Embroidered Fall Bird

My first Tea Towel Tour 4 embroidery is done! This chickadee is from a free pattern offered by Andrea Zuill, 'Badbird", at her blog. Get your copy HERE.


I put a batik binding on my towel in 2 contrasting fall colors. I used my one-inch clover bias tape maker for it. This time I made it into a double fold binding by ironing it in half again lengthwise and top stitching it. I like the way it looks with this method much better than the other way I've done it.

This is the last of my stash of blank flour sack tea towels and I haven't been totally happy with the weave of these although they are very soft. I found some very nice blank towels at Cost Plus World Market today. They were about $10 US for a set of 4. The weave reminds me of the incredibly nice texture of the Sublime Stitching towel we test drove in our first Tea Towel Tour. HERE is a link. Scroll down to the one called "OUR FAVORITE Tea Towel". It is $6 US, but it is a superior quality.

We are camping this weekend and the weather promises to be comfortable and dry. We haven't camped in about 2 summers so we are really looking forward to it, but I have no idea what our equipment looks like. For all I know, critters may have set up house in our tent bag that we stored in the garage last winter...

Mermaids

Mermaids, originally uploaded by IamSusie.

In addition to making things from felt and collecting hankies, I like to embroider. I made this little pillow from a drawing my 6-year old daughter made. I was scrambling to stay on budget for gifts at Christmas. My daughter now makes little pictures all the time for me to "'broider". Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to the rest of them yet. She was very proud of the way she drew the purple bikini to cover the mermaid's "private spots".

That's fabric crayon filling in the large areas. I like embroidery, but not enough to satin stitch all that in. I was fairly certain that I had ruined the little project with the crayon until I heat set it with the iron. That smoothed out the color considerably.

My son has had a special resource teacher in addition to his classroom teacher for the last 2 years. This is the drawing he made of Mr.M that I embroidered into an ornament for him.

Doing this from my kids drawings was really satisfying and pretty simple. I just found some transfer paper at the craft store, traced the pictures onto it and then rubbed it onto my fabric.

I do prefer iron on transfers, but this worked great. I like to use the chain stitch with 2 or 3 strands of embroidery floss. It makes a bulky, forgiving line.

It is my dream to embroider tea towels for everyone with cute little children's drawings.
*sigh* I have many crafty dreams....