Hoopla Swap 3

Check out my Craft Critique review of the terrific book Scandinavian Stitches by Kasja Wikman. The article ran a few weeks ago and I did all the crafting in a flurry before Christmas.The book is full of terrific seasonal projects. I highly recommend it.

I also recently did another Hoopla swap on Craftster. For this one, we needed to exchange a tiny 2 to 3 inch hoop motif. Because if the small size and because my partner, pugwash, mentioned him in her sign up information, I stitched up a little Mario:





A few days later the hoop she stitched for me arrived. We were completely on the same wavelength because she did a piranha plant for me:



Swapping is really fun. Thanks, Pugwash!

Hoopla Round 2

Look what Luckdragon stitched for me in the Embroidery Hoopla Round 2 swap on Craftster!

I love the french knot lei on the little boy. She did a little bit of crayon tinting and it makes a very nice effect. I also like the thick texture of the girl's hair.

I just signed up for round 3 of this swap. This one went very fast and was a lot easier than the Tea Towel Tours I used to co-organize. Those were an extravaganza of messages, mailouts, and communications. This is a simple exchange with no extras. I imagine a nice display wall of hoops as I do more swapping. I have a lovely collection of fully decorated tea towels from my last several embroidery swaps, but those are hard to display.

Check out this link with just the image posts from the swap and you won't have to read all of the chit-chat.

Tea Towel Tour 5

The Susie Can Stitch family is still around, but I've been busy and a little bit overwhelmed by various things lately. Only one more week of school and the kids are home for the holidays! The craft show I did a few weeks ago went well and I think it is one I may do again since both times I've done it have been successful.

I realized that I never shared with you the lovely Tea Towel that was stitched for me in our Tea Towel Tour 5 swap on Craftster!
As you can see, there is a large area for me to add my very own motif. I plan to get to that sometime. Probably after Christmas when things settle down a bit. Ugh.. those colors are all messed up in the above photo. The towel is white, not greenish and pinkish... Cloudy day with artificial light makes for bad pictures. I did want to share an ironed towel with you. THIS PHOTO has better lighting, but the towel needed to be pressed.

First, this is the stitching by Pearliepie. She used rich colors to stitch these beautiful stylized flowers for me. I love their folk arty feel and that outlining stitch is amazing:


Next is the stitching by j-q-adams. He uses variegated floss to great effect! I love the french knots and a bird motif was a theme I was thinking of going with until I decided not to specify a theme for this towel.


This is the stitching added by Kitten Wrangler. She did a Hungarian motif not even knowing that I am 1/4 Hungarian! This is amazing satin stitching and there is an unusual sort of weaving done on one of the flowers:


Here is the motif by SarahJ2001. I adore Hollyhocks, but I haven't been able to get them to grow here in my Chicagoland clay soil. Her stitching is full of charm and warmth and I love the pretty variety of colors she chose:


Finally, this is the stitching by Ritaizza. This is a design from a crewel work book she has. Crewel is a tapestry embroidery done in wool, but the desings are easily adapted to cotton floss. I think she has done a sort of twisted stem stitch on some of the flowers which adds a cool texture.


I absolutely love my towel! Thanks so much to my talented swap partners who kept up with our demanding swap!

Kawung Style Embroidery

I reviewed Dritz Mark-B-Gone Marking Pens for Craft Critique. Click HERE to read my article.

I also finished my last stitching for my Tea Towel Tour swap at Craftster. Click HERE to see our gallery. Find the "See Images Only" tab to edit out the chit-chat.

Kitten Wrangler indicated that she was interested in traditional Indonesian design so I did some research. I found mostly batik designs, but a motif I thought would translate to embroidery was this style of interlocking circles called "Kawung".



It is a beautiful loose weave linen cloth, so the circles came out very slightly wonky. Batik motifs are also imperfect, so I'm being authentic, right? I used DMC Color Variations embroidery floss for the circles. It is lovely floss! Note to family: Good Christmas gift for Susie is the multipack of Color Variations Floss.



Here is Kitten Wrangler's finished towel. Actually it is a napkin, but in this swap I call everything a towel regardless if it is an apron or something else. Click on the photo to go over to Flickr to see the labeled photo. I didn't do most of this lovely stitching!

