Stitching Dragonflies

I love bugs on embroidery. I find that people especially love dragonflies and damselflies. I looked through the flickr and found some people who like to embroider them, too. I posted patterns and a tutorial on my Shebrews blog for this particular damselfly. There are many ways you can stitch dragonflies and many stitches that can interpret their beauty.


LindaB from flickr did this crazy quilt loaded with dragonflies and damselflies. LindaB actually incorporates dragonflies quite a bit in her work and even includes tutorials on her blog. Dragonfly wings tutorial is here.



The above dragonfly is also LindaB's. I found another artist who offered a free pattern for a dragonfly, too. Knitting and Co.


And here are a few more examples from Flickr. The first one is Jo in NZ.

This next beaded dragonfly is from LindaB.


Try some of these little bugs on your work. They are really quite fun! In one of my early pieces I did one with organza ribbon for a ribbon embroidery class, but I have forgotten since then how I did it.

Embroidery- the Embellisher Queen

Hi Everyone! I hope you are looking forward to a new project! I have learned that sometimes I fail to make use of some valuable tools I have when I am looking for an embroidery project. As an embellisher, I constantly look for things to put my "signature" on. Lately, when I go to a fabric store, I have been looking at fabric as a canvas, rather than a painting. Instead of being satisfied that the fabric is doing all the work, I look to see what I can do to make it "mine".

I suppose because I am a painter on certain days, looking at things as "unfinished" seems to happen to me quite frequently. I like working on muslin and filling in all the wonderful colors, but sometimes I like to look at something that's already on its way and change it's course. I will show you some examples of what I mean, and then, give you the directions for the little 'checkbook holder', 'pocket folder', or 'clutch', whatever you decide to use it for.



Here is an example of a fabric that had cats printed all over it. I trimmed one of the cats and left enough border to stitch it to another piece of fabric. To make things easier, I ironed it on with Heat and Bond Lite first. (The light Heat and Bond lets you sew through it).



I blanket stitched around the outside of the cat, but, after looking at it, I probably could have just straight stitched and been just as happy. I thought of filling in the stripes, which is an option, but I left them open.


Here, I used the 'themed' fabric and just took it a step further with adding the word 'teacher' and a few flowers to pull the pieces together. Later, after looking at it, I added white centers to the flowers, but I will not post that picture to save space.



Here, again I used the 'themed' fabric and added the image, and after looking at it, tied it together with embellishing one of the 'cat' words on the already printed fabric.


This little trick draws the piece together and gives it that personal touch. Now, I will show you how this is all put together. (what to cut, directions)


Cut the following pieces: 2 pieces 7" x 3 3/4" that will be the cover. They look like that above. While you are cutting them, imagine them folded in half width-wise, so if you are placing a particular design that it goes where you want it. (not upside down) This piece above gets folded as the cover of the folder. Stitch these two pieces together and plan your embroidery embellishments and do them before anything else.



Here, I have embellished the 'plain' dragonflies. At this point I debated about beading, which would have been great on this design. I added the word 'dragonfly' and stitched the flowers in the dark area to tie it together. This is a good time to add your label if you have one, also.



Now, this is the tricky part. I did it wrong the first time, so my picture was wrong and I can't show it. Cut 2 pieces of fabric 7" x 6" that will be the inside pockets. Fold these lengthwise and iron, then lay them on the right side of the cover (the outside) the opposite (which would be crossway) direction of the division of the cover. In other words, the two lines would intersect. Make sure the fold of the pocket is facing the middle, and the side you want showing facing the cover.

Then, cut one piece of fabric (this will be your lining) 7" x 7 1/2". Lay this piece face down on top of the pockets. Pin all around, leaving a gap for turning. I like to leave the gap on the back side bottom. This will be handstitched after turning. After stitching and trimming, pull the entire thing through that opening and push corners out and iron flat. I hand stitched snap closures on mine, but this is optional.





I wanted to show this last kitty folder because I wasn't happy with it after I finished it. I don't think the newspaper fabric 'worked'. I would probably use a solid or vaguely printed fabric instead, next time and use the newspaper fabric for the folders.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and idea post. Let me know if you use it, I would love to see what you do with it.

note: pattern pieces below are not actual size - they're a guide to show you what to cut...

Are we almost there???????

Wow. That's how I feel sometimes when I am trying to finish an embroidery project. I begin jumping up and down and get a little whiney inside like the little child in the back seat of the car crying out: "Are we almost there, yet?" Some projects take an awful long time, and give us some tremendous problems along the way, and maybe, it's the project we put away for months to take out again and determine to finish it.......

