New freebies - finally

I am so sorry I haven't been here for so long. It's been a very busy time with university, work and some illness. It doesn't seem to be any better until the end of this term, but I will try to update the blog more often.

I know I promised a knitting pattern. I have started to make one more pullover, thinking to take notes as I go, but had to stop because I had so much else to do. I will come back to it soon, hopefully. I cannot knit much, only 15-20 minutes at a time usually, because I have a pain in my left shoulder.

Anyway, I would like to show you guys a few pictures of what I did for the university. We worked with embroidery. I have done lots of embroidery, so I wanted to try something new. I learnt needle lace, goldwork techniques and tried embroidery on materials I had never used before: tulle, organza and other very thin, see-through material.

I also learnt the basics of lace-making at university. It was so cool! I wish I had time to do more.

I also created a cross stitch freebie. There are two versions, one for a card and one for a bookmark. I hope this can bring some spring-feeling to you. Enjoy!

Happy Easter everyone! And happy spring!

Happy New Year

Wishing you all a very happy 2016.

Christmas stitching 1

Perhaps you could guess from the pictures in my previous post: I was again selling some of my things at the Christmas market. I went to Vattholma julmarknad, this is near where we live, about 20 km from Uppsala, and also to Hågaby - this is in town. They went OK, not too good but better than lat year. I had to realise, again, that you cannot really make profit on needlework. At least I got back the cost of the material.

After the two big markets, I also did small ones in the staff room of my school, and at my boyfriend´s workplace. All the money from those I sent to a charity, and that felt really good.


So here are some of the things I made.

You may remember from the last two years that I love making small embroidered felt ornaments.

I made the usual read and white ones. Forgot to take a good picture of them, and now only have a few left, not the most beautiful ones. They looked like these, but there were different shapes, hearts and stars, decorated with applique, embroidery and beads.

Here is a detail from the above picture on the market, not a really good one but perhaps you can see the variety.

But my favourites were these white ornaments, embroidered with gold metallic thread. Unfortunately they were not as popular a the red-white combination. (Swedish people are quite traditional when it comes to their Christmas decorations.)

This time I also tried making some cross stitched ornaments. It was simply that I missed cross stitch, I didn´t stitch so much lately with all the university assignments. It was fun to stitch them - but did not sell many. I still have a lot of them left.

The ones with the red felt around them were not so easy to make: the felt stretched out of shape a little. Perhaps I should have starched it a bit before cutting.

I also made some felted ball ornaments. They are actually recycling: we make them at school, during the felting unit, and kids often leave them behind if they do not turn out as they expected. So I collected them, worked on them a bit more to make them fully felted, then dyed them in kool-aid. :) Then added some embroidery and beads.

And this year again I made the little walnut-babies. I love them, they have such a great feeling to them, old-fashioned, natural, cute... They speak of Christmas to me.

I wrote about how to make them here. This time I embroidered the star in the middle instead of glueing.



And finally, a few pictures about my embroideries that I made in the summer with flowers and grass. In case you have been wondering how they turned out after 5 months.
They still look quite good. The two flower-pieces haven´t changed at all, the grass has dried but still looks OK. They hang here above my sewing machine, I love looking at them.

Next time I will be coming back with describing my recycling Christmas projects. Watch this place.

Until then, happy stitching.

Agi

Merry Christmas. Boldog karácsonyt! God Jul!

I wish all my dear readers a Merry Christmas, relaxing holiday time with lots of good food and needlework. :)
I hope Santa has been listening and will bring you - and me ;) - lots of yarn, thread, fabric, books etc.

Here are a few pictures of what I have been up to lately. Promise to come with some real posts soon - before the New Year. Promise :)

Another experiment - "temporary embroidery"

I have been playing around with embroidery and nature again. This time I tried to use flowers, leaves and grasses instead of thread in my embroidery. To make things easier, I chose a loosely woven evenwave fabric, and pulled out some threads.

Then I collected some grass and some flowers, just in front of the house. I wove them in in the places where the threads were pulled out, but I found that some of the thiner ones can go in other places too, they could be pulled between the threads of the fabric.

Here is the result.

I am not sure this will look as nice as the previous experiments after a while. The flowers started to bend their heads even as I was working with them.
But I like it so. Part of natures beauty is, I think, that we know it is fleeting, it is there now, but does not stay the same for long. This temporary, or ephemeral embroidery pays homage to this feature of nature.
But even if my embroidery loses its beauty, the photos will keep it forever. I just wish I could take better ones.

Also, embroidering with plants, and preserving them in a photo, could be a nice way of recording the variety of nature in different seasons, or as we travel.

Embrodery experiments with flowers

Hello, everyone. Hope you are having a lovely summer.

I have actually started working this week. But before that, we went to Hungary and had some lovely time, except that it was so hot, it was too much. I loved coming back to Sweden.

During the holiday I only did a little crafting. I knitted a very simple pullover, I will show it next time.
And I did some embroidery. When I got homework at the university course to do experiments with knitting and sewing, I was a bit nervous, wasn't sure how to experiment, felt a bit insecure. But I actually got to like it. So I decided that I wanted to try something new with embroidery: I tried using real flowers.

I made two pieces: one with a piece of yarrow that, I was hoping, will dry nicely on the fabric - and it does, so far. On the other, I used a few very tiny flowers with colourful petals, and then I pressed them. I thought that the petals may even colour the fabric a bit, but they did not. Still, I like the result a lot. I am curious what will happen to the pressed ones with time.

Here are some pictures:


Hanging on my wall:

On the first one I used feather stitch (without drawing any lines, hence little uneven) and French knots. I took this picture when the yarrow was still fresh:

On the second one it was some lazy daisies and just one straight stitches. Here the flowers were still fresh:

After pressing:

I have one more idea, not saying anything more. I will try at the weekend and we will see how it goes. Watch this place.

Anyone willing to come with me on this journey? It is GREAT FUN!