A geometric pattern for a biscornu - freebie!

Hi, summer crafting continues but this is the last week. Next week I am back to work. Crafting will not stop, of course not, but I might have to slow down a bit. :)


This is what happened since I last posted. I finished two small cross stitches: a teddy bear and an owl.
The teddy was done following a pattern from a magazine, as usual:

With the owl, I was looking through my stack of patterns, and of course, I could not find anything I really liked. Then I thought, I have been improvising with surface embroidery so much, what if I try to do something similar in cross stitch? So instead of a pattern I looked at a few owl photos, started with the eyes and the head above the eyes, that was the most difficult part. The rest of the body was easy. And the colours: this is for a little girl who loves owls and her favourite colour is pink. :)

Perhaps I can now draw the pattern for the owl.

I am almost done with warping my loom. I have threaded the reed and the heddles, now I only have to roll the warp up, but for this I need help.

I also started on my second quilt. This is going to be a king size (or something like this, huge, anyway, to cover my bed). Half of the block are done. The other half will be the same block but with different colours.
I am following this pattern, although I made a mistake when I was putting my blocks together, so they are not exactly the same as in the pattern. But I don't mind. :D

And finally, I have been drawing some geometric patterns in my cross stitch program. Here is the first one: just the right size for a biscornu, but it can also be used as a separate motif for a card, or as border in a row - in this case omit the backstitch line around it, that is only necessary if you are sewing it together as a biscornu.

Good luck with it, happy stitching.

Summer crafting: quilting, embroidery and a cross stitch freebie!

Hello, hello, I am still here enjoying my summer holiday. Apart from going to the sea yesterday (Oh, how lovely it was!) I was at home all the time and was keeping busy with all kinds of crafts.

First of all, I finally finished my first quilt. Do you remember? I wrote about it ages ago, when I started quilting it, I realised there were mistakes and that put me off it. Now I took it out, finished the quilting in a day (decided not to worry too much about the mistakes, just continue), made a scrappy binding and sewed it on with the machine. It is far from perfect but for a first quilt it is not too bad. If I may say so. I just love it :D

I am planning to make more quilts, definitely. I have already chosen a pattern and even cut the fabric for a huge overcast for my bed, but didn't want to start it until this one was finished. Now I can start it. Soon! But I also plan to do some small practise pieces to learn quilting, while I am doing the piecing for it. I hope that one will be much better. And I am thinking to sew the binding by hand!

Pictures:

I wanted to show my ongoing embroidery pieces to you. Do you ever stitch without a pattern? Just like doodling? Long ago I posted some improvised embroideries I did on felt, now I have some more on all kinds of leftover fabric.
Most of them I started at school. With year 5 classes I do a hand sewing unit, and with year 6 an embroidery unit. With most classes there comes a time when everyone is happily (or grudgingly) settled down with their work and I don't need to run around showing them the different steps. I sit down among my students and take out something to work on. It cannot be something very complicated because I am often interrupted, and of course, my main focus is on the children. But I found they like watching me actually make something, not only explain all the time, sometimes they even get inspired by my work.
Then it happened that I threw that piece of fabric with the needle and thread in my bag so I could stitch a bit on my way home, or while waiting at the dentist etc. That meant that next lesson I had to start a new one, right? :D


So here they are, not finished yet but they will slowly become something.

I also have this piece of Hungarian folk embroidery that I started a while back and pick it up once in a while to practice the special stitch it uses. It is very typical of the Hungarian area in Romania, and it is done with a stitch similar to the open chain stitch (see Mary Corbet's video here) except the stitches are laid very close to each other. It was not easy to learn and I am still not really good at it. First I constantly took it out but that is quite difficult, so I decided to just go on and hope to get better in time.

The next piece is a little experiment. Stephen bought for me a pile of old snaps and hook-and-eye fasteners once and I was thinking perhaps I could use them for decorative effect. So I sewed some hooks on the fabric, wrapped some thick thread around them, and the plan is to sew them down couching-style, also add some stitches around the hooks. We will see what happens to it. :)

The cross stitch I made I have already shown here (the birds), but now I am planning some more. I have to finish 3 squares for the charity quilts till the end of September, so I am working on those now. After that I will make some things to sell in my webshop. I have been working on some patterns, will show them later. But there is a small one, a biscornu pattern that I would like to share with you.

It is a red biscornu again, I just love red embroidery, but of course, you can use other colours too.

Please enjoy it and feel free to share it with others.

Click on the picture to get the pdf pattern. Happy stitching!

Crazy quilting again

I have been late finishing my April block for the CQJP, I know, I know, shame on me. I started it too late, had an idea and as I started working on it, I didn't really like how it turned out, so now I am a bit stuck...

On the other hand, I finished the next one. It is a bit of cheating, really, because this was made for another purpose, but I think I will send it in anyway.

In the school where I teach, we have a very small class of year 9 students who are graduating. We are a new school and of course, not many kids would change school for their final year. So we have only 11 students - but they are a very special bunch. We love them all. That's why I was asked if we can make some textile project that they can leave behind, something to remind us of our first year-9 class.
I suggested a quilt and the kids liked the idea. I gave them each a piece of fabric and told them to do something with it - embroider, applique, whatever they want and they turned out great. However, as there is only 11 of them, I promised to make one myself, so we can put it together 3 x 4.

So this is my block for the 9Q class-quilt. I wanted to keep it simple, so as not to overpower their own work. But also wanted it to be beautiful. They like it. :)

And some details. I love the stick-figures. Didn't really plan them, just improvised as I was going.

Geometric quilt cross stitch pattern

I have made another quilt-style cross stitch pattern.

The smaller squares, I think, are perfect for a biscornu or ornament and the bigger is just the right size to stitch for a needlebook, if you fold it in the middle.

You can also stitch it vertically, for a book cover. This is what I plan to do with it when I have time.


The colours are:

326 rose vy dp
3778 terra cotta lt

and the white squares are left empty, assissi-style, but of course, you can stitch them or substitute your favourite colours.

I hope someone out there will find pleasure in stitching these. :)

Log cabin quilt cross stitch pattern

Hello, dear friends.


I have made another quilt style pattern. If you haven't seen the older one, here it is, near the end of this post: http://worldaccordingtoagi.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-cross-stitch-patterns.html (for some reason posting a link doesn't work)


I stitched it - it is a good pattern if you want something that requires little concentration when you are tired or need a break from a more complicated pattern. I enjoyed stitching it. Then I thought I would make a mini log-cabin quilt as a backing piece and make a pincushion. It didn't turn out very good but I still like it. :)

This is what it looks like.





And here is the pattern for you. I simply left the white squares empty, but you can stitch them white or perhaps you can add some metallic here, whatever you like. Enjoy it. :)

a new quick stitch

I stitched one the designes I made, because I really needed something colourful to lift my spirits.

Here it is. I decided to leave out the backstitch and French knots in the fourth square but I might stitch it again with doing some backstitch in the other squares, too.