Flirty Taco Chips

These are the flirty taco chips I stitched up for ritapizza in our Tea Towel Tour on Craftster. This is a pattern by Jacque Davis that she made available free in the Hoop Love group on Flickr. Get it HERE.



They are bathing in guacamole. I decided that if Rita doesn't like guacamole, then it is spinach dip. Rita reports that she does like guacamole so all is good! I used chain stitch throughout, except on the eyes and boys' faces. The chain stitch gives the ladies puffed up collagen lips which I like (in stitching, not in real life..)

Here in Chicagoland we have the best, most delicious corn chips ever in the history of taco chips. If you eat Tostitos, I am sorry for you. These are in every store in Chicagoland in big displays. They are so fresh they taste like they are right out of the fryer. They only have four ingredients: corn, lime, corn oil, and salt. They are made locally by El Ranchero. We call them "Chips-in-a-Green-Bag" at our house. I don't know if other people call them that, but it seems like when I say that everyone around here knows exactly the chips I refer to.


Interestingly, their price seems to fluctuate with the price of corn, but they are always a better price than commercial brands. My son is one of those kids who really likes very crunchy snacks. If we don't have green apples and Chips-in-a-Green-Bag in the house, I better get to the store quick!

Cowboy Small

This is Cowboy Small. He's the embroidery I finished for Pearliepie in our Tea Towel Tour swap on Craftster.

She wanted a Wild West Saloon theme, but I remembered this adorable children's book from our collection and wanted to stitch him up Here is his coiled up rope:

He's an image from a charming children's book first published in 1949. Lois Lenski won the Newberry Medal for children's literature and probably should have won a Caldecott Medal too.

Chain stitching throughout! I tried french knots for his eyes, but they pulled through so I used small satin stitching instead.

Clown Fish Embroidery

This is the clownfish embroidery I did for j_q_adams in our Tea Towel Tour 5 swap on Craftster. He wants an aquatic/oceanic theme for his towel, and I thought that the clownfish might be the most charming fish in the ocean. I remember teaching about the coral reef back when I was a teacher. The reef pictures I found just didn't have the appeal of this little guy.

His towel is a nice ecru color. I did my favorite chain stitches with 2 strands of embroidery floss. I used a coloring book image, (I think.. clown fish images were easy to find) and just started stitching the outline in black really late at night. About halfway around, I realized that doing the outline that way meant that I would have to fill-in a lot. I have a phobia about fill-in stitching. I don't know why, because I think these rows and swirls of chain stitches look cool.

Something else I noticed is that DMC embroidery floss is really nice and silky. The black I had was something I've had in my stash for a while, maybe Coats and Clark or something and it was just noticeably not as easy to work with.

Tea Towel Tour Round 5!

I think this might be my 7th Tea Towel Tour! This is the stitching I did for SarahJ2001:

Stalking her revealed a love for roller coasters, so I thought this coloring book motif would be perfect.

Whee!

And because I love it when people do these title motifs, but I never do it myself, here is SarahJ's stitching for her own towel. She says she is new to embroidery, but she did a great job!

In other news, I think we had the H1N1 flu in our house over the weekend. It hit my husband and son hard, but my daughter and I have no symptoms. It was a nasty flu, but it didn't last that long. Turns out there is no real way of knowing if it was the notorious virus going around because they can only test for that when symptoms are just beginning or at their worst, and.. uh... my guys were stuck in the bathroom at that point. In any case, we are on the mend, but we missed some fun Labor Day activities we were looking forward to!

Craftster Best of 2008

WooHoo! Craftster put up their Best of 2008 list and my colorful dyed lace made the best of list for Fiber Arts: Dyeing. I blogged the lace project HERE and shared it on Craftster HERE. I used this lace in a bunting for my daughter's birthday.



The Craftster list is a combination of most views and judgment of awesomeness by the moderators so I feel quite honored.

I'm on the list twice! Our Tea Towel Tour Round 3 was the most popular swap of 2008! Rectangel organizes the Tea Towel Tours and she is a huge part of why it is successful. It is not easy to keep everyone on track in a swap like that. My role is a co-organizer and group leader. That's my hapless Owl in the thumbnail pic they used. I stitched this for Fruitloops.



