Craftster Challenge with Sew Lovely Embroidery

Craftster has teamed up with the very wonderful, very generous and very talented Sew Lovely Embroidery to bring you this awesome needlework challenge on Craftster.org! What's the challenge you ask? Well, I'm going to tell you! Sew Lovely has designed a pattern exclusive for Craftster.org and it is just dying to be stitched up by you! Have fun with it! Alter it! Make this pattern yours! Want to tint the embroidery, then go for it....want to stitch it on paper, do it! Just make sure you keep an element of the pattern in your design. 

Specifics:

 Go to this thread and prepare your pattern.

Crafting time for this project is November 1st-December 2nd

Entries are due from December 2nd to December 9th.  On December 2nd, 2013,

Voting will happen from December 10th-December 17th

Only ONE entry per person! 

Now for the most awesome part of the whole challenge! There will be 3 winners! EEEPPP!Check out what the prizes are! 

Sew Lovely Jacket Winner!

Jacket closeup

Thank you everyone for your entries! We had eleven suggestions for Halloween patterns, I plugged the numbers into the random number generator and we have a winner!

Which is Lisa Black! Congratulations Lisa! If you could pass your details onto me (Jo) or Flor, Feeling Stitchy's editor, (you'll find our emails on Feeling Stitchy's  Email Us page) and we'll get in touch with Maureen from Sew Lovely, who will arrange to get the jacket to you!

Thank you again Maureen for such a lovely prize!

Patterns: Halloween round up and a Sew Lovely GIVEAWAY!!!!

I know I probably say this every year but Halloween is my absolute favourite holiday to stitch for. There are loads of great Halloween patterns out there and we're already seeing some great Halloween stitching in the Flickr pool. The collage above shows just a sample of the fantastic stuff out there; top to bottom, left to right, we have

1) Bone appetit stitched by Polly's Lady, pattern by Lizzy*Kate

2) Hallowe'en Trio, an oldy but a goody from a Feeling Stitchy stitch along pattern designed by Cathy Gaubert back in 2011, Jana D recently added a crochet border to her piece and I think it looks great!

3) Dracula by Little Dorrit and Co. (one of the best books of all time in my opinion, the other being of course Frankenstein). Check out the Little Dorrit blog for a free tutorial on how to make their pattern into a tote bag.

4) A free Halloween candy pattern from Red Letter Day Stitches

5) Beautiful Bones by Sew Lovely (read on below for our Sew Lovely giveaway!)

Other great Halloween themed patterns include (both new and classic);

6) The Halloween Spooky Sampler from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.

7) Not one but two new Halloween patterns from Badbird (a cartoon style witch and a cutie pie witch).

8) Kitsch Witch, Feeling Stitchy's Halloween stitch along pattern from last year, designed by Cherry and Cinnamon.

9) Cate Anevski's Bride of Frankenstein, which has been on my to-stitch list like forever!

10) Polka and Bloom's skull patterns.

*Phew* my linking fingers are tired! Have I missed any? How about we increase the list and give you guys a chance to win this .......

 

Hand embroidered front and back with dancing skeletons by Maureen from Sew Lovely, the jacket is an American Apparel size medium and to be in with a chance to win it, comment below with the name of your favourite Halloween design, it can be a design already on the list or a new one! The giveaway runs till Wednesday midnight UK time (9th October 2013) and a comment will be picked randomly the next day, don't forget to keep an eye on Feeling Stitchy to see if you've won! (Giveaway is open internationally, thank you Maureen).

And on one final note, as we're talking about giveaways, we've yet to hear from the winners of the Alison Glass and Stitched Blooms giveaways, so Margaret Schindler (Alison Glass giveaway) and MelodyJ (Stitched Blooms giveaway), if you could get in touch with Feeling Stitchy's editor Floresita at unafloresita(at)gmail.com, we can pass your details on so that you can receive your prizes!

Queen of the Deeps

stitched by makeworkproject

I am in love with this embroidered octo-mer-queen, as embroidered by Heather.

The gorgeous detail Heather achieved on the hair is just outstanding:


As if that's not fabulous enough, this pillow is a mate to a Kraken pillow Heather also embroidered - from a SewLovely pattern. Luckiest couch ever! Amazing stitching, Heather.

