embroidery – Stars & Sunshine

Comparison Embroidery Hoop

June 22, 2012 Julia 16 Comments

I’ve had a fair share of car trips and plane rides lately, and wanted some hand work to take along. I found a ton of embroidery hoops at a garage sale last month (a grocery bag stuffed full of all different sizes for $5!), and have wanted more of them to put around the house since doing an embroidery hoop swap earlier this year. I decided to stitch up one of my favorite phrases lately:

Sometimes I have a tendency to look at something awesome about someone else, and instead of thinking how great it is that they are blessed with that talent/personality trait/situation, I think about how unfair my life is that I don’t have it. Which is completely lame. And messes up being happy about things I have that I should be psyched about because my life is pretty good.

So here’s to not letting other people’s gifts make me forget about my own. If the grass looks greener on the other side, maybe I should just water my own grass! Or appreciate that I even have grass.

I used this sparkley DMC embroidery floss for the word joy. While it was a huge pain to work with, I am completely in love with how it shines! I also painted the outer hoop red, and I love how it adds a pop of color and ties in the red from the word comparison 🙂

And here’s the image I made up to trace for my embroidery, in case you want to make your own or just print it out! Download the pdf here. It is sized for a 6″ circle hoop – but you can adjust the scale as desired. I ended up freehand-adjusting the word ‘joy’ and adding hearts – but this is what I started from.

Wild Olive Stitch Swap

March 19, 2012 Julia 22 Comments

Last month, I joined an embroidery hoop swap at wild olive. When I signed up, I provided some colors and things I like. I got this information about someone else, and whipped up a four inch ready to hang embroidery hoop based on those likes. And someone else should sending me a surprise package in the mail! My partner’s identity is a secret until she receives the package, but until then I thought I’d share what I made.

I’m especially pleased with the little heart between the two birds – its made with a bit of the green thread and a bit of the blue thread wrapped together.

Along with the embroidery hoop, I made a little zipper pouch to send my partner as well. Its a ribbon surrounded by a zipper so that it zips up into this tetrahedron pouch. I used this tutorial (found via pinterest, of course) to make this pouch out of a 20 inch zipper and a 20 inch piece of ribbon. Even with the great instructions, it was still a bit difficult to figure out how to wrap up the ends of the zipper, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I happened to get a 10 gallon bag full of a variety of colorful zippers for about $10 this summer from a craigslist listing, so I had plenty of zippers to choose from 🙂

Here’s the full embroidery hoop (with some information that would give away my partner’s identity conveniently hidden by the zipper pouch). I painted the outside hoop brown to match the branch with acrylic paint. I also used a pretty green floral print to finish of the back of the hoop.

I had a surprisingly great time whipping this embroidery hoop up. Now I just need to send these guys off to my partner 🙂 And I can’t wait to get my surprise package in the mail!

Penguin iPad Case

September 3, 2011 Julia 1 Comment

A while back I shared an embroidered penguin I’d made which was destined to be an iPad case. I’ve finally (after months!) gotten around to finishing that project up – and just in time to take it to classes for the fall.

Here’s a view of my case all zipped up. Its fabric left over from my twirly skirt, with an off-white fleece lining. The zipper’s a littly wonkier than I’d like, but it works well.

And I still love that penguin 🙂

WIP Wednesday

July 6, 2011 Julia 3 Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of time on and looking at cool projects from link parties lately, and I’ve been finding more inspiration than I know what to do with. My list of projects to try (both and list in my head of my own ideas) is growing out of control, and Eddie’s been giving me a hard time because I’ve mostly been getting supplies for two new projects every time I finish one! I thought joining up with works in progress Wednesdays might help give me that little push to actually finish more of the projects I have lined up, so here goes:

In Progress:
iPad Case:

I have the inside (an off-white fleece) and the outside sewn together, I just need to put a zipper in on top.

DWR Quilt Along
I think it was a sign that The Plaid Scottie’s DWR Quilt Along started while I was on an unexpected trip to my grandfather’s house in Colorado and found out that my grandmother had made this quilt:

It has my two favorite traditional quilt patterns – a star and double wedding rings. I decided I’d go ahead and commit to the quiltalong and make something like this, even still using navy and white (they happen to be our bedroom colors as well). Here are the fabrics I chose:

I’ve got most of the pieces cut out by now – and I can’t wait to start piecing them together!

Tree Quilt
Two close friends of ours recently got married, and while we have already gotten them a gift from their registry, I decided I wanted to make them a quilt as well. I’ve already got the top together (ok, there was no piecing – just some applique and embroidery). I’m planning on hand quilting it with a faux bois pattern, but I may wimp out and do it on my machine after all 😛 The idea is for it to look like one of those carvings you see in trees – only snuggly and environmentally friendly!

Not Yet Started, but I have all the materials for:
Knife sheath (for the husband)
Apron
Navy/White skirt
Black/White rose dress
Green necklace
Purple/pearl necklace & earrings
Coral necklace & earrings
Christmas hexie quilt

And then there’s my to-do list of projects I want to do around the house/as gifts, but I won’t go into that here 😉

Embroidery Attempt #1

May 24, 2011 Julia 1 Comment

My husband and I spend our summers working in New Mexico, but go to school in Texas during the year for graduate degrees. We’ve been here for a week, and I thought I’d done a pretty great job of not forgetting to pack anything. That is, until I sat down to start sewing together a skirt once I’d cut out all the pieces – and realized I’d brought my sewing machine but no foot pedal *sigh*. Conveniently enough, my sister’s staying at our house back in Texas and gave the sewing machine pedal to my mother who is in the process of shipping it to me (thanks, mom!).

With a lack of a sewing machine and some crafty time to spare, I decided I’d try embroidery for another project I have in the works. Embroidery is something I’ve always really admired on other people’s websites and wanted to try on my own, but this weekend was the first time I ever actually finished a project (yay!) It’s not great or perfect, but I’m pretty pleased with it.

I just found a picture of a penguin I liked on the interwebs, drew it on some tracing paper over my fabric, and did a simple back stitch and tried french knots for the eyes. He’s about three inches tall. I originally tried doing a satin stitch across his tummy and face, but I couldn’t get it to turn out very nicely, so this is what I ended up with.

This guy is on some black woven fabric I have leftover from making the skirt, and is destined to become an iPad case for my new iPad2 <3. Hopefully they’ll come together soon once I get my sewing machine all back together!

-Julia