Speaking of stuff like this. I can hardly believe that I have contributed 258 photos of embroidery to the Flickr Embroidery Group. That makes me #3 of the top 5 contributors there (out of 2,826 members). Most of the embroidery is my own although I also share vintage work done by the women in my family and embroidery done for me in the swaps I've participated in. If you look at my submissions, you'll see that I embroider a lot of small felt applique.

New Tea Towel

My group is finished with round 4 of our Tea Towel Tour at Craftster. My towel has a woodland theme. I did the little birdie in the center from a free pattern by Andrea Zuill "Badbird".

This squirrel is by timpani~jax. So sweet. The leaves are incredibly finely stitched with only one strand of embroidery floss:


Bunny by UrsulaDiamond. Happy bunny is holding a bouquet of little flowers stitched with the lazy daisy stitch:


Sewphie stitched me this lovely fawn. I love the shading details under the belly and the white fur under the chin:


Sewsew-a-gogo stitched up this active squirrel. Can you see how she combined thread colors to do the fur?


Finally, Nannetta stitched up this busy mouse gathering up the beautiful bounty from the forest floor:



Didn't I have talented swap partners? I love my towel so much! What a fun swap!

Tulip Embroidery

After reading THIS, I've decided enough is enough, I must have a Pot of my own.... maybe for my birthday or Christmas. I have always preferred rice over pasta. I'm not quite sure why. I use our slow cooker, but I think The Pot will be better for us since I don't usually like to start cooking dinner in the slow cooker right after breakfast.

Here is my last embroidery for Timpani-jax in our Tea Towel Tour 4. Her towel has a 1920's theme and already has three pretty ladies and a cool vintage car so I did these art deco tulips.



I adapted a free vintage pattern available at Needlecrafter.com HERE. I didn't photograph the whole towel so it can be a surprise for the recipient.

A Sailor's Grave!

This is my latest Tea Towel Tour embroidery. Sewphie asked for a nautical/tattoo/ pinup/okay with skulls towel. Hers already had 2 pretty temptresses and a georgeous ship stitched on it, so I went with this. It was an image that kept coming up when I was searching for vintage tattoo images. Every time it came up I laughed. Her towel is already a bit racy and this is really a teetotaler's dire warning, isn't it?

It's an old Sailor Jerry Tattoo design. Check out THIS flickr photoset of a collection of these vintage designs. I'm hoping to stitch up a nautical pinup towel for my dad to use. So many projects!

Here is the towel so far. Only one person left! The detailed stitching by my swap partners is truly amazing. Check out our gallery HERE.


See the quilt underneath? That's a project for my mom that I've been working on for months. It just came back from the quilter's and all it needs is the binding and a label.

Virgo Embroidery

This is my latest embroidery for my Tea Towel Tour swap on Craftster. Nannetta asked for a Zodiac/celestial theme towel and her sign is Virgo. This Virgo pattern was posted in the Flickr group Hoop Love, HERE.


People are doing some amazing, impressive things with their fill-in stitches this round of our swap. I hesitate to start filling in areas because once I get started doing that, I want to fill everything in and then I feel like I might as well have appliqued the design.

I decided to do a sort of a wood block look for her hair and outline her dress with a double line of chain stitches.



My next towel is a nautical/pin-up/tattoo theme. I think if I keep doing these swaps, I'm going to have to invest in a tattoo design book, because it really is a popular theme and I try to be careful about copyrights even though our swaps are all just personal use gift type exchanges. Pin-ups just seem to get more and more popular!

Pegasus Embroidery

I call it Pegasus Dreams of Cupcakes. This is my latest contribution to our International Tea Towel Tour:


It's for Sewsew-a-gogo's 4-year old daughter who likes monsters and baking. I hope she also likes green horses with luxuriant purple hair and pink wings. In case you were wondering, I do all chain stitching with 2 strands of embroidery floss. I think I did a very small amount of back stitches on the nose and there are just a few french knots.

The pattern is available HERE with a Pegasus from Andrea Zuill. I added the cupcake.

Cross Stitching

I dusted off my cross stitch things to do this motif for UrsulaDiamond in our Tea Towel Tour. It has been at least 15 years since I've done any cross stitch. Ursula's towel (actually it is a rectangle of what I think is weavers cloth) was totally blank and she was very open about preferences. She suggested cross stitch and I was itching to get going on this all weekend when I was away with my family.



