Blackwork adventures with Marknad

I have always loved Blackwork Embroidery. The stark contrast between the black thread and pale fabric allows the embroidery to stand out.

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I divided the runner up with a sewing thread running thread. The table runner was sourced from Ikea, in Australia the Marknad was $5 per runner. Great value. The black perle embroidery cotton sits well on the natural coloured runner. The plan for my embroidery is to make four blackwork samples either end of the 40x140 cm table runner.

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I have the "Made in France" Blackwork book, it has some lovely designs in it.

But if you don't have access to this fabulous book, check out the Elizabeth Almond Sampler Tutorials and Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread.

Ikeahack: Trendig Teatowels update

When I saw these Trendig Teatowels in Ikea I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I drew up some plans, popped it all into a zip lock and then moved house a few times and forgot where I put them!

I found the project last week and started to do some work to them. The goal is for them to be curtains in my laundry or maybe even upstairs.

I do find that play centres are the best place for embroidery! I can get my coffee delivered to me, my kids can be entertained and I get to do some work in some excellent lighting conditions.

Even though this one hasn't been pressed, you can see how I am progressing. This took me a day to do this using Perle 8 thread.

I loved the Trendig capsule collection that Ikea produced a few years back. I hope that they do something similar again, many of the products and designs were iconic.

Some of the Noren Curtains on Etsy are just so gorgeous. I hope that mine turn out as nice.

by Eastern Classic on etsy

by Kotori Handmade

by Honma Japan

Crafty Necklace by An Astrid Endeavor

I am always on the look out for something crafty and unique. 

I love to support crafters that work hard at designing their own unique style.

I came across this Etsy shop in my travels. How gorgeous! Yes?

An Astrid Endeavor has many unique handmade pieces, unlike several other Etsy shops that I stumbled across that are currently selling chinese knock offs ...

Crafty Christmas

I stole a few minutes today for some crafty Christmas embroidery.

I bought some 4 inch embroidery hoops from Lupin Handmade and thought I would make a few Christmasy decorations. What do you think?

Kaos Hottie finally finished!

I have to zip off the post office this morning to post my Hottie Challenge to Curlypops so that Cam receives it on time ..

I really enjoyed doing this and I feel even better that the money raised from this initiative will be benefiting others.

All of the hotties will be exhibited and be for sale at the

Open Drawer Art, Textiles & Learning Centre

1158 Toorak Road, Camberwell

Melbourne

July 1st - July 24th.

Proceeds will go to the Margaret Pratt Foundation

(research for heart and lung transplants).

Luckily for me I have some felted jumper left over so that I can make a nice cover (similar design) for my heat pack ...

My Creative Space ...

Last night I started embroidering this Aunty Cookie Alphabet print. Intended on for Tori's room, I wanted to give it a bit of colour and depth.

The birds will be given feathers and the girls perhaps bows in their hair! A good activity for in front of the telly at nights.

Are you playing along this week? Head on over to our creative space ...

Dirndl Project 2010

Every year our Family Church has a Christmas Bazaar. This year it is on Saturday November 27th, 2010 at 10am. Otherwise known as German Cake day by some of my friends due to the variety of German Cakes available for purchase.

A few years back a family friend had a Dirndl made for Victoria when he went to Germany and we managed to get two years of wear out of it for the Bazaar. But it doesn't fit any more :-(

So the challenge is to make a new one for her. I'm pretty good with the pattern that I am going to use. I am going to draft a pattern off a dress that fits her at the moment and hopefully re-use the apron that came with this dress providing it doesn't look too small. But the lynchpin in the outfit is the embroidery along the top of dress.

My Dirndl that doesn't fit me anymore :(

I've been looking at Barvarian Embroidery for my Janome Embroidery machine. I love the idea of doing it by hand, but it would take too long and I have end of year reports to write as well!

If you are wanting to do something like this by hand then the Mad Sampler Book Company has some images from books that are out of print that you could use. Alternatively Dover Publications have some Peasant Iron On Transfer Patterns that you could use.

via Emboridery by Ruth

Sewn by Joan has some free electronic embroidery files that might be appropriate but the bought ones might be a bit better such as Elke's Emboidery Patterns.

Then I came across "lancaster embroidery" which could be well suited, but it is not German or Barvarian. Hungarian machine embroidery styles might be good if I delete some of the decorative accents.

via Windstar Designs

I like the image above of the acorn's and love hearts, as Victoria has a thing for acorn's at the moment and there is a big Oak tree in the front of our family church.

Dress Patterns

My aim is to make the dress out of black linen with red accents and a white linen blouse, which we already have. I have some red ric rac that might look good around the hem of the dress. We are going to use the white apron from the original dress that was made for her. Zip up the back of the dress rather than the front.

via Germany.info

I pretty much have the pattern worked out for Victoria, but as with most machine embroidery, you have to trace the pattern out, do the embroidery first and then cut out the pattern later. So the hold up is the embroidery.

But if you don't have a pattern then you could try these ones.

Vogue Patterns has an Austrian Dirndl pattern.

Simplicity have a children's pattern that you could use. I would just use the base garment of 'B' and not include the rouched waistband and over skirt.

via Simplicity

Alternatively, you could do a hunt for a vintage 1960s pattern to do the job.

via GrayMountainGoods on etsy

So we will see how we go. Hopefully I will have time to finish this project before the 27th November.

Punctuation patchwork experiments

Remember this baby quilt top?

Yesterday I managed to get an hour to myself in my sewing room (while the jet setters were passed out) and I started to play around with using up the scraps from my Punctuation baby quilt top to construct some more blocks either for pillows or another quilt top.

