mid-90s handkerchief

I got very interested in embroidery in college (and have pics of samples I did then to upload, too - I'm going to piece them onto - into? - my band sampler), but then got caught up in quilting, and then stamping, and didn't pick up embroidery again until my late husband and I moved to Florida in 1993. There was a quilt store called Rainbow's End in Dunedin that we found when we first lived in St. Petersburg (I loved St. Pete!!) which was just AMAZING. Still the largest quilt store I've ever seen. And they carried silk ribbon and books by Judith Baker Montano!! I just love her. I was SO excited when I found her website last year and saw that she does a three day Crazy Quilt Retreat every November in WICHITA, but then I couldn't go. I am determined to go this year!

Anyway, her books inspired me to make a set of four handkerchiefs for my husband. This is one of them, which I then used in a shadowbox for my bathroom (with his shaving brush and pocketwatch). One was buried with him, and go figure, I never took a picture of it (silly me). I can't remember which one that was. One was a rocket, one was wheat, and one was cattails with dragonflies. The willow tree has always been my favorite, though (probably why I know where it is and not the others!)







It was hard to get close-ups of the tree. I deleted a lot of them. I can't even really tell what stitch I used on the trunk - it looks almost like a braid. I'm guessing it was a chain stitch of some sort, since I really, really love chain stitch. :-)

I got off work at something like 6:30 in the morning, and Ian didn't get off work until around 8 most mornings because he always stayed late. So, I would just sit up there in the ICU breakroom (I worked in the lab, he was an ICU nurse) and embroider while he finished up. It was very domestic. :-)

Mail rec'd!

The holidays kind of got me off track with posting about this, but:

Saturday, I got an envelope from Sublime Stitching! In it was not only the Spaced Out sheet, but also the Bon Voyage sheet!!! How cool is that? I am on my way upstairs to iron the Rocket gal on to my sampler - will post pics later today. :-)

Cute embroidered coffee cuff, and embroidery design thoughts

Wild Olive's Coffee Cuff

This is a very cute pattern/tutorial for a coffee cuff that I found today while wandering through blogs. I need to make some! I wish my yard of felt wasn't in Texas.

I've been watching Enterprise on the SciFi channel the last couple of days (I saw Star Trek - the new movie - Sunday, and have been on a major Star Trek kick since then) (of course, I wear my Starfleet Academy Class ring, which I got in Las Vegas ten years ago, every day, so it's not like it's a new ST obsession), and have been thinking how the astronomical charts they use in the background of the intro would make SUCH good embroidery designs! I think I'll google that and see if there are any public domain charts I can adapt to embroidery.

I've been thinking for years that I should try to adapt my sketches to embroidery patterns, and I finally did one today. I still need to clean it up a little, but then I'm going to start working on it on my sampler. Not sure how many people would want to buy two men walking into ice caves, but I had the idea that the flashlight beam on the ice would look cool with a lot of the sparkly or glow-in-the-dark threads out there, and the solid white, grey, and black areas (the two figures are silhouettes) are perfect targets for playing with stitches. Not sure WHAT stitches - I'm not that good at embroidery yet - but I'm going to play around. :-)

I have several sketchbooks in storage. I have two, I think, with me - I'm going to dig through them and see what I can find to adapt.

Algerian Stitch

Working on a fiber postcard - it's not the band sampler, but it the next stitch I will put on there, if I can figure out how to get it evenly spaced!

Turns out my 4x6 Weavette is perfect for postcards! Used Lime Stripes Sugar & Cream yarn, and a variegated DMC floss for the Algerian stitch. Haven't figured out what to do in the center yet. I love it, though, and this gave me SO many ideas for embellishing stuffed animals before I even take them off them loom and stuff them! I could do a lot more complex embroidery while they are still on there.

Crochet hook case which was embroidered after felted

I have a post on Roving Weaver that has some embroidery in it. Here's the link.