm silk ribbon french knots with a yellow colonial knot center done in 2 strands DMC floss.

In The Garden RR: Lillian's block

I finally received the ribbon I had run out of in the mail, so this weekend I finished up the last of the leaves and then added Swarovski crystal beads and some bigger glass seed beads to add texture to the design. Now to send it off!

Godey's Lady's Fashion

Aren't these illustrations beautiful? I found them at the On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics at the University of Arizona. Here is a link to the page I found them at. Scroll down until you see Fashion Plate or Godey's Lady's Book. Just click on the Sample Page and then right-click and save the image.
I just think these would make beautiful fabric prints for CQ or backgrounds for blogs among many other uses I'm sure you can think of.

Old Embroidery Articles

Here is a link to this interesting old Ladies' Home Journal (1898) page Click Here. The link is to a PDF file at the On-Line Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics at the University of Arizona. I also thought this Click Here (also PDF) one was really neat as well, it is an article from Needlecraft Magazine on embroidered gifts (November 1912) and it had a neat little idea of tucking away little embroidered gifts you make throughout the year so that when you need a gift you already have one made. It's just so neat to read the old text. It's funny how embroidery was so commonplace because now-a-days you rarely find someone who embroiders! They used to embroider and monogram everything. I read in one of the articles that any young girl who values her possessions will take the time to nicely embroider her monogram on it. It's hard to imagine kids these days monogramming anything!
You can click on these photos and save them as well. The 3 sets of monograms are useable.
I hope that I haven't infringed on any copyrights or anything like that. If I have please let me know and I will modify as needed.

Embroidery Designs

Hi all I just found this site full of embroidery designs just waiting to be used! It's got all kinds of things in there, like alphabets, flowers, and holiday designs. Check it out. Ladies In Red

This heart design is in their Valentines section. Enjoy!

My Brother Isaac's Gift

This monogram is a last minute one, since my brother Isaac will be at Dad's for Christmas I figured I better not leave him out! So I picked this monogram since he loves medieval style, out of the Victorian Alphabets, Monograms and Names for Needleworkers from Godey's Lady's Book and Peterson's Magazine. I scanned it, resized it, printed it, and then traced onto the pillowcase with a water erasable pen. Then I tried a new stitch! The split stitch, I had watched a tutorial on how to do the split stitch here, and felt that it would be the perfect stitch to get this monogram done so I can send the gifts off to Dad's. I used 2 strands blue DMC floss. I was going to do the stab method but after 2 or 3 stitches it was just too slow so I switched to the sewing method and I really enjoyed it since it seemed faster and I could get on a roll with it. I stitched each section by first stitching the outline and then stitching round and round working in towards the center until it was all filled up. I finished stitching the monogram in 2 and a half hours! I just sat and focused on it since I wanted to complete it last night. The split stitch also gives a unique texture and look to the monogram.

I had been wondering if this was an 'I' or a 'J' since the older monograms have one of those missing. Either would have been fine since they are both his monograms but I found this today that has the full alphabet and I now know that it is an 'I'! Whew!

Johnson "J" Towel Gift Set

Finished! My Johnson 'J' set for my Dad and Joyce Hope is finally complete and ready to send.
Click Here to see how I made the smaller ones.
Click Here to see the 6 inch monogram.
Click Here to see their bright bathroom the set was made for!

Christmas Gifts

I worked on my Christmas gift for my Dad and his wife, Joyce Hope. They love bright colors so I had the idea to create a set of hand towels that I knew they both would love with the Johnson 'J' on them. Click Here to see their bathroom! I started in July, but that 6 inch floral 'J' was so much work and the terrycloth so hard to stitch on, there was just no way I was going to do 3 more! So I came up with the genius idea to make the other 3 smaller letters on the band area so I drew up a few ideas for J's and this is what I settled on. (I had been doodling in my visual journal with J's just the other day so this one was already in there and I just ran with it for this idea) I took the air-erasable pen and drew the 'J' and then stem stitched it on. I'm going to do 3 five petaled french knot flowers on each 'J' with some ribbon stitch leaves tucked in with them and 3 on the end of the 'J'. This way it won't take me near as long to finish, and it's a wonderful matching set.

In The Garden RR: Lillian's block

Well I was finishing up my work on Lillian's block and planning on sending it on on Monday, when I ran into a little problem...I ran out of the ribbon!!! The color I was using for the leaves was all used up, so I got on-line and ordered some more from Thread Art. Now it's not like this was a tiny bit of ribbon that I didn't pre-plan for or anything. If you have bought the spools of ribbon from Thread Art before you know that they are 10 meter spools...and I opened it new when I started working on her block! I also used some on Kari's block though, and I used it in the other motif on Lillian's block as well. I thought I had enough or I would have ordered more last week! I'm so sorry Lillian for holding up your block until the ribbon arrives.