Some favourites of 2012

L to R, top to bottom

1. Kindersquad by SeptemberHouse
2. The Crown by What Delilah Did
3. Tattooed Ladies by Sew Lovely
4. Do Small Things with Great Love by Nana Company
5. Elsa Mora

2012 has been a fantastic year for embroidery, I can't wait to see what 2013 brings! Happy New Year everyone!

Patterns: Two Candy Girls

Candy, embroidered and colored in by Maureen

Candy Jacket Side view (hand embroidery and jacket by Shane York)

I love seeing how the same pattern can be interpreted differently, in this case it's from Sew Lovely's  Tattooed Ladies pattern sheet. I think both are absolutely brilliant and it's always great to see embroidery on clothing!

Way Back Wednesday

 
I love when new patterns have that retro feel to them. This is the case with Sew Lovely embroidery patterns. I adore them! They are the sweetest people ever and their patterns are super cute. I love the pin up girls and don't even get me started on the cowgirls. Swoon!

Snifferooski's take on this stitching beauty is so over the top adorable. The retro flowers on her shorts are beyond perfection. How can you resist it? I can't!

You can check out Sew Lovely on Facebook, Etsy and Flickr.

Patterns: Valentine Round Up

There's lots of great Valentine's Day embroidery patterns out there at the moment and still plenty of time to stitch something.

How about something with a little cute vintage vibe from Sew Lovely?

(Stitched by me)

Or Wendi Gratz's lovely heart sampler?

Heart sampler embroidery pattern detail 1 by Wendi Gratz

Or how about some cute applique from Sew Sew n Sew?

Valentine's Embroidery / Applique Pattern by sewsewnsew

If anatomical hearts are more your thing, may I recommend this new pattern from Sublime Stitching.

Or if you're looking for something for the person in your life who is not that into pink or hearts, may I recommend the I'm Nuts About You pattern from Penelope Waits, I realise this pattern has been around for a little while but I thought I'd mention it because it just happens to be in this month's issue of Cross Stitcher to!

Patterns: Smile for the camera (again)

Embroidered Diana Camera Skirt stitched by Sew Lovely

I don't know about anyone else but personally I struggle sometimes with what to do with my embroidery, my pieces usually end up on cushions and I think my husband would say that we now have way too many cushions! So I love this idea by Sew Lovely of making this gorgeous camera embroidery into a skirt pocket so much that I thought it was worth blogging about the Smile for the Camera pattern sheet again (originally blogged about here). I think if you know your way round a sewing machine reasonably well, this would be quite easy to do and would be a lovely way to personalise a skirt!

Patterns: Folk Art

Home Sweet Home stitched by WithWhimsy

I love Sew Lovely's Folk Art pattern set so it was great to see one of the designs from the set pop up in the Flickr Embroidery pool, stitched very charmingly by WithWhimsy.

Talking of Sew Lovely, also check out their brilliant (and free - for personal use only) Little Red Riding Hood versus the Wolf pattern that is on their blog.

Patterns: Lydia the Tattooed Lady

Lydia the Tattooed Lady beautifully stitched by katiekutthroat

I love katiekutthroat's use of colour for Lydia the Tattooed Lady, which is part of Sew Lovely's Circus Palooza pattern sheet.

Patterns: Pin up girl

Pinup WIP by Sara Chung

I love this pin up girl wip by Sara Chung, it's an adaptation of one of Sew Lovely's pin up girls. You can read about the alterations Sara made to the pattern on her blog here (scroll down to the bottom of the post), I love the use of the lace!

Patterns: Camera Boy

Camera Boy by Sew Lovely Embroidery

I love this pattern (which is part of Sew Lovely's Smile for the Camera pattern sheet) and I love the choice of fabric and the use of just black thread and how the boy has been placed in the bottom corner of the piece. A beautiful pattern and a beautiful piece of work to.

Patterns: Summer Girl

Sew Lovely have posted this beautiful free Summer Girl pattern over on Flickr.

I'm finding the height of summer a little quiet on the new pattern front (is everyone out there having too much fun!), so it was lovely having a new pattern to stitch from and with a summer theme to boot!