Introducing Mr and Mrs...

When I was back in the homeland earlier this year, I attended the beautiful wind-blown, west coast wedding of some very good friends H & M. Here is a pic of the lovely couple...


For their gift I made some personalized pillowcases with their new names...


The pattern and pillowcases are both from Sublime Stitching.


Here they are installed on the marital bed. Quilt hand made by H's Granny :)


I think they were quite well received. Fewf.

Mumma and Bubba

My good friend R had a gorgeous baby a few weeks ago named Lucia. This is super exciting as she is the first baby among my group of friends, and boy is she cute. Unfortunately I won't get to see her until I am home in New Zealand next January, so in lieu of actually attending the baby shower and visiting her in person I made and sent some custom swaddling cloths from some gorgeous fabrics I found at Purl Patchwork.



The pattern is actually from Purlbee.com (Purl Soho's blog). You can view it here.

I chose some soft double cotton gauze and shot cotton to make a matching set of three. All fabrics are Kokka I think.





The back fabrics were all double shot cotton, in complementing colours. And then I added a running stitch around the edge of each cloth to tie it all together.


They are super easy to make and feel nice and soft, perfect for babies born at the beginning of southern-hemisphere Summer, like Lucia.

If you are not familiar with swaddling (and I wasn't before I saw the pattern) here is a how to video:



Of course I was super late with R's birthday present as well (January) so I popped a blue scarf in the package as well.


A tried and true pattern at this point.



Yay babies!

Oh Dolly

Behold. My first embroidered portrait:


In case you can't tell (from the quite dark photo), it is the one and only Dolly Parton.

A friend, Z requested an embroidered bag for her birthday (which was in March!!), so as I was SO late I decided to capture her favourite diva in stitches.

Started with sewing a simple drawstring bag...


Decided on a portrait to copy


Traced the portrait with a pencil


Went over the pencil with a thin sharpie felt pen. Put the pen drawing inside the bag so I could trace it with disappearing fabric pen


And started stitching that pretty face


What do you think? Did I capture her likeness?


Here is is all finished and ready to be wrapped.


Further Dolly enjoyment below...

Embroidery Wall

I finished the last few frames for my embroidery wall...




Which is now in place in my bathroom, yay!


All patterns from Sublime Stitching
Hoops and most of the material from Purl Patchwork

Sneak Peek...

Here is a sneak peek at the two newest additions to the embroidered hoop collection I am trying to get going. I whipped these up the other weekend while watching a True Blood marathon (best ever).


Both patterns from Sublime Stitching

Morrocan Wedding Blankets!

Yesss I found them. Maryam of the awesome blog My Marrakesh sells Moroccan Wedding Blankets.


Peruse the whole selection (and some other cool Moroccan-ware) here.

Happy New Yeahhhhhh!!!

Hi there. And welcome back. I don't know about you but our holidays flew by and I can't believe I'm back at work already.

I hope you all had a great relaxing break and Santa was good to you. I got lots and lots of treats and was very spoilt by my visitors. Lucky! Hopefully Z and M had a good time being shown around NYC.

And yay the best thing about being back is I can now show you what I have been crafting over the last few months. Nothing compared to some of the amazing treats out there but I tried.

First up the Glow-in-the-dark Monogram ipod/camera/phone/whatever covers I sewed up on Odette, to slip in with some Xmas cards. Pity most of the cards were opened by the UK post and the pouches were either lost or shoved back in and taped back together. Ugh. Thanks for that.

I made them with some neon grosgrain ribbon and soft natural linen from Mood Fabrics, I'm soooo project runway.


And embroidered each recipients initial on in glow-in-the-dark thread from Sublime Stitching.


This is the closest I could get to glow in the dark :(


And this is one of the ones that got lost!! Ill make you another one soon C.


Next up is a matching scarf and hand-warmer set I made for my friend Z for Christmas.


The hand-warmers were an experiment and (even though I had to re-do one of the hands) I think they turned out good!


I also posted them on Ripple-Along here before Christmas and fellow rippler Jan has even made her own versions! Awesome! Let me know if anyone else is interested in the instructions and I can post them here as well. So exciting to think that someone can follow my instructions :)


Next is a Queen Anne's Lace scarf for my Mum. My first attempt at lace and once I got the hang of it (ripped and re-started 3 times...) it was actually really easy.


I am making a few more in this pattern and cant wait to experiment with brighter colours and also thicker wool.


Download the pattern (for a small fee) here.


And lastly 4 sets of hand-embroidered pillowcases for my parents, grandparents, aunt & uncle and poppa.


The pattern I kind of made up myself after being inspired by some stitches I found online.


The purple wasn't my first choice but time was running out and funds were running low. I think it looked ok once it was all done.

Other than that I actually made 2 scarves for my brother but accidentally forgot to take photos of either of them, durrr. They were both black so nothing to get too excited over ;)

Well after all that it doesn't look like I even made that much! Now I just have a few more things on my list of WIPs (tea-cosy, 3 bday presents, scarf for me etc) and maybe sometime this year I can start on my first afghan. Scary!

Hope you are all well and 2009 has been good to you so far.

xxxxx

PS: New years resolution, post on GC more often!

Kid Craft Keep-sakes

A couple of cute ideas for using art from the kids in your life as presents. This way they will last forever.

From Plum Pudding.


From Vicky Howell.

Free Pattern

Awesome free stitching pattern from Sublime Stitcher Jenny Hart over here on Pimp Stitch Blog.

Merry Stitchmas

There is an awesome tutorial on how to create an embroidery pattern from a portrait over on CraftStylish.


Would make a great christmas present for the right person...

Tweet tweet

When I was playing with my aforementioned air-erase pen, I drew up and stitched the below little number, with some bird patterns from the Sublime Stitching book I got for my birthday.


Let me know what you think! The birds are an iron on pattern, and the hearts and crosses are free hand. Since the pen would "air-erase" so quickly I pretty much had to sketch and stitch straight away. So it is a bit different to what I first drew, oh well.


Oh and I got some metallic thread, look how pretty. It was sewwww scratchy to stitch with. Next time I think I'll use less threads, which should give a flatter look.


I hung it up with my other 2 stitching projects, which looked ok...


... until I stepped back. The wall is still a bit bare.

So I think I am going to use the below photo as inspiration and just keep adding things. Still thinking about the pin-board too.



Image via. Apartment Therapy New York.

Oh and maybe a poster. Since I am rolling in dough right now...

Ch-check it out

Lots of things I am net-crushing on right now...

I like these cute new letter tees from American Apparel.


This Car-sage via CowTimes. At first I thought it was an elaborate air-freshener for your air vents but it is just for being pretty. Still cool though.



These Laura Plansker Diaramas. Creeeeepy cute!




And these I found v-inspiring for me and Odette's new project. Some embroidered/fabric iphone covers. From Design Night.


And last but not least, the new cushions from Rob Ryan!