Say hello, wave goodbye

...but it's not 'farewell'! I'll be back in a couple of weeks time (probably sooner than I planned to, knowing  myself...) Hope you will still be here when I return because I will have some REALLY good stuff coming up in late summer and early fall! I will close my Etsy shop for a bit as well, but the good news is that in the mean time you can still buy my patterns at the Follow the White Bunny Shop !

New addition to Embroidery Wall & more Organic Embroidery

Wynken, Blynken and Nod have been added to the small embroidery collection in my living room. My own Alice Rabbit had to temporarily find another place to stay to give the sailing trio some room. Lisa sent this awesome embroidery to me as part of the Phat Quarter Embroidery Swap. (The swap that I made the Edward Gorey embroidery for) The theme was books and Wynken, Blynken & Nod is a poem but with such a  wonderful piece in the mail I won't complain about the tiny bit of rule-bending Lisa did here ;)

Detail from Lisa's embroidery. Photo taken from Lisa's Flickr photostream

Lisa also kindly sent me a book with not only the actual poem but also the illustrations by Sheilah Beckett on which she based her piece.

Check for more photos and details the post on Feeling Stitchy I wrote about it and Lisa has many more gorgeous detailed photos of her embroidery on Flickr.

Because of the girls' summer vacation there is not a lot of time (or energy) for exciting new craft projects. Luna and I did make some progress on the little dolls quilt we are making together for her toy horse. She did a wonderful job with stitch-in-the-ditch-quilting! And I made a tiny bit of progress on the Organic Embroidery.

Colonial Knots were added all around the outside of the yellow bit. I made a feeble attempt at trying to learn the Colonial Knot early in my embroidery 'career' but soon gave up. With the Embroidery Companion (the Yvette Stanton book for left-handers that I always keep near) in my lap I tried again and still found it very tricky to master this stitch. I felt like two hands weren't enough to make one miserable Colonial Knot! Next I added a circular Fly Stitch. I needed a little guidance to make it more or less round, hence the blue marks on the fabric. I actually quite like the Fly Stitch but don't use it very often.

While I was organising some stuff in my house I came across a lot of forgotten embroideries in progress. I'm so easily tempted to start a new project but really should finish at least some of these. One is pretty special, I started it over 2 years ago and I bet some of you will be surprised I have not finished it!

Organic Embroidery

As you may know I regularly post on the Feeling Stitchy blog. My focus is mainly on 'amazing stitches' although I also post about any embroidered piece I come across and like. Last Friday I posted about an especially interesting embroidery by Valerie Roybal. (read the post here)  I thought the organic shapes, or indeed the organic 'free style' in which her embroidery seems to have been made, were very inspiring. My little try out doesn't look anything like Valerie's piece. Not nearly as organic and more flowery. More fiddly too...but I did find out how lovely (almost liberating!) it is to stitch without a pattern! So if you feel like doing some 'Organic Embroidery' too, I'd be interested in seeing your embroideries! If you tag your photos #organicembroidery when you post them in the Embroidery group on Flickr I'll be able to find them more easily!

p.s. this Organic Embroidery made me think about Organic Embroidery Floss. A whole different subject altogether which I will address on another occasion!

Stacked coins and embroidery trivia

I'm rather pleased with how this baby quilt top turned out. The colours and the fabrics work well together and the coins are neatly stacked (well neat enough anyway). I'm a bit worried about the quilting bit though. Not brave enough to do the whole quilt with a nifty free motion pattern yet (although I have been practising!) so I am just quilting straight lines vertically about 1/4 of an inch on either side of the 'coins'. I'm not continuing the vertical quilting lines on the sashes though, not sure what I will do with those (suggestions are welcome!). 

In other news.. I went to see 'Water for Elephants' yesterday. Loved the book and I enjoyed the movie too. It's about a circus during the Depression and it tells a beautiful love story too. Anyway in one of the scenes Reese Witherspoon, who plays one of the main characters in the movie, was embroidering. And it looked pretty convincing too. Not that you could see what she was embroidering but still.... So I googled a bit and found out Reese actually collects embroideries in real life. How cool is that? :D

Walking the Globe...New Pattern is here!

Woohoo! I'm not sure how I did it, but I managed to get my new pattern in the shop just now.  I had a hard time deciding on a title for this pattern. "What makes the world turn?" or "Up in the air" were options but in the end I settled for "Walking the Globe".  Today I found out that that is how you call balancing/walking on those big Circus Balls. Anyway if you feeling like stitching this sweet pattern yourself you can find the pattern here. 

Something for the couch

Yesterday I made a new cushion cover for one of the couch cushions and I think it turned out fairly well. I'm not brilliant at making cushion covers as you can probably tell from the photo. I always make them slightly too big so my cushions always suffer from 'empty corners syndrome'. I also don't measure anything. Because I often think cushion covers  just made from regular quilting fabrics are a bit  floppy I quilted the top of this one. It now feels firmer but soft at the same time. The cushion is also a try out for a colour scheme I had in mind for a quilt later this year (or maybe even next year?) It's a mix of newer fabrics and stash fabrics in grey, black/white and red shades.

P.S. Many thanks to all the sweet replies to my last post!