Windsong Jewels: My work on Kari's Block

Well I've been working and working, stitching and beading, and here is the finished block! I hope it is not too cluttered! Really this is the first CQ block that I've completed embellishing! Just click on any of the photos to see them closer.

All the larger roses are spider-web roses, and the smaller filler roses are running stitch roses, which I zigzagged from edge to edge while doing the running stitch down the ribbon.
Then I used french knot flowers for filling and the little buds are twisted chain stitch. All the leaves are ribbon stitch, except the branches on the curved seam which are padded straight stitches.

The gold seam is an alternating buttonhole stitch with lazy daisy's on both sides and a gold seed bead at the tips.

The purple seam is french knots using silk chenille to make the fuzzy dots and lazy daisy's in sets of 3 with seed beads in the middles.

Monogrammed 'C'

Here is the finished monogrammed pillowcase for my dear friend Christina who is in Iraq. It's a nice green flannel pillowcase.
For the verse I took an air-erasable pen and drew it out and then stitched over it with the stem stitch.
The verse is Psalm 4:8 says
"I will lie down and sleep in peace for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety."

Windsong Jewels: My work on Kari's Block

Here's some more work on Kari's block! I hand dyed the lace motif in antique gold and added a glitz button and glass leaf beads to the middle. Also I added some amber glass seed beads to the spokes. My goal was to make a focal point so than in the yellow area I can create an opposite focal motif in silk ribbon embroidery. I'm still going to add some seam treatments and I know it's a little out of order but hey this is CQ after all and there really aren't any rules! Heeheehee!
I also added blue running stitch roses in 4mm and ribbon stitch leaves in 2mm silk ribbon.

Floral Motif

Here is a close up of the floral motif I created on Lillian's block.
I just love how it turned out. It has spider web roses in 3 different colors of 4mm silk ribbon. Clematis flowers made out of ribbon stitches in purple 4mm silk ribbon. Little yellow french knot flowers which are made by making a french knot with 1 wrap and loosely tightening with 3 wrap french knots in 1 strand DMC floss for the center. I made stems using the stem stitch and 1 strand silk floss and added leaves with 4mm silk ribbon in ribbon stitches. The little rosebuds are made from the twisted chain stitch in 4mm with a fly stitch in 4mm green worked around them.
I added clear swarski crystals to the roses as dew. Also I added amber glass seed beads to the middle of the clematis flowers. Then I added some larger amber beads and some small clear AB seed beads as dew drops near the rosebuds.

I took the air-erasable pen and kind of put circles where I thought roses would look nice then I drew little ovals to point towards the other area of the block which became the rose buds. Then I kinda felt where the clematis flowers would go and drew that in. I liked what I saw so I got some floss and made the spokes for the roses, but then I was on a role and went ahead and made the roses. Then I took a chance and instead of making the lazy daisy flowers I tried doing the ribbon stitch and ended up with clematis flowers which I like way better than the old daisy flowers. Then the next day I looked though JBM's floral stitches book and found the french knot flower and made those, I tried to make them a little looser and free so they'd look like a filler flower more. Then I drew in where the stem would go and the smaller stems I wanted to get them pointing in good directions and proportionate to the bouquet. Then when I felt it was right I stitched those in then added the leaves but I realized I needed more stems on the big long stem in order for it too be more realistic for roses so I drew in what I thought would look nice, stitched it and added the leaves. Then I added the little buds and the fly stitches on them. Then I went though what beads I thought would look nice, did a lot of bead tryouts before deciding which ones to use and where. Then I stitched them down and it was done!

My secret to making motifs is to get the foundational elements in and the filling stuff just comes together after that. To me the main flowers, and stems are foundations then secondary flowers after that, then I add the filler flowers and leaves in around them.

In The Garden RR: Lillian's block

Last night and this afternoon I worked on adding some beads to the painted lace and then on a new motif that would help bring balance to the block. I also added beads to the SRE motif. I still haven't put the leaves on the vine yet but it is so easy to do that I figured I'd better go with my idea for the SRE motif before I forgot. I love how it turned out! It's like I followed a pattern but I didn't! I'm so proud of it! I even tried 2 new stitches (flowers) on it too. The french knot flower, which is the little yellow ones, and the twisted chain stitch as some rose buds! I love those little twisted chain stitch rose buds and I am thinking of using them for my next "A rose by any other name" challenge. They really make the perfect little bud and I am very impressed with them. I learned them in Sharon's Encrusted CQ online class. They are very easy too.
The motif has roses and purple clematis and it's like a wonderful bouquet right out of my garden! I think I want to make something similar on a jacket collar!

Click on the photos to see closer.