Yesterday my friend, Patti, and I stopped in our local antique/consignment shop. I wasn’t really expecting to find anything because they don’t have many textiles and also their prices are way too high. However, I fell in love with this beautiful hand embroidered linen tablecloth. It had 3 or 4 little stains that didn’t look…
This little queen was stitched mostly in the car on our trip to central Oregon and the coast. I had to change the drawing a bit to suggest a pattern I could use as the filler for the letters. I like her new necklace, and I don’t think I could have sewn that squiggly one…
When I started this project, I had a few rules: Each block would use one color of variegated floss. Each letter would have a pattern design — same pattern on each letter. The letter designs would stay inside the letters. The first rule has been broken twice, and now with this block I’m breaking the…
This was a pretty easy block with an obvious pattern to use on the letters. Originally I was going to do the quail for Q instead of the queen (even though she looks so cute with the little king), until I managed to change her design a little bit to create a pattern for the…
Here’s part of a comment I just received from my friend, Bunny, at When Life Hands You Scraps: “about the wood grain on the door, you’re right, it does look busy but I think that is because the house is so plain other than the door, windows and roof. Maybe some light horizontal lines across…
The “I” block in the ABC Coloring Book is a giant ice cream cone. I just wasn’t interested in stitching it since it has so little detail. Fortunately, I have two other coloring books illustrated by Vincent and Dorothy Fago and one of them has a cute drawing of an ice cream vendor with a…
This was a pretty straightforward block that was quick and had a nice fill pattern for the letters. I like this variegated floss — the colors are perfect for a giraffe. I just couldn’t bring myself to make yellow grass, so I bent my self-enforced rules again and used a different color floss for the…
This is a DMC variegated thread and it’s very subtle — sort of a red, fuchsia, pink and orange, but it’s difficult to see in the photograph. Since the fireman drawing doesn’t have anything obvious to use as a fill for the letters, I decided to draw some flames. There are a couple of other…
This house took even longer to stitch than the owl. Originally I was going to use the little roof shingles as the filler in the letters, but I just couldn’t do any more of those. I decided to do the window pattern instead which was way easier, but I wish I’d made the lines a…
The elephant was finished several days ago, but I have been busy pressing, drawing, cutting and sorting a gazillion little vintage triangles for the sashing strips. Although I had settled on the pinwheel pattern, I tried several different versions — all prints, scrappy prints & white, scrappy prints & solids — but finally decided on…
Thank you to all the people who have commented on this series of blocks. It’s so nice to hear from other embroiderers and quilters. This Jack-in-the-Box is stitched with my new Anchor multi-colored floss which I think looks just right on him. For most of the block I used just one thread because of all…
This is the perfect Pacific Northwest item for the letter U. This one went lots faster, so maybe I will be able to post a block every other day if I continue to trade off between the easier and more complex drawings. This weekend I am going to lay out some of my vintage triangles…
My plan was to post one of these blocks every other day, but I’m finding that to be a pretty tight schedule. Anyway, here’s my new block — N is for Nurse. I think she’s sweet and I really like her hairdo. Some blocks are less complex, so I think I’ll start trading off and…
This clown was made with a skein of vintage American Thread floss. I really like the colors, but when I started stitching, I realized that the sections of color are much longer than the DMC or Anchor variegated and multi-colored floss. To me this gives the clown a very different look compared to the puppet…
I intended to post this bear last night, but just as I was finishing up the last of the fur, I caught my cat, Jack, urinating on a pile of clothes in the laundry room. Because this is a bad habit he has acquired lately, I grabbed him to toss him outside and he decided…