0 Needlequest - May round up and June design theme - line

Here we are just after the end of the fifth month of the Needlequest and it's time for a brief round up of what participants have posted about recently.

* I did a couple of learning samples, then the heart you can see here mounted into a card for Sir next Thursday.=)

* Tingting finished quite early on in the month and has completed a stalled project of 12 panels and made it up into a bell pull.

* Wendy also pulled out a project that had got stopped and got it re-started.  She hasn't finished it as yet, but here's today's update.

* Pamela managed to get quite a bit done on her coloured blackwork alphabet sampler.

* Like I usually am, Dorte's a little bit behind at the mo, but here's what she created for the April theme, Spring.

Some good stuff there, no?  I felt I really learned something over the last month too, which was great.=)

Now, it's already June and time to think about 'line' as a theme.  What does that mean?  Well, it's more about what it means to you than what it means to me, but the general idea is to spend some time concentrating on the linear aspect of design.  That could be outlining - even the popular 'doodle stitch' style, or it could be something verging on geometric.  It's really up to you!

I've inserted a couple of the sample project pieces I did when I was doing some City & Guilds work back in 2008/9.  These were from the 'line' design element part of the course.  As you can see, especially from this shell, we had to work only with lines as far as possible.  This one lent itself very well.

This second 'stitch and slash' piece (shown here before being 'distressed' (read: 'spoiled and made a mess of'!!!)) was based on the stripes on a tiger's coat.  So, linear in another sense.

What will I be doing?  Hopefully, finishing off the sample that was the second piece in my C&G course and something that long-term readers will be familiar with - the peacock feather.

I'm longing to get this one done and OFF my 'to do' list, where it's been for over 3 years!  I don't need it for anything, but I hate UFOs and there's always a chance I may go back to C&G one day, so the more I have in my portfolio, the better.  Also, if I dump it now, I waste all that time and effort (many hours worth, I can assure you!), and waste is something I was brought up to loathe!

So, t'must be finished.=)  I also would like to take it to the Harrogate Show in November and show my old teacher as she's usually there now promoting her C&G micro centre, Castle Textile Group.

What about you?  What do you have in mind, Team NQ members?

I'd also be interested in hearing from those who signed up, but haven't made a start on the challenge yet.  It's not a problem, of course.  The whole thing is optional and I, like many others, have signed up for several challenges I never did a thing about!!!  I've made some changes to the participants list though so that the active ones appear first.

For more information or to sign up to join in, go to the Needlequest challenge page.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Detail: Needlequest - May round up and June design theme - line

0 A sympathy card

My sister-in-law's father died from lung cancer recently, so I put together a small card for her.  Above you can see the materials including the design transferred onto white silk and mounted into the working hoop, and below you can see the Anchor pattern I took the design from.  It was originally a wedding ring cushion!

Below is the finished item (I took no WIP photos this time as it was a quick piece) with a few extras added in to 'pad it out' and the ribbon attached as well.

I'm part way through the last of my DMC stumpwork kits and will report on that soon.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: A sympathy card

0 A ribbon card to share

A few years ago, in a fit of needing retail therapy whilst I was unhappy in a former job, I went to the Crafty Ribbons site and bought a few of their cut price, end of range kits, some of which I've already featured on blog. This was the last remaining one and the design left me feeling that I could really understand why it had been discontinued.  For one, the design isn't that exciting, but that's nothing compared to the poor choice of background colour - dark green and purple on black!  How they sold any is beyond me, but I got one and tried to make some improvements. 

Naturally, the very first thing was to dump the black background.  This is both an easy thing to do and made necessary by the fact that they always seemed to give you the very smallest scrap of fabric possible to work on - the sort of size you can't fit into a suitable hoop without troublesome mounting with other fabrics etc.  So, that's easy to lose.  I had another go at painting a background for it.  The first time I tried, I did the greens in too 'yellow' a tone and so the rather blue-ish colours went poorly with it.  This time I made sure the tones were all relatively blue themselves, even though they faded a lot more than I expected (again!) by the time they'd dried.

I also jigged around a tiny bit with the design, but I don't think I made any real improvements there, especially as I'm no expert in ribbon work and really only know one or two basic concepts.  What do you think of the finished item anyway?

I like this sideways on view as the light has captured the sparkly elements of the organza ribbon nicely, which is a photographic treat as one normally doesn't get to see such detail.