I used 14 count waste canvas for this. I found the free pattern online HERE at Alita Designs.

I did 4 repeats of the pattern. It would be incredibly lovely going across a whole surface. My daughter was trying to pay me a compliment by saying that it looks "store boughten". She hasn't quite learned that that isn't really what we are going for with our hand stitching, but she's sweet.

Stitching this was fun, but I remember why I quit doing cross stitch. It is very detailed and small. In the time it takes to do a small project like this you could sew up an entire quilt top. I did watch several fun movies on TV. Have you seen Waitress?

Dishcloth Swap

I stayed up really late the last 2 nights. The first night was because I couldn't tear myself away from watching Knocked Up, even though I've already seen it. Last night I stayed up sewing my Katie Jump Rope quilt. This morning my husband got both kids off to school and I slept until 10:00! Lucky Me! The down side is that I have to force myself to get back to a normal sleeping schedule because I am a night person and it is really easy for me to keep vampire hours.

I'm finished with my dishcloth swap on Craftster. My partner, ashestoashes, sent me a gorgeous set of blue and green washcloths for my kitchen. Aren't they nice?

Here's a closeup of her beautiful knitting:


I like knitting and knitting is the craft that got me hooked up to all the online crafting community in the first place. When I was teaching myself about 2.5 years ago, I went online to find some tutorials and simple patterns. I found all the forums and knitting was only the beginning of the inspiration I found online. It turns out, that I don't have the soul of a knitter, I prefer crochet and other needlework. Nothing is really quite like a knit dishcloth, however. I like crochet for the scrubbies and for potholders, but for the actual cloths, the suppleness of knitting is better.

Here's what I made for her. Her bathroom is blue, tan, and brown so I used those colors for this set of towels in the ballband pattern.

Knitting this pattern is surprisingly easy. I memorized it really quickly and now I want to make many more of them. The little scrubbies are crochet. I made a few for us to test drive to see if cotton scrubbers are actually useful or better as decoration. My daughter likes them in the bath.

Today I hope to get my quilt top done. I have to clear out the messy areas because our cleaning service is coming tomorrow. Our house is neat after they do their thing for about one evening and then the stuff migrates back out again. We really need just one more good work area in our house and some better storage.

Tea Towel Tour 3

My group is all finished stitching for round 3 of our Tea Towel Tour at Craftster. Check out the gallery HERE. The thread is well over 100 pages long now, so if you click on the tab that says "show images only" you can see the stitching and skip the chit-chat.

Here's my fantastic towel. I sent it out blank except for the bias trim. My partners all used just a little bit of red on their motifs and that really unifies the whole thing.


This geisha is by AlwaysInspired. Her name is O-Ren because AlwaysInspired was watching Kill Bill when she stitched her.


Here is an overheated saucepot embroidery by KittyKill. This is an Aunt Martha pattern packet that I also have and love.


GatsbyGirl designed these heart flower applique flowers herself. They are ironed on with fuseable web and then the border is chain stitched.


Fruitloops did this fleeing pear and happy cherry embroidery. She found these patterns at Hoop Love on Flickr.


Lovebirds by Amyracinrose in a tea towel swap on Craftster. These birds are a Sublime Stitching pattern and I think they are in the new CraftPad.


Thanks to all my partners and our fearless organizer, Rectangel!

Phew, I was afraid I wouldn't get that posted before I left town to go on our first camp out with the Boy Scouts. I'm a bit apprehensive (so is my son and that's why I'm going) because it's still pretty cold out and I really don't know all the other volunteer dads. One mom friend of mine is also accompanying her son, but he's been in poor health so my fear is that they'll stay home. I'm not too excited being the only woman camping with a bunch of men and boys, although they are all very nice people. Since I'm not a leader, I think we adult tag-alongs can do our own thing during the day when the boys are rock climbing and stuff, but I don't know if I'll have my own car. Add to that the fact that it is supposed to be rainy this weekend. I'm pretty sure there is a shower at this campground, but I wish my husband didn't have a prior commitment and could go with us. I'm planning to hang in and enjoy it! I do love camping!