Howdy howdy! I did not work on my stumpwork at all, sadly. But I did start reading The Ashely Book of Knots. Clifford Ashley spent over a decade writing this book, having toured all kinds of industries (but mostly sailing) to learn every knot he could gather. The man...
You've read about my idea for this here, right? Ok! See all completed TAST posts here. Obviously this hasn't been turned into bunting yet; I plan to do that all at the end. Voila! Front and back, for posterity's sake:) The "TAST 2018" title and words in black are not...
Howdy Howdy! Today is the first Work In Progress (WIP) Wednesday where I will share weekly with you what I've got going on behind the scenes, so to speak. I will also discuss my Take a Stitch Tuesday (TAST) adventure with you, so stick around for a fantastic,...
A guild member gifted me some amazing fabric - lots of it. I cannot wait to get going on a crazy quilt design! To thank her, I wanted to make her an ornament. The guild had a holiday dinner with an ornament exchange so I was hopeful to make two. Alas, I had zero...
You might recall that I signed up for two Craftsy courses earlier this year. Today, I present to you my first finished project, from Embroidering Texture and Dimension from Sue Spargo which is a lesson in textured embroidery. I ordered her fabric kit but could not...
This is actually the last "completed" project I have done recently. I was doing some archaeology work this summer and stayed with a gal named Ellie. She teaches yoga and raises bees! I convinced her cat Sampson to fall in love with me, too. I wanted to give Ellie...
So I fell off the blogging wagon a bit when Apple decided to stop supporting Aperture and therefore managing photos became extraordinarily menacing. Boy got me Lightroom but I could not get on board. Part of that was how it imported my Aperture library all fungled and...
I embroidered three more buttons for my guild's State Day event later this year. Remember, these each fit within a 1-inch diameter circle! Two patterns came from 500 Simply Charming Designs for Embroidery. Everyone's favorite is that wee mouse! And one came out of...
As a self-taught sewing beginner, I have not purchased many patterns. Almost everything sewn here at theCrafties has been found through the generosity of people providing their ideas for free online (or gifted to me by people I know!). However, as I am moving into an...
One of the things I am trying is wrapping my hoops. I first learned of this from a Craftsy class for Celeste Chalasani's Stumpwork: Raised Embroidery Essentials (no, I have not started this project yet; I need more time to feel ready for it!). I know that several...
At my last embroidery guild meeting, we learned how to do blackwork embroidery and were shown the EGA pattern Learning to Love Blackwork by Linda Dorril (if you become an EGA member, you will have access to it to try for yourself!). I have come across blackwork...
So, I did it - I bought the rest of the project from a seller on eBay! I was shocked by how small each panel was - but then I read the print on the actual project and realized that they were exactly the size they are suppose to be! Ha! Anyway, I stitched them up real...
What is old is new again! This is a candlewick embroidery project (yet another aspect of sewing I had never heard of - though it kind of makes sense considering I was all of 4 years old at the time this hit the shops, as marked by the printed date on the bottom of the...
My embroidery guild is hosting the State Day this year, so each member is assigned to make two buttons. I enjoyed making such tiny (one inch) pieces so of course I made more (and I might still, yet!). This pattern might look familiar to you: it is the same I used for...
My MIL and I attended our first embroidery guild meeting in March. The project for the meeting was a ribbon candy ornament by Calico Crossroads using perforated paper. I hadn't heard of such a thing! But, I signed up for it and worked on it here and there since....
I have two cats. Sasha is the kitten of the family, and her spunky personality often gets her into trouble. Maya, three years older, is like a little old lady cat, prim and proper, and she rarely does anything wrong. The one thing she does (and Sasha actually...
So in yesterday's post, I mentioned that the embroidery guild gave us a needle book and a pattern to make a bunny on the cover. Well, ta da! I added my own little details: french knots in the top and bottom border, eye, and nose; a two-color vertical line at the...
One of the things I've done this year is sign up for some creative classes. Craftsy was offering a buy-one-get-one event in January so I enrolled in my first two: Embroidering Texture and Dimension by Hand with Sue Spargo and Stumpwork: Raised Embroidery...
As I mentioned last time, I purchased my first pattern off of etsy from KnottyDickens and printed it directly to the fabric via a short tutorial at NeedlenThread. I never intended to stitch the phrase on it, so before I printed it, I edited the image and made the...
I hadn't posted a lot there toward the end of the year, huh? I was in the midst of a tough semester, to sugar coat it. I survived, so there is that! 2017 is going great. I hope that with my new teaching schedule and perspective on life that I'll post more often...