I've already got the next small stumpwork piece prepared in the hoop for embroidery, so look out for that starting soon!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Detail: A ribbon card to share

0 A Little Ribbon Embroidery

I've had a couple of Crafty Ribbons kits in my kit drawer for a while now and have been meaning to get them worked up.  However, when looking at the designs, I couldn't help but feel that the best hadn't been made of its potential.  This is the 'original', what do you think?  You get a small square of black fabric to work it on and, yes, it's plenty big enough for the design, but really nothing like big enough to put in a hoop.  In fact, although this is my fourth kit of this brand, I've never once used the fabric supplied in the package owing to its over small size.

I decided that the first thing to do was to create a new background and, as I had three small projects in mind that I wanted non-plain backgrounds for (including another kit by CR, the colour choices for which make me wonder how they could bring themselves to put it into production....), I decided to have a go at a bit of painting.  Below are the materials I thought I'd use, meaning to do natural, landscapey sorts of things with them.

And below again are the materials I actually used!!

This is what the piece of fabric with the three painted sections looked like when wet.  Notice that I wet the whole area I wanted to paint first so that the colours merged and spread out well on the fabric. 

And this is what it looked like dry - considerably lighter.  As you can see from the tubes of paint photo, I've used watercolours and I really should have remembered how much lighter they dry.  Having said that, I didn't really mind the change too much as I've made the mistake of having an over-poweringly painted background before.  I also learned that Sap Green' dries with quite a hard edge (as does Permanent Rose to a degree) - something to look out for another time.

The middle of the three was the one intended for this ribbon piece as I wanted to give the impression of a pot of flowers in a yard with a wall/fence (the brown-ish colour) and some greenery (the green spots dropped into the brown whilst still wet), on a paved area (the grey at the bottom).

The embroidery itself took around an hour and, as it was done in evening light and was a quick stitch, there are no WIP photos this time, but here's the finished piece, mounted in a card and looking a lot nicer, I think!

Do you agree?  I do like the general design and love the plant pot button - in fact I'm planning to get hold of a few, probably from the Crafty Ribbons booth at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show, presuming they'll be there.  So that part was good, but I think the black background, to say nothing of the awful slightly blurred and totally 'flat' photograph on the kit was a big no-no.  Not surprisingly, I got this as part of a sale on their website - discontinued kits.

PS, In case anyone's wondering what's planned for the other two painted backgrounds, the simple answer is nothing.  I found the green on the left hand one just too vibrant and felt it didn't go with the ribbon piece I had in mind and the right hand idea just no longer works for me.  I was going to do a small sampler with a crazy quilt appearance as a support for my catch-up on TAST.  I still quite like the idea, but don't think this one worked and so will consider trying another one soon.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Detail: A Little Ribbon Embroidery

0 Hardanger Floral Card

No WIP Wednesday posting this week or last owing to having nothing to post thanks to being away a couple of times.  However, I've been getting on with my knitting - only need to sew it all together now, and made this floral hardanger card:

It's from a New Stitches magazine, issue 88 from summer 2000 and I bought the materials pack, which included pearl and stranded cottons and the card blanks (there's also a blue one, but I worked that one years ago.)

Here's the finished thing, although, as ever, I had trouble getting the light pink of the card to show and couldn't make satisfactory adjustments on the image editing software, so you'll just have to imagine the card - including the bit showing through the cutwork - to be just that bit brighter than you can see here.

The close-up looks quite nice, and the peachy-pink of the background shows up passably well.

Until next time....

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Detail: Hardanger Floral Card

0 Cushions and Cards

I may not have posted much of late, but I have been busy!  First of all I finished up the Ring of Roses scatter cushion cover by putting the zip in.  Here it is being modelled by one of our own cushions.

Then I moved on to the giraffe cushion cover.  The patchwork went relatively well, but is still a bit uneven.  This was the front when initially put together - showing off some wonders in uneven patching!!

Frankly, I prefer the back and wouldn't be at all surprised (or upset) if the recipient decided to display it this way around!

In the end I managed to find a way to improve the look of the front - put some trim around the main picture and extend it a little so as to cover over the worst of the bad joins.  It's come out OK, but it isn't exactly a masterpiece.  Mercifully, the disabled girl I'm giving it to has rotten eyesight, so she won't see it's many imperfections!!!

Then it was onto the next project - a cross stitched wedding card for a couple who are marrying on 31st of this month.  They're having tea and cakes as a simple reception afterwards, so I thought this display of colourful cupcakes was in keeping with the occasion.  It may be a simple and fairly small design, but just look at all the colours I needed!