And, when you are finally done......who gets it? Don't you wish then, you could share it with more than one person? Well, you can. I am going to show you how.

First of all, you can use your own embroidery, but if you are interested in the design I am showing you, it will be on my blog for free use. I will try to put up the pattern today after I blog here. Here is the finished design.


Take the completed embroidery piece to a place that does color copies and have them reduce it to fit within 5.5"tall x 5" wide or slightly smaller. Fold a 11" x 8.5" sheet in half and see if you can line two designs to fit pasted next to each other. Then, have them run copies of your work on card stock paper. If you are able, you can run these color copies from your home printer, after scanning the work, or photographing the work and scanning the photograph.


When you cut the cards out, use a scissors with an design edge so you don't have to worry about perfection and it gives it that fabric look. You can purchase matching and fitting envelopes at the scrapbook stores or craft stores in the scrapbooking section.

I also made a nice booklet to hold the cards for gift giving, which I will show you how to make. First, I used heavier cloth, like duck, twill, or drapery weight. I even did the embroidery on duck cloth, but if you need to transfer by tracing, you probably will have to do muslin for the embroidery piece. If you already have the embroidery, pick something that will fit the space of this pattern and cut it down accordingly........the embroidery boundaries should measure approximately 4" x 5".


Your major book piece will be slightly larger than 8.5" x 11", I pinked the fabric all around. Attach your embroidery piece to this on the right right side, leaving room around the top and outer edge for machine stitching later. I attached my embroidery with a simple stitch, but you may want to machine stitch it on. I like the frayed edge, so I used fabric that I knew would fray nicely.


So, here I am applying the embroidery after attaching the piece to the front. Notice the placement on the side and top, leaving room for machine stitching later.



After you finish your embroidery, cut another piece of matching fabric to line the inside of the book, 11" x 6", and stitch them together all around the outside. Then, looking at drawn pattern, fold the bottom up making a hem at the top and stitch those sides closed. Then, sew two lines in the middle to hold a pen. Then stitch two pieces of twill tape or ribbon to tie the book closed. I used fray check on the twill tape open end.


Then add your pretty cards that you made earlier........





And there you have it! I hope I explained this well enough to follow, but I don't mind you emailing me if you have questions. I decided that after the embroidery cards were sent, this made a nice notebook for your purse with paper pads and pen. I wanted to purchase a nice matching pen before posting, but I forgot to go get one. Imagine the pen in the middle of the open book. It fits really nice. I know you can't see the pattern real well, but maybe you can print it out, and then you will see it better. Enjoy!

Refrigerator Art

Stop. Don't scroll down. Let me explain. You'll spoil the surprise if you peek......let me start this way:

In the United States, in Wisconsin, in some small city, on my street, in my home, there is a little known art gallery known as the "refrigerator door". It's the very first art gallery for my children's creations. I have five children, so not everyone's pictures got to be on the refrigerator at once, but it was surely an honor to have one's creations displayed for all to see who came to visit.

Now, my children's children have been proudly displaying their works of art. If you want to know what a big deal this is, know/remember what I am talking about, it's a little like when you open this page and see your creation on the page for all the visitors to see.....that "little person" in you lights up with glee.......


What I have for you today is how to transform those wonderful art pieces into embroidery. First, I made an inkjet transfer of the artwork and put it on muslin. Make sure that you make the transfer reversed if there is lettering, so that when you apply it, it is legible. Then, because I am not schooled in embroidery, I wanted to have the quilt batting to hide my embroidery trail, so I sewed on a border and tacked the quilt batting to it.


Then, I began a wonderful experience of embroidery. I cannot tell you the pleasure it gave me to trace those little crayon strokes of my granddaughter's. I was quite surprised.


The only two rules I gave myself were to try to mimic the colors as much as possible, and to embroider in the direction of the crayon stroke. I think this gave credibility to making the crayon drawing into the embroidery piece. I used a chain stitch most often because it filled in easily and I could blend other colors if I wanted to. Being an embellisher at heart, I really had to resist adding things like extra design, or beading.......I used self-control and stayed true to the drawing....lol. Now I will show you some detail of the work.





After much deliberation, I decided to make the piece a wall-hanging, though the possibilites included a tote panel, doll quilt or framed in picture style. I used DMC number 8 cotton perle embroidery thread. I like the ease of not having to separate strands, but the colors are much more limited. I am not a quilter, so I must admit I put this together without that knowledge, but I am fairly happy with it. I wished I was a quilter after I sewed it. However, I cannot wait to see Gabby's face when I give it to her for her birthday today. Truly, it would even be a great "Gramma" gift! Hope you enjoyed it!

