Finished: August Stitch-a-Long (& a bonus sea star)

I finished this in August, placed it in the hoop, and took a photo for posting to the Flickr group as we watched Irene's progress towards us; I wanted a photo up just in case we lost power! But now I've framed it properly, so here it is again--not photographed on the wall, as I'd hoped, but outside on the deck, where the light was much better.

If you click on that, it should get a little bigger. This was so much fun to stitch, and I have no doubt that these vibrant colors will brighten my wall and my day in the dead of winter.

Also recently finished, another tide pool creature, this time on one of the "flour sack" dishtowels I bought for this reason. I'm not sure how these are going to hold up--it's a really, really loose weave, which you can see in the photo.

He's cute, though, isn't he? I used outline stitch (or maybe stem stitch; I can never keep those two straight) for the outline, seed stitch in both yellow and orange for the inside, backstitch for the contour lines, and a French knot for the madreporite. I think if I ever get around to offering this whole set as a pattern (I'd have to stitch them all first, and get a nice clean copy in PDF format) I'll have to include information about each animal. They're just such cool creatures.

It's not as "clean" as I'd like--the loose weave! It didn't help matters--but I still like it. I haven't decided if I'll continue with my original plan to stitch four animals along the bottom of this dishtowel, or if I'll switch to the napkins, which are a little sturdier, and just do one per napkin.

Happy Labor Day weekend, to those in the US. Enjoy the unofficial last (*sniff!*) weekend of summer!

My Creative Space: August 25

My goodness, where did the week go? In between a full and busy weekend and a few days having my nearly grown-up niece to stay, I managed to craft a little.

First up, today is my husband's birthday. After the boys were so successful in creating their own superhero shirts, I suggested we make a shirt for their dad's surprise gift. They know his favorite superhero is Wolverine, so despite the fact that Wolverine doesn't really have a symbol like some other superheroes, they were adamant(ium) (ha! you'd have to know superheroes, I guess, to get that). We ended up with a three-color deal, lots of arguing spirited debate about design and placement, and the banishment of one child altogether when it became clear that he was arguing because he likes to argue. The shirt, shown here before I ironed it, was largely the work of my nine-year-old (although I cut and ironed the stencils).

That X in the circle is the X-men logo, but you can tell the shirt represents Wolverine because of the claws coming in from the side. (I know more about superheroes than I ever wanted to, and most of it has seeped in without my conscious knowledge.)

Next up... I'm almost done with my Feeling Stitchy August Stitch-a-long piece--and in case you missed it, John had such kind words to say about my progress as of last week; he totally made my Saturday morning--so I put it in the hoop to see what I want to do next. Up until that point I'd been embroidering at whim, but I figured I should make sure what I have goes into the hoop in which I want to frame it in a logical way. I don't want to cut off any of the embroidered bits. So I took this photo to help me remember which part I'd decided to "frame."

It's a poor, flash-lit photo, but really, I took it so I wouldn't forget. Then I roughly sketched it out so I wouldn't forget. I'll probably forget anyway. But I'm almost done, at any rate, and just in time, Wendi posted a video on how to neatly frame embroidery in a hoop; I was kind of fuzzy on how to do that.

The final picture: a heap of stuff on my ironing board, which represents projects to come.

The caterpillar is on one side of a folded panel; on the other is the butterfly, of course! I bought this when we visited the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art about a week and a half ago, because my daughter would like a caterpillar pillow. I haven't decided if I'll make a throw pillow out of it and put it over a pillow form, or if I'll get some coordinating fabric so it's large enough for a pillow case. I wanted to wash it first and then measure it again. So now it's been washed, and it needs an iron. (You can see the full panel on this page; it's the first item.)

The pile of white cloth to the left is four flour sack dishtowels from Target. Nothing fancy, but I wanted some plain dishtowels for embroidery. I've been working on more tide pool drawings and I'm just about ready to stitch, once I finish my stitch-a-long piece.

Phew! And along with all that, there was an earthquake (I didn't feel it, but I was on the edge of an island in the Bay, and I wonder if the crazy waves right about that time were related) and now we're bracing for a hurricane. The forecast keeps changing, so we'll get ready while we wait to see what the ultimate danger is. This weekend is my kids' last before school starts on Tuesday. I'd planned to fit in one last beach visit on their last day of summer vacation, but either way, somehow I don't think that's going to happen!

What's been keeping you busy? And you can see lots more creative spaces here.

Progress: August Stich-a-Long

(Don't forget to enter to win some starter embroidery supplies!)

Once I decided to use the flower fabric for Feeling Stitchy's August Stitch-a-Long, I spent one evening mainly staring at it, not at all sure where to begin. Because I'm new to embroidery, my stitch vocabulary--the stitches I know myself--is fairly small. With time, I'll be able to look at an area and scroll through several possibilities for stitches in my head. But right now I feel so limited, like I need a good thesaurus. After I stared, I consulted the two embroidery books I own (Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches and Stich-opedia) and gained my footing a bit. But still, I can't believe it took me so long to remember stem stitch as an option, and I see so much I'd change if I started over. But enough. Let's take a look at my progress!

