Book Review: Mandalas to Embroider

Hello all - here's a review I've been looking forward to doing for some time - Carina Envoldsen-Harris has created a lovely new title called Mandalas to Embroider: Kaleidoscope Stitching in a Hoop, with colorful, easy designs that can be adapted to any level of stitcher.

Just so you know, the book link above is an Amazon Affiliate link - clicking through the link and buying is one way to support our volunteer reviews.

This book is beautifully photographed, with lots of bright, compelling images of each project. Carina’s wonderful sense of color is evident throughout this book. It's a delightful book, and I recommend it to any stitcher! And stay tuned to the end of this post for a giveaway!

What's in the book

There are 24 total patterns with iron on transfers, and materials, stitch, and color guides.There are 12 large patterns made to fit in a 6 or 7 inch embroidery hoop, and 12 mini patterns for tiny Dandelyne hoops.

I love that the Table of Contents includes a visual guide of every project in the book, to pique your curiosity, and give you a clue of where you might want to start:

The intro includes a bit of info on the spiritual significance of mandalas, I must say it is wonderful that they included that, as those of us coming from another culture might be inclined to view them as merely pretty art. I appreciate that Carina takes the time to explore their significance.

There's a Materials and stitches section which walks you through each stitch used, a brief guide on hoops,  and a how-to guide for mini Dandelyne hoops, which is a lovely plus.

Pattern pages

Each pattern page includes a color line diagram, with DMC floss suggestions, a stitch guide, and a large, lovely photo of the finished piece. One thing I love about the Winter Solstice pattern, is that it incorporates DMC Coloris floss, a bright variegated floss that looks quite nice stitched up as a mandala.

Each of the mini patterns have a common theme: The Explorers, The Gardeners, and The Artists, and I love that each of the mini hoops has a female name- it gives them a nice dash of personality.

The last section in the book contains the iron on transfer patterns, and a brief guide to using them. The book also has a handy large pocket in the back for storing your cut transfers.

 

What I made

Using the transfer patterns was a breeze - I used a hot iron with no steam, ironing the front and back of the fabric first, to heat it up, then pinning the transfer face down and ironing.

The transfer lines we nice and dark, no trouble at all! I wasn't happy with size of my fabric, so I tried again, and the second transfer was just as crisp and dark - I suspect each transfer is good for many ironings:

On to my stitching - Carina's color palette was lovely, but I love to strike off on my own, so I decided to choose my own colors and stitches.

I used a thick pale blue perle cotton, and couched it down with 2 strands of pale blue floss:

Next I chose a light taupe floss, and chain stitched all the little leaves. It took awhile, but I think it paid off well in texture and interest:

Next I chose 2 nice blues, and did a combination of split stitch and chain stitch for the centers:

Next, I followed up with a split stitch in a nice bright red:

I could have repeated this same pattern for all of the cute radish-like shapes, but instead I chose to rotate all 3 colors is different combinations. Not sure if that was successful, but it was quite fun:

I again used chain stitch on the petals in the center, and large lazy daisies in the thick perle cotton. I love the texture these different weights and stitches provided:

Overall, I'm quite happy with my stitching of this project - I love that the design is simple, but you can adapt it with any stitches you'd like to try out, as well as experimentation with color.

Here are all the threads I used:

Again, I highly recommend this book - the patterns are enjoyable, intricate, and very adaptable!

The Giveaway!

Carina and her publisher kindly sent us this book for review (thank you!) and are offering 1 giveaway copy of Mandalas to Embroider to one lucky Feeling Stitchy reader! This applies to all our readers, no matter where you live!

To win, answer this question (from Carina herself): What's the stitch that you "fear" the most? I'll leave comments open through Wednesday evening (CST), June 27, when I'll close the comments and choose 1 random winner, and announce it here. Ready? Set? Go!

Patterns: Alphabet Motif Club

Carina is half way through her alphabet motif club, but you can still join in and download the earlier letters. I love how colourful these are and I think they'd make a great quilt!

Edited to add (sorry, me being forgetful and forgetting the link!) - you can find Carina's Alphabet Club here.

Patterns: Las Flores de Frida

Las Flores de Frida by Carina from Polka & Bloom

Carina from Polka & Bloom has branched out to doing people! Embroidery patterns of faces (particularly realistic looking faces) are often tricky but Carina's done a great job here. You can learn more about how she created the pattern, which is fascinating, here. And you can find the pattern itself here.

Patterns: Valentine Roundup

L to R, top to bottom - (1) Frankenstein Valentine by Bridgeen, 

(2) Fox Hand Embroidery Pattern by teentinyhappythings, (3) Pick A Heart by DonnaBroidery, 

(4) Kaleidoscope Love Embroidery Patterns by littledear , (5) Fox With Hearts by Kinderling, 

(6) Love is Love by Carina (free! - thank you Carina)

With Valentine's Day this coming Friday, it's not too late to start stitching!

