Closing 2010

At the end of the year it's good to have some finished stuff, so we can meet the New Year with the new things in mind. That's why I thought that on this very last day I'll show you the pillow I made recently. You could see the progress in the previous posts and now it's just the right time to show the outcome.


I had the plan to use as many stitches as possible so I could learn something new, but after trying a couple of them my nature revealed. That is I like simplicity - in result the pattern on the pillow is quite simple, only a few stitches used. By the way, here you can also see that I like the symmetry as well :).

To sum up, in the centre you can see the greek cross filling, the borders are made with herringbone stitch, the rectangles in both sides - fan stitch. I found all of the stitches in STITCH magazine. In the magazine they were used for other Hardanger project (very beautiful btw).


With the New Year coming I have a new stitching in mind. I'll be boring but this will be Hardanger again and pillow again. However, I'll try to put put some more posts with the progrees, so anybody interested will be able to see Hardanger step by step.
And last but not least - I wish everybody the New Year to be full with fun stitching and cool projects!

Always give a chance

I moved the desks at work. On the new one there was a plant that the previous folk had left. The plant was meager and dying. The soil it had, looked like it hadn't been changed for years. I had thoughts of getting rid of it but somehow was pity of this little fellow.


I took it home, gave a new soil, watered and put to sunshine. And what? Only a couple of days passed and the plant started to grow a new leaf. I should give it a name, I guess.

This is the example when the nature teaches us something. This time it taught me - always give a chance. I guess this is something that can apply to stitching as well :). Always give a chance even when at first glance it looks there won't be anything good out of the work.

Greek cross pattern

Today I have a short post, as I only wanted to show you the greek cross pattern. It looks very nice and doesn't make a lot of time to make. I also like how the borders look. I found this pattern in Stitch magazine (issue 59).



The rest of the embroidery coming soon :).

Some blue threads...

Nothing (or hardly anything) encourages to write posts as a new follower. Especially if this is the first one :). Jennifer, WELCOME here.

So this post will be to begin about my recent embroidery piece I've been doing. I thought of a small and quick embroidery. I found a project in Stitch magazine with many interesting stitches, so I decided to play along with them. I don't have a ready pattern, I will use the stiches randomly and will see how it turns out.

For the beginning I decided on using herringbone stitch and greek filling. Herringbone stitch is very useful if you want to create some kind of "border" for your embroidery. In my case it'll be at the top and the bottom. It looks really nice and is easy to stitch:

The greek cross filling is a Hardanger motive. Here you can see the very small part of it. What you can see are in fact only the kloster blocks. They are the basis for Hardanger embroidery. When all the kloster blocks are ready, then some threads inside it are pulled out and the remaining ones are used to form some shape - this will be our Greek cross in the end.

Oh, and the thing I should have mentioned at the beginning - The piece of fabric with the embroidery I'm making will be a part of a pillow. Making a pillow is a good thing to increase my sewing skills.

Stitching and music - Sea Sew Album

I've never thought that music and stitching may have so much in common, but yes - they do. Lisa Hannigan is an Irish singer, she has gentle, soft voice that reminds me of sunny day, gentle wind, green, green grass and me lying there doing nothing :).
In 2008 she released her solo album Sea Sew. What she did (apart from singing) is she stitched all the lyrics that when later on photographed and this way the album layout was made. If you want to read something more about it ans see the photos here's the link to the project itself. If you want to hear the music (and you really should - I think) here's Lisa's MySpace with some of the songs.

Gradually, I come to an opinion that regardless of the hobby you have, it's like a well when you can throw your money and it never comes to an end. As I'm searching the internet from time to time to find fabrics, threads or accessories I can see an endless list of must-haves. One of them (that I already bought and may recommend) is a thread clipper "Kuroha" from Clover brand. It's much more handy than the classic scissors when it comes to cutting threads, so stitching is a little bit faster. And it's really sharp - hopefully it'll be so for a long, long time. Here's the photo of how it looks:

This is about give-aways. No, I'm not going to offer one :(. I will one day I promise. But first I have to get the idea what I'd like to give and then I have to make it. This is about attending give-aways. I took part in a couple - in fact yesterday ended one big give-away party hosted by Sew Mama Sew. The drums are rolling now and I'm awaiting who is this lucky one (would it be me, please?). I don't know what's your rules in attending such events and if you have any at all, but as I was searching through the sites I realised I have a few.

First of all I only take part in those give-aways that I find interesting. Everyone has its own style and taste; what I find gorgeous others may dislike, what others love may be not so cool to me. I feel that if I took part in something I just don't adore for 100% I would only lessen the others' chances to win and in case I won it would not give me so much pleasure as for others.

Secondly, as I try more and more I see it's not so much about winning. It's more about sharing knowledge of each other. I know about lot more blogs and people than yesterday and it's so many more places for me to see somebody's talent, ideas and thoughts that may inspire me somehow. I've noted down a couple of blogs from around a crafty world and I guess it takes me some time to dig through them. It's a bunch of good lecture for evenings.

Thirdly will be about what give-aways I like. There are two types: in ones you may just write hello in the comment and you have a ticket to lottery. In others - and these are my favourite - you have to write something particular. It's much more joy for me if I can answer a question or give some adivce. In one of the give-aways a blogger was asking about some advice to occupy the time of three kids in an airplane (yes, that's tough). I answered with my first thought about some board games - that wasn't maybe brilliant, but I got email back a day later. I received a personal email!(wow that was nice) - she was saying that's a great idea. Most likely it was out of courtesy, but somebody took its time to answer me thanking for the advice.

Ok, that's it for give-aways. They are cool, they have positive energy so I'm going to take a look at them whenever I have a chance. And I will prepare one some day - after all it's not only about getting but also about giving, isn't it!

Stitch magazine

Some time ago I was searching for embroidery magazines that could be a source of various embroidery projects and designs. The one that cought my eye was Stitch published by Embroiderers' Guild. It looked very promising on the website so I ordered 3 issues as a trial. The magazine passed the test and recently I ordered the latest one. To give you the idea of what's inside this magazine that I like here are some points:

• a variety of projects for different embroidery types with detailed instructions and list of items needed to make the project
  
• the projects are really stunning - they're beautiful and practical in the same time
  
• each magazine contains books reviews. Books about embroidery of course
  
• there are some ads, what here is in fact a plus for me. They all are about embroidery stuff, so I have even more hints on where to find what I'm looking for
  

If you ever feel you need something more than you can find on the Internet then you can try out Stitch. Or if you just want to stare at all these little, beautiful hande-made thigns then Stitch will be also fine:). Here is the the magazine website if you want to look.