I love this lion pattern and the variegated thread looks so great on his mane. See…..I’m not always all negative about stuff I make. This ABC project is so much fun to stitch. If you are interested in making any of these blocks, I have placed a link to the pdf (52 pages) just below…
I love this doll, but I must say I could use some more practice on my back stitch — it’s hard to make all of the stitches the same size. I wonder if it would be easier if I were using more than one strand of floss. I am going to make all of the…
This puppet design is so cute, but my thread choice ended up being a little pale. I used an Anchor multi-colored floss (rainbow) that I thought would be perfect. I do like the effect, though, and plan to use multi-colored floss on the clown and the jack-in-the-box as well. The doll is in the hoop…
This owl took almost the whole skein of floss — and most of it was done with just one strand. It’s hard to see in this photo, but I used another variegated floss — sort of a brown/rust/red combination. It’s subtle, but I like it. I promised myself I would only do two of these,…
I’m pretty excited about this ABC quilt made from the coloring book I posted earlier. I should be working on the wool quilt, but I just had to see how these were going to look. Instead of the two smaller drawings, I decided to make letters instead and fill them with a pattern copied from…
When I was a teenager in the early 60’s, I talked my mother into buying this sampler kit. I’m pretty sure it was offered in one of the tons of magazines we used to get. Because daddy worked in the advertising department at Phillips Petroleum, we received just about every magazine you could think of…
Only four more rows to go — that’s 22 more embroidered squares. I still haven’t figured out what to do for a border, but I’m sure something will come to me. It would be fun to embroider a vine or something on a dark border. Although I’m still enjoying the stitching, I need to search…
Yesterday morning I was searching Flickr for a hummingbird embroidery pattern when I discovered Susan’s incredible embroidery of an Anna’s Hummingbird. Since 2002, Susan has been stitching a collection of birds that visit her garden — each one exquisite — based on John James Audubon’s Birds of America. I contacted Susan to request permission to…
This time I waited until I had two new rows to post. Pretty soon the quilt will become more squarish and I’ll be able to fit it into one photo. Probably everyone is getting tired of looking at this quilt, but at some point in the near future I am going to run out of…
Row 3 is done — only 8 more rows and 44 embroidered squares to go. Although I love the wool, this is probably the most difficult fabric I’ve ever used for embroidery. I have to draw the design freehand since it’s on thick, black fabric, and because the wool is a bit fuzzy, it’s impossible…
I’m excited about this project — it’s a nice change from my usual vintage cottons. The wool is very nice to work with, but no hand quilting on this project — it’s way too thick and many of the squares are a bit fuzzy. I am planning to tie it with yarn and back it…
Recently I purchased a group of old wool suiting samples. I have no idea how old they are, but they are definitely vintage — the stickers are yellowed and brittle and the swatches are mostly all wool, with a few wool/silk and wool/rayon blends, but with no modern synthetics. The patterns are cool, the fabrics…
My daughter, Emily, loves Hello Kitty so I decided to make a little quilt for her using the pictures from a HK coloring book. Hello Kitty is really fun to embroider — I used both 1 and 2 strands of floss, depending upon the level of detail in the picture. My favorites are Hello Kitty…
Rather than make another quilt block yesterday, I decided to add text to the blocks. I just finished this Jack and Jill block which was the first one I colored/embroidered. I like the having the verses and it’s nice that most of the rhymes have four lines (although some of the blocks are going to…
I finally finished the quilt for Marjorie Claire, daughter of my niece, Jennifer, and her husband, Cyrus. I think Marjorie was about 10 days old in the photo below, taken in December. We are all excited to have a sweet baby girl in our family, and I am pleased that she has my mother’s name….