Stitched Blooms winner!

Pom-Pom Luminaries from Stitched Blooms by Carina Envoldsen-Harris

We have a Stitched Blooms winner! We had a total of 152 comments, which we plugged into the random number generator.

And comment number 57 is MelodyJ, who has a couple of tea towels she'd like to embroider! Well the book and the embroidery floss should help ;) ! If you could get in touch with me, Jo (you'll find my email address under the 'Email Us' tab at the top of the page) and I'll pass your email address onto Stitched Blooms' publishers.

Thank you everyone for your entries!

Stitched Blooms - book review and giveaway!

Feeling Stitchy's old friend Carina from Polka and Bloom has a book coming out! Called Stitched Blooms, it has 300 floral, leaf and border motifs to embroider! We've been very lucky to have a sneak peak at it and I can say it is absolutely gorgeous! 

As well as a comprehensive embroidery introduction, there are 20 projects to make. Some of my favourite projects include a Mexican folk blouse, botanical art (I know what's going on my to-stitch list for my Christmas present giving this year), a Dala horse (check out Mollie's version when she reviewed the book) and a sweet dreams bedding set.

I think the highlight of the book though is the large collection of motifs at the back of the book. Looking through the pages of motifs is the embroidery pattern equivalent of being a kid in a candy store; the motifs range from borders to small to large-ish individual motifs which could be put on so many things, there isn't a pillowcase or item of clothing that is safe from me now! Although I am a big fan of large complicated patterns (that's where I'm personally at in my development as an embroiderer, as I've been embroidering for a fair few years now), there is so much to be said for smaller patterns, they're perfect for quick embroidery fixes where you can sit down, start something and finish it in one session, it's satisfyingly rewarding! And well, that big embroidery piece you spent months on, there's only so many things you can do with it, whereas with Carina's collection of motifs, in a blink of an eye you've got little leaves and flowers and cute Scandi borders appearing on everything! (And for those hankering after larger patterns, there's patterns such as the bedding set and the blouse as you can see.)

To prove no item of my clothing is now safe, I couldn't resist doing some alteration on an old plain white shirt of mine that had been sitting unloved in my wardrobe. It's still a work in progress, my plans got ahead of me, but this is what I've done so far.

(The stitching around the collar is adapted from one of Stitched Bloom's patterns, I made it longer. Also I'm finding little hoops are really handy when trying to work round awkward bits of clothing.)

Now that I've hopefully tempted you all, how would you like to be in with a chance of winning a copy of the book and a bundle of seven different colours of floss that are favourites of Carina's?

To be in with a chance of winning, simply leave a comment below (and I'd love to know what item you've got sitting round the house you'd like to stitch a motif onto!) The giveaway will run till midnight UK time 30th September 2013 and is open internationally.

So long, Farewell, Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen*

Well, now. It's my turn to say 'au revoir'.

It's a bit sad of course, but with the combination of &Stitches and my own work at Polka & Bloom, I think I'll have plenty of distractions. No need to get all down about the past - the future awaits! :-)

I have absolutely loved writing for Feeling Stitchy for the past (almost) 4 years and being part of this wonderful community. You have inspired me in more ways than I can possibly count! So thank you very much for being so awesome.

I hope the inspiration has gone both ways and you've been inspired by my posts, whether they've been about geeky, odd, pop culture or colourful things. Or whales! I think this community shows that when you plant the seeds of inspiration, a beautiful garden of creativity will blossom.

And I want to end this last post by encouraging you to do some stitchy graffiti. Seriously. Make the world prettier with stitches. :-)

I hope we'll bump into each other again! Do pop by my blog from time to time if you fancy: Carina's Craftblog.

xoxo, Carina


*To quote The Sound of Music...

Farewell (not goodbye) and congrats!

Carina's project from the new &Stitches

A little bird (or bunny) may have told you that two of our wonderful bloggers, Carina and Nicole, are setting out to create kind of the most amazing embroidery-related zine, ever. Jo did a review of the awesome publication they’ve put together (&Stitches) just a few days ago - and please don’t think we’re biased because they’re our friends - they’re also amazingly talented people. I thought you should know a little bit more about just how awesome they are...

Carina has been a blogging friend for years now on Feeling Stitchy. I founded this blog in March of 2007, and Carina joined in one year later in 2008. She has produced countless posts and has tirelessly helped moderate comments and photos and contributed so many ideas here. She hosted the July Stitchalong last year, which introduced you all to MimiLove's delightful Tom Gnome. She has her own successful side business - we showed you one of her beautiful patterns during the June stitchalong, and you can find more of her gorgeous patterns on her site Polka and Bloom. She’s also been a featured designer for DMC and has created her own stitching books.

