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Fiona did some sweet drawings of our family earlier in the week and I decided to use them to try an embroidery project. I dug out the light box and the latest issue of Craft (with Dolin O’Shea’s article, Embroidery 101) and a scrap of linen fabric. I found my embroidery floss and hoops plus the fabric pencil from the sewing kit I bought at my sewing class and, without any final product in mind, started tracing the drawings onto the linen.
It’s coming along pretty well and the jewel colored floss is happy making. Unfortunately, the pencil marks are rubbing off and already too faded to work with. I will try to pick a fabric marker this weekend, retrace the drawing and try again.
Yesterday, I the mail carrier brought me Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing and I have been poring over it. I definitely want to make the backpack for the bee. We looked at the pictures together and she was all for it. Of course, she requires it be pink.
I also want to make the bed pocket for our king sized bed. The bed is crammed into a little room and there’s just no space for side tables. I wonder if I can incorporate the embroidery onto the bed pocket as a patch.
Sunday, I made a lamb cake and between the cake and the frosting and I end up using four sticks of butter. I didn’t mean to! It was pretty buttery. Next time I need to pay more attention to the cake batter recipe I choose. A pound cake would probably work better, structurally.
We picked up the latest issue of Craft magazine over the weekend and it has a nice article about getting started doing embroidery. I have been wanting to get started on something but so far I can’t imagine what to embroider. I need to know what something will be used for and I have a mistrust of decorative objects that don’t have a purpose. I think my first sewing project will be a little adventure bag for my daughter but I don’t have a working sewing machine yet. Maybe I can embroider a patch that I can incorporate into the bag. I need to think about this. I don’t know why I’m having trouble starting, there are so many things to embroider: sewing cases, dishtowels, a child’s drawing (and here).
I love the Clover embroidery patterns at Superbuzzy though my limited research pointed out that the Clover embroidery tool might make stitches that are a little too delicate and need to be glued on the back. I’m sure I can use the patterns for conventional embroidery, though. There are more fun patterns at Sublime Stitching; they even have gnomes and forest animals. Primrose design has vintage patterns in her store and a whole series of tutorial posts on her weblog she calls Stitch School.
One thing I would love to use as a pattern is a sketch I did a few years ago as a plan for my vegetable garden beds. I have a scrap of linen fabric (just under a yard) I bought at JoAnne’s for half-price, I have hoops, I have floss. I have ideas, too.
I set up our little greenhouse shelf on our enclosed porch and have been slowly planting flower seeds in my seedling trays. Much more slowly since I ran out of potting soil, in fact. Today I think we can pick some more soil up, though. Since the garden will be planted in our front yard I thought I’d grow mostly flowers. We are going with simple, hardy ones like cornflowers, marigolds and zinnias.
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