The Problem Is......

Picasso is quoted as saying: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." My interpretation of that is: Most of what makes good art is "courage." I say this because I struggle with my own idea of what something is "supposed" to look like, instead of just letting my imagination go.........

As an embroiderer, I am most attracted to the things that are out of the box....or, that do not follow the "rules". I love things like crazy-quilting, and free-form crochet, I love mixed media where all the things bump together, doing their own thing, but coming together as one piece. But for the most part, I do not have the courage to step out of the norm.....I am working on that.

One of the things as an embroiderer that would give you freedom is to be able to make your own patterns. I am constantly looking at things as input for my idea box. I keep a spiral notebook that I paste and glue photos, and sketches. I know some people can just come up with things out of their imagination, but sometimes I need that little object to give me "courage" to even try it.


I found this picture in a Sunday newspaper and thought it was a great reference if I needed an illustration for shoes. I was thinking all week about blogging for today , and I decided to make it a project for you.


You can trace the shoes on a seperate piece of paper, and then trace that drawing on a piece of muslin with a water soluable pen, or if you are a really good embroiderer, a fine black marker. This piece is 8X10 inches. The muslin is 5 inches by 8 inches. After tracing the pattern, I bond the pieces together with heat and bond light.


I usually pick out first the colors I am sure about and decide as I go along. I knew I wanted the border to be red, but I wasn't sure about the shoes. I used a herringbone stitch, but you can use any stitch you like. You can see faintly the tracings of the shoes with the water soluable pen. I use number 8 DMC embroidery thread. It's easy to work with, although the colors are much more limited. I also think I just read that DMC does not sell out of the US. I don't know why.


After much looking at it, I decided to just let the shoes be black. At this point I thought of many ways to bring some design to them, but left them simple for this demonstration. You can fill them in with fabric markers, or you could have cut little appliques, and this morning while looking at them, I thought you could introduce some beading in them. I decided that the lettering should be red, for color balance. I free-handed the verse, but there are lots of books with the lettering done that can be traced in your scrapbooking stores. The sky is the limit!, is the saying.


At this point you can decide if it's a mini-quilt, a pillow, a small hanging, or frame it. Just go confidently in the direction of your dreams!


This pattern is absolutely yours to do with as you like and have fun with it! Now maybe when reading the Sunday flyers in your paper, you will get other ideas! Please post pictures on the Flickr Embroidery Group if you make anything with it, I would love to see what you do! Take courage and step out of the norm!

Aunt Pearl's Drawers

Hi everybody! I was thinking about Mother's Day coming up and something I could give that I made....For my birthday a friend of mine gave me some drawer sachets and I liked them very much. They were commercial and paper packets, and though I love opening my sock drawer and being greeted by such a lovely fragrance, I thought an embroidered set would make a lovely gift. So, I made a pattern just for the blog to share with you. You can use them how you like and even sell if you want. I would love to see what you do with them, so email me if you Flickr them or put them in your blog or shop.


I am only posting the pattern on this blog, but I have written out the whole tutorial on my craft blog .


I was worried that the post would be too long if I did the whole tutorial here. I am new to blogger, so I don't quite understand all the posting options or ways of doing things.....


I don't know how these will print out, but hopefully you will get good copies. I embroidered on a 3" x 4" square of muslin which after tracing the pattern I bonded to the fabric with heat and bond lite. Then, I began my embroidery. If you do it this way, you don't have to "quilt" the pieces, which I like because I can get on with the embroidery, which I love.



I was looking at the Flickr pics last nite trying to get familiar with things you do and I realized that I am an amateur embroiderer at best. I do not know the rules.....lol....are there rules? I started embroidering when I was ten. I was given some floss and some printed towels and left to my own. I realize when I am working sometimes that there is probably an easier or better way, but I somehow manage to get to my goal regardless. I use a simple backstitch for outlining and the border is an official stitch, but I don't know what it's called. I found the stitch I use for the border, it's called Herringbone, it can be found here.


I went to my Aunt's house yesterday and asked if I could photograph my sock sachet in her sock drawer. My Aunt is 79. She agreed, but lit up when she saw my "underwear sachet" and offered to let me use it in her underwear drawer............




I hope you find some lovely drawers for your new sachets. Enjoy the patterns and until we talk again, I hope your "Feeling Stitchy!"