I began by finding an area of fabric that had a larger flower that I wanted to stitch, and then I started with the lines in the leaves (which I now wish I'd used stem stitch for). Then I worked on the center of the large flower, and I began to fall a bit in love with this project.

I used satin stitch for the yellow ring and purple, French knots for the very center, and seed stitch for the pink. (The colors are almost true but not quite; I waited for the rain to clear and finally set this down right by the slider before we lost the little natural light we received today.) I've tried to work the areas from back to front; in other words, stitching the foreground last, so I'm not stitching a petal that overlaps a leaf before I stitch the leaf.

Speaking of leaves, I really like this one:

My satin stitch is not the best, so I used a little backstitch after I filled in those red polka dots, to define them a bit more. Then I read I should do that in reverse: backstitch, then work the satin stitch over the edges of the backstitching. I'll try that next time. The black circles are backstitched with two strands of floss, and I outlined the leaf with chain stitch, um, just because.

This little flower was also fun, although now I wish I'd used yellow stem stitch to outline instead of backstitch. I used cross-stitches for the orange band and French knots for the pink. Underneath is a narrow circle of green.

Back to the larger flower up above. When I finally remembered stem stitch, I decided to use it for all the black doodles on the petals, again using just two strands--I don't want the black to be overwhelming. I'm kind of tickled with the way it looks.

I'm thinking of outlining those petals in orange buttonhole stitches.

Another thing I'm finding interesting is the ways the colors interact. Look at the big picture again:

The lines on the two purple leaves and the orange leaf are all the same red-orange color, but it really looks pink on the purple background. I find myself squinting and holding the floss against the fabric in good light to reassure myself that I'm getting it right.

So, if I had to start again, I might do some things differently, but it's all part of the learning process, and I'm finding this really fun. It's interesting that I've read that stitching on printed fabric is a good place for beginners to start, because like I said, if you only know a few stitches, that's all you think of to use. I bet if I tried something like this again in a few months it would turn out very different, just because I'd know more.

I'm thinking this will end up in a painted-to-match hoop, hung on the wall. But first I have to learn how I'm supposed to back it and all for that....

August Stitch-a-Long: The Next Embroidery Project

Do you read the Feeling Stitchy blog? (If you embroider, or have any interest in beginning to, you should!) I began following shortly after I fell headlong into the embroidery rabbit hole, but I've never joined in with a stitch-a-long before. They host them every month. Either I'm busy with something else, or the pattern doesn't speak to me, or the pattern speaks to me and says, "Be intimidated!" THIS month, though, I'm on the ball. This month, the stitch-a-long is to stitch on fabric of your choice, following the design. This is something I've had in the back of my mind to get to anyway, so this seems like perfect timing. (I did a little bit of this on one of my sewn cuffs, here.) So, the first step is to decide what fabric.

First I looked in stash. I have some cool dragon fabric (I didn't photograph it), but the dragon is HUGE. I mean, HUGE. It would take forever to go over it in thread, plus then what would I do with it? So I decided that would become something else... someday. On the way home from the library with all the kids the other day, I ducked into the local quilting store and bought a couple fat quarters.

There weren't a lot of options for large-patterned fat quarters, so I went with the one on the right. I bought the one on the left because I liked it and thought it might make a cute sewn cuff. But I also have this fat quarter in stash, sent to me from Tasmania by Tinkingbell:

At first I thought those little insects were way too small for stitching, but I put it to the kids, and we really looked at all the fabrics. We all like the Australian fabric, and we thought this guy would look great stitched up:

I had all the colors I needed except for the darkest green, too. So we went to pick up some dark green floss, and I took the other fabrics with me. We picked out loads of floss colors and then had to leave everything behind when the line at the store (let's say, oh, Joanns) didn't move for ten minutes. And my 7yo instigated my 2yo to misbehave, and she couldn't stop grabbing all that cheap tacky stuff they put along the maze they make you stand in while you wait to check out. And wait, and wait, because they understaff. And then when I picked her up, she inexplicably began screaming at the top of her lungs--not her usual MO--and then for the first time in nearly ten years of parenting I had to leave a check-out line with a screaming child, abandoning everything. (I include all this for any other moms out there who wonder about how come it all looks so easy on the Internet to tell you that it's not.)

So. I was convinced to try again, with only my oldest along, and this is what we have.

The Australian fabric, missing the brown floss: Where did I put that when I took this photo?!

The purple fabric

The flowers

What do you think? I put a poll in the sidebar... I'd love to know which you'd stitch up first, if you were me (because I have a feeling I'll get to all of them eventually). While I still think the purple-printed fabric would make a nice embroidered cuff, I also think hooping a circle of it and stitching up some of the design would look really cool. I love the colors in the flowered fabric. And, of course, the Australian fabric is unique and fun... but maybe I'd want to keep that whole and not go chopping it up for that one section.

Please click through and vote, and feel free to leave a comment leaving your reasoning as well!

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If you've considered taking up embroidery but haven't yet, make sure you check back next week. I'll have a giveaway of the basics you need to get started.