This shows the cross stitching itself finished and the colours out for the outlining.  I decided not to use the prescribed dark grey for it, but to chose a darker shade of each colour family used for the icing (I tried to make every single cake a different colour and almost succeeded too!) and a brown shade for the cake bottoms.  The Kreinik is for the cake stand.

I think it turned out quite well, don't you?

Here are two books I borrowed from the library last week.  The hardanger one is mostly stuff I already know, but there are one or two ideas in there that I haven't come across before, including using beads in filling stitches.

Also, how about these for hardanger cards?  Creative, or what!  It made me feel that there was a great deal more to be done with a simple piece of hardanger than just to mount it in an aperture card.  I got some white card blanks yesterday to try painting up as three of these seem to have been.

I was also inspired by the cross stitch cards book.  Again, I've discovered that there's so much more that you can do with a small cross stitch than just bung it in an aperture card, so inspired by some of the designs in the book and using the technique explained there (putting bondaweb on the back of the Aida to 'stabilise' it, but not needing to bond the second side of it to anything - just cut out the shape, peel off the backing and then attach to your card), I made this with the 'cat in a basket' design I finished off a few months ago.

The cross stitched piece was attached using those glue pads you get for decoupage types of crafts and thus gives a bit of a raised look.  Of course, you can do it flat as well.

It feels good to have got a few projects finally completed and also to have some new and innovative ideas for fairly simple techniques.  I can develop quite a bit just with these counted thread pieces and am even considering trying to sell some of the hardanger ones, once I get something impressive stitched up.

What's next?  Finishing up the other WIPs, I hope!  I'm having a really good deck clear at the moment, trying to get long neglected tasks done and free my mind of all that clutter.  Next sewing machine job will be making some alterations and then I can get down to my camera case that I've been planning for over 3 years now....

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Detail: Cushions and Cards

0 Weddings coming up!

Two weddings are happening within the next 3 months and so I'm already well on with the gifts for the first one (in mid-August).  I've done the card and have got everything ready to start stitching for the gift.

<-This is the design I used for the card.  As you can probably see, it's part of a long, narrow sampler design and is by Patricia Bage of Patricia Ann's Designs.  It's from her 'Beginners Guide to Drawn Thread Embroidery'.  I just used this central square and then added a line a silver cross stitches around the outside as it was really too small for the card blank. Yes, the fabric is lilac, but it hasn't shown up well here.

Here's the floss toss for the gift.  The design is the 'ring of roses' you can see on the right, here finished up as a table centre, but I'm going to work it as a cushion/pillow cover as it's more practical and, frankly, I can't stand buttonhole edging.  Caleb, I love ya, but not enough for all that edging!!!  I'll probably also change the woven filling for wrapped bars as they're quicker and, by the time I get to that stage, I'll be ready to do something else, no doubt.  The flowers are to be worked in these pretty yellows as I thought that would be easier to fit in with whatever colour scheme they chose for whichever room they want to use it in than the reds I'd originally planned to do with this design.  Anyway, I expect to be starting on the satin stitching this evening.

This next bit is for Cynthia who, after the room re-organisation post, wanted to see whole room shots.  That's quite a challenge as the room is so small!  However, nothing loathe, here is the view of the (messy) desk area, which is wall to wall as you see, and was taken from as far back in the doorway as I could reasonably stand.

This second shot shows the bookshelves joining on to the new shelves and from that you can see how short that wall is.

So, I live in a rather tiny space, but I think I've got it about as close to optimised as one could hope for.  There's no comfy chair in there for stitching, that's why that takes place in the roomier living room.  And, if we do move closer into town as Sir wants (and part of me does too), then I will almost certainly lose my room and we'll end up sharing a second bedroom as a study.  Not as good, but still far better than being restricted to the dining table, no?=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Detail: Weddings coming up!

0 The Bluuuue Planet!

When I did my reader survey back in November a few readers commented positively on my 'unusual subjects' for embroidery.  I'd never really thought of them as being out of the ordinary - I just stitch what appeals to me, but I suppose the goldwork viola (string instrument, not the flower), cross stitched narrowboat and perhaps some others are relatively unusual topics for stitching.  (Made me also wonder what 'normal' subjects are and, other than flowers, butterflies and birds, I can't think of much.  Anyone??)  Well, I think this latest piece will also qualify.

