forest friends for katie

happy birthday, katie! for a dear friend's birthday, i made her a forest friend from sublime stitching. she loves pink. so.... why not make a fuzzy squirrel?? i used a running stitch, a back stitch (my favorite!), and a stem stitch (have been working on improving that technique).

why the "lalalalalala" at the bottom? there was space, and it was goofy.

sugar skulls

so it's been forever... all apologies. i love to stitch, but blogging isn't my strong point.

so i was invited to a 'mexican halloween party'. my friends had plenty of taco meat & supplies from a fundraiser they threw earlier... and since it was a theme party, i figured that i'd take a tank top and stitch one of jenny hart's sugar skulls on my shirt. i took some fun bright colors and whipped this together.

it made me smile!

teeny vulgar stitches

tried out an experiment of using a very small weave and cross stitch. the final product is about 3 or so inches tall. :) made from a julie jackson/subversive cross stitch pattern:

gave it to my friend stephanie. if you know mama steph; you know that this is right up her vulgar-mouthed alley. love you mama!

happy valentines day, baby.

we spent a wonderfully relaxing valentines day at home, catching up on DVR together, while he wasn't allowed to look at what i was working on. i figured that i'd combine our shared love of law & order & my new hobby.

have you seen the svutines? this artist is brilliant. http://www.brandonbird.com/svutines.html

i really wanted to try a portrait. a portrait in embroidery sounded like such a challenge. now... i'm not an artist. so what will i try out? a SVUTine already had a line drawing aspect to it, so i figured i'd give it a shot.

i took a valentine with dr. huang (i DARE NOT begin with his precious Marishka Hargitay/Olivia Benson!!!), traced it onto the material from the laptop screen to fabric, using my disappearing ink pen, and began. here are a few "in-progress" shots:

he appreciated the effort & had a big goofy grin after i gave it to him. now i should put it on the wall sometime...? not sure what else to do with it... :)

julie west patterns

at the jenny hart workshop, i picked up a packet of patterns from julie west. some very fun and cute designs. i put them together onto a double hoop product. i found some fun quilting squares in an effort to see how embroidering onto a patterned fabric would work out. it was an interesting project to work on, to not let the pattern of the fabric deter from the design that i was about to stitch on. it's something to work on. maybe i should use a "smaller" pattern to stitch on?

april showers...
bring may flowers!
buzz buzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..............
the set.

and let's not forget the signature that i try to put onto my designs (not all; just some)....

hope you like 'em, katie! gotta package them up for you & actually *give* them to you sometime, huh. :)

AHOY!!!

ahoy, matey!!

i believe this is from a sublime stitching design... just felt like making an anchor one day. an entire project using satin stitch. i like the silvery thread; it was very very smooth, which was new to me. what do you think?

doves

i did a set of doves & gave them to julia - i thought they were sweet & gentle. the border was created by green & yellow thread that i sort of figured out a weave to make a design around them. a few little flaws here & there, but cute, i thought...