Rather than a block of 4 x4 2.5 inch squares, I played around with including a 4.5 inch square white block in the middle. Yet again, I am cutting into my Kona Solid "snow" that I have put aside for my daughers neverending Paintbox Quilt.

I am still undecided as to whether to hand embroider letters or punctuation marks onto the white insides or applique them. The appliqued letters use up a 2.5 x 2.5 inch square, but for me, hand embroidery is sometimes much easier.

Quality Control officer Anastasia

I think they would make either yet another cute baby quilt top or some cute nursery cushions.What do you think?

Crime Scene

Things are a bit slow on the sewing and craft front this week, as I have started back at school and there is a lot of preparation and organization to do for the coming term. So only essential sewing is getting done this week, orders and market stock. Tori's Quilt has indeed been put on temporary hold.

But this afternoon, I stole a few moments while watching Project Runway, to knock over some more crime scene outlines on some Market bag fronts ...

The challenge is in finding the balance between my artistic vision for this range and using technology to get there results I need. Customers do not necessarily want to pay for hours of hand embroidery, even though they will say it is gorgeous!  So I am putting a lot of thought into deciding how to represent the crime itself and I am thinking that some clever applique work might be the trick.

I also have some new pillow designs in the works! Just to put things into perspective, the blood embroidery on the "axe" crime scene took 1.5 hours ...So what crime scene do you want to see?

Crime Scene Media Pocket

This is the the last prototype of my media pocket, the one that I am nearly 100% happy with. Since the media pocket was for us, I thought that I would play around with a bit of hand embroidery.

Still not happy with the finish near the zip, but I will fix that in the ones that I will do for Saturday (not that I am leaving anything to the last minute!)

If I still had my friends Gocco I would probably screen print the image on, but doing the hand embroidery didn't take that long.

Inside I have put "police do not cross" fabric ... a little surprise.

My hubby and I needed a pocket for our portable hard drive, but I wanted the storage pocket to fit the various nintendo devices. The pocket on the front is for storing the usb cable or game chips.

Here is a close up of the fabric! I have lots of geeky fabric in my collection, so I will probably make a few these with computer chips, bolts and skulls.

Boomerang Gift Set

A few weeks back I was asked to do a gift set for a little girl. The client picked the fabric and we embroidered her name on the bag. The thought was if she went to childcare, this could be a good sized bag to put all the essentials in.
I was given quite a bit of freedom with the components of the gift set. The client wanted a bag and the shoes and whatever else was upto me. She had fallen in love with the Boomerang fabric as it looked quite "Australian" in design. I decided to do a little changing mat with a toweling backing. I use one of these with my daughter and it is very useful for both changing, eating and general moping up of baby mess. Once I did the embroidery on the bag, it was quite easy to do the embroidery on the face washer (the finished gift set had a red and black face washer). The embroidery machine required both back interfacing and also "ultra solvy" to prevent the needle pulling the toweling back through. Ultra Solvy then rinses out under some warm water


The bag was lined with the same fabric and there were some pockets sewn into the inside of the bag, along with the pockets on the outside of the bag.
The size of the shoes were 6 - 12 months. Hopefully little Elisa will be cruising by then!

Bunting Bag (Custom Order)

I never really knew what a bunting bag was exactly before I took on this custom job. It is very much an American term used to describe a travel garment commonly used in prams.

The client wanted a bunting bag that would suit the personality of the recipients. We discussed some ideas, I sent back a few sketches and then I did some embroidery samples. Decided that the embroidery would look better on red rather than black and then started to sew. The end of sleeve mittens were the trickiest part of the project and I am sure if I made one of these again, I would do it the “easier” way. I want to make my little girl one for next winter in purple with little bat embroidered on it.

Anyway, onto the technical stuff! The Bunting is made from Arctic Polar Fleece, PolyCotton Tartan and Wool Wadding for extra warmth. The brief that I was given was “warmth”. The Bunting has a custom Wolf Howling embroidery done on my trusty Janome 350e and the “tags” with Konstant Kaos on them are also done on the Janome (how I love my Janome).

For more images of Konstant Kaos creations, check out my livejournal scrapbook.

Baby Gear for Georgia

I am quite busy getting a number of custom jobs done. One of them was a "collection for a baby girl" inspired by a few pictures that were given to me (Confederacy, The state of Georgia, American Civil War). The task was very much a Project Runway moment ...but on project runway the designers don't have to take care of a grumpy 11 month old at the same time! I sketched out a few ideas and decided on five items; a dress, a hat, shoes, a bib and changing mat.

The dress took me longer than expected due to the hand sewing that I had to do on the cord work. The design is from the cuff of a confederacy general's jacket. I definitely have to buy the attachment for my sewing machine that makes cording easier to sew on! Here is my gorgeous daughter modeling the dress which is a little big for her.

I had to also make a matching hat, so I opted for more of a "bonnet" style hat.

I did some matching shoes and decided to do some cord work on them to see how my machine would handle the stitching of the cord.

The changing mat and bib had embroidered stars on them and also a lining that was water repellent. These two items are quite striking.

Last night out of frustration I spent a some time working out how to make garment labels on my embroidery machine *grins* ... at the moment I am embroidering twill tape - doesn't look too bad. Better than the cashs' labels that I got done as a trial, and certainly cheaper than the $400 I keep on getting quoted for "real" labels. The advantage of doing them myself is that I can change the colours, size and tape colour to meet the needs of the garment or object I am making.

Yesterday afternoon I went off to the etsy meet up at fed square. It was a worthwhile afternoon, lots of ideas and things to follow up on and lots of interesting people to talk to.