I've known for years that far more of the Earth's surface area is covered by water than it is by land, but it was really brought home to me over the past few days whilst stitching DH's anniversary card.  I saw this in 'New Stitches' #143 - it's part of a horizontally long piece of all the planets in our solar system.  As Sir has been studying sustainable energy and other environmental science and technology subjects a lot over the past year, I thought this was the idea design for him - even if it is the 'wrong' side of the planet, (Europe, or even Asia, would have been more appropriate), and not very romantic...

I might use this second shot, or another like it, as part of my header photos one day.

I also made Sir this tie out of some of the lovely fabric I bought in Taiwan on our spring 2008 visit.  He already has one with Chinese characters on from a museum shop in Taiwan and another with old style Korean hangul (i.e. not the totally modernised script) which we got in a Seoul gift shop, so I knew he'd go for this one.  I got the pattern from the Purl Bee blog and adapted it as needed.  It's ended up being narrower at the front than a commercial one, but hasn't come out too badly, all things considered.=)

A whole month since the last post, where have I been?  Running two lots of e-bay auctions that were rather a wash-out, amongst the usual being under the weather etc.  Oh yes, and I finally got all the drawers etc sorted out in my room.  I've done photos and so I need to post them to show anyone interested.=)

I've now 'awarded' myself two 'give the brain a rest' weeks where I won't be reading study books, doing research, learning languages, making notes for the books I'm planning to write and so on.  It's creative things - stitching, art, maybe even music; novels and getting some niggling jobs done as well, which include some mending and altering, but also making up another cushion cover and a case for my camera out of more lovely Taiwanese fabric.  So, I hope to have more to post during the second half of the month.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Detail: The Bluuuue Planet!

0 COMPLETE change of mind!

Friends of our are celebrating their golden wedding on Friday and, well, you just can't get that go by without a card, right? I thought I'd use Mary Corbet's charming tudor style rose and work it up in yellows and outline in gold. Here's the pattern traced and the threads selected:

And I was going to mount it in a nice, square, gold card blank. Was going to look stunning!

However, as soon as I'd got a few little bits of the darker yellow in, although the colour looked great, I simply wasn't working it well and wasn't really in the mood for that type of work..... So, out it came from the hoop, it got put away for later use (I still love the idea and my colourway for it, so I hope to come back to it some time later on), and I got out my pastel pencils and ribbon collection. This is the result:

A BIG change in direction, huh??!

Detail: COMPLETE change of mind!

0 Chinese Wedding Card

Just a quick post today to show a card I made over the weekend for a Chinese couple I was asked to stand witness for at their legal wedding ceremony yesterday, (if you can follow that!!) Red is the Chinese colour for celebrations and they often trim that red up with gold, so I mixed that colour scheme with our traditional white for weddings and did a quick hardanger piece.


DH typed up and printed out a nice something in Chinese which he stuck on the inside as a flysheet sort of arrangement too so, for an impromptu piece, we were quite proud of it.=)

Here is the final card mounting of the heart I did recently as well. This was for a silver wedding anniversary, but I found that I didn't actually have a silver '25' sticker, so just left the front plain. I think the stitchery is fancy enough anyway.


Next thing I hope to do it to get the water violets and fish piece made up into the final cushion/pillow cover. No estimates on when yet except that it must be done by 7 July.

Detail: Chinese Wedding Card

0 5 Smalls, 3 Styles

Here are all my other recent finishes, most of which were worked on whilst I was working in Leeds recently.

The first is a cross stitched bookmark made for an elderly friend of ours, Charlie. He was delighted with it when we gave it to him last night.=)


Next we have the two printed canvas needlepoint kits that my mum found a few months before we went to Taiwan (about two years ago now!) and that I recently finished off and 'repaired'. On looking at the top one again the other day, I realised that there are more repairs to make, i.e. when I decided, in my 11 year old wisdom, that it wouldn't matter if one or two stitches went \ when all the others were / as it filled in the shape better....




Here's a wedding card done well in advance of the big day on 20 August this year. Now like me to get things done in good time (Prince Albert would have approved: 'It's always better to complete a task well ahead of schedule.'), so I now have this to keep clean and safe (in its envelope) for the next 2 months and to think of a gift to make.


The last photo shows the circular card mount I chose to put the silver and purple heart in. I took pix of both this and in a square mount and, as soon as I could see them side by side in my photo package, there was no contest on which looked best. (I'll post a better photo when I've taken one.)


Next task is to get on with the blackberries and make up the two cushion/pillow covers etc, but I'm rather busy preparing for software and secretarial exams (plus going to classes and so on) just now, so I mayn't get on as quickly as I'd like... So what's new, huh?!

Detail: 5 Smalls, 3 Styles