Nicole joined us in 2010 and has contributed many lovely posts on embroidery and stitching - she also helmed the wonderful Covered in Stitches Contest last year - bringing together the talents of so many stitchers for a truly inspiring group of finalists and prizes. Her own lovely side business, Follow the White Bunny, features whimsical embroidery patterns that showcase her kind nature and her talent as an illustrator, quilter, and storyteller. She was also a featured designer in the recent Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays book.

If I have to say that Feeling Stitchy has been about anything at all (aside from embroidery) it has been about the joy of making things and the growth you experience from doing things you love, for free. They generously volunteered their time and effort here, and I know we have all grown thanks to their love and dedication. We wish them the best of luck in their new endeavor. Thank you, Carina and Nicole!!!!

Patterns: &Stitches

Feeling Stitchy bloggers Carina and Nicole have just launched an exciting new e-zine called &Stitches. A quarterly e-zine, each issue has a theme and for the first issue their theme is colour, so cue lovely, bright embroidery patterns from Nicole, Carina and for this issue, their guest embroidery designer is none other than Corinne from SeptemberHouse, with a brilliant fish design.

As well as three fantastic embroidery patterns (as well Corinne's fish, Nicole has designed a lovely text based Spring pattern and Carina has designed a very cheerful felt applique bird), there are articles on finding colour inspiration from objects around you and colour theory, which I think will be very useful for that all important first step (colour selection) in embroidery projects. There are also interviews, book reviews and a how to for an embroidery stitch that I've certainly never heard of and I'm always up for learning new stitches.

All this and great photography to, I certainly enjoyed reading this issue of &Stitches and will be eagerly looking forward to future issues. If you would like to check out &Stitches, Nicole and Carina are very kindly offering a discount to Feeling Stitchy readers, you can find the &Stitches shop here, just enter the code ORANGE at checkout to get 15% off! This offer is available till Wednesday 18th January (CET).

Fire place sampler

A Night In by Pin Pals

Now, this is my kind of cross stitch sampler! Love everything about it, the little scene, the colours.

And is it just me or is there something Matisse-esque to this?

July Stitchalong - Week 3

Hey guys, here's the week 3 update of the July Stitchalong. This is my progress. A bit of satin stitching going on there on his booties. Fancy! :-)

How about you? Are you doing any stitching along this month? Don't forget to use the tag JulyStitchalong when adding your photos to the Feeling Stitchy group.

Miss Pixie Crafts

Speaking of satin stitch! Take a look at this beauty (can gnomes be beauties?!) - nice satin trousers. And the flowers too! I love how this gnome had been completely filled in - that's such a great texture.

snifferooski

Talk about texture! The hat on this gnome is absolutely awesome! That swirly-ness is really great. Looks like coils of chain stitch...

jamiebarks

How cute is this guy?! I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one who can't commit to filling the gnome - that's a lot of work! Look closer at this gnome, notice that tassle on his hat? That's inspired! Absolutely love it. :-)

Right, that's it for this week - I reckon you could finish a gnome for next week.. Why not give it a go? :-)

Sweet family portrait

Family Portrait, originally uploaded by DetroitMommy.

How adorable is this 'portrait'?!

Such a sweet and simple idea. And quite moving, I think.

Love it. :-)

Stitching awesomeness

Kermit the Camera WIP, originally uploaded by Smallest Forest.

I think this is pretty darn great!

And that's about all there is to say about it! :-)

Do check out the blog post about it on The Smallest Forest.

Stitchy and Nice

Stitchy and Nice, a gallery on Flickr.

I have a wee favour to ask you! When you add your stitchy beauties to the Feeling Stitchy Flickr group, would make sure that anyone can blog the photos? Because, you see, I come across a lot of cool stuff there, but often the settings on the photos are such that only a link to it is available.

So if I want to post it, I have to contact the person to get a copy of the image or have them change the settings and such. I don't always have time for that, unfortunately, so I move on to the next photo, which will let me blog it.

It's up to you if you want to allow people to share your photos, of course! I get that there are reasons for not wanting to. All I'm sayin' is: we want to share your work, but sometimes we can't.

In cases where I can't blog a photo here on FS, I've taken to adding them to galleries on Flickr, so I have a "collection" of that I think is stitch and nice. ;-)

I'm going to post those from time to time, so all those stitchy niceries will get a wee bit of a shout out at least. :-)

Edited to add:
In case you do want to allow others to blog your Flickr images you can do so by following this link. :-)