Stitched Lettering

1. Untitled, 2. DSC_0119, 3. Edward Gorey: The Bathing Machine, 4. How To Open A New Book, 5. L'Enfer complete, 6. Inspired by the lesser known novel from Natsume Soseki, "I, Swallow", 7. Yeah really, 8. soporific, 9. Ampersands framed

If you regularly read my posts on Feeling Stitchy -and why wouldn't you? ;) - you will probably have noticed that I LOVE embroidered and cross stitched lettering. From clever and witty quotes to beautifully stitched Ampersands.  So if you are equally enchanted by Stitched Lettering come and join me in the Flickr Group I started earlier today! You can post (hand) stitched lettering, alphabets, ampersands, text, quotes, patterns of lettering, monograms etc etc you get the idea....There are already many wonderful photos posted in the group. I hope this new group will be a source of inspiration for you all!

P.s. click on the links underneath the photo to learn who the stitchers of these awesome pieces are!

My Snow Owl Pillow

Today My Snow Owl Pillow is featured on the Fat Quarterly Blog ! The Shades of Grey Designer Challenge was a bit of a struggle (I wrote all about it on Fat Quarterly so I won't bother you all with an account of the difficult process) but in the end I was quite pleased with the result! Jan DiCintio's Shades of Grey fabrics are a joy to work with. The subtle greys go great with almost any other colour and the designs are slightly retro but modern at the same time. A perfect combination as far as I am concerned!

I tried to echo the retro feel in the embroidered O W L letters. On Pinterest I found a link to a great resource for cross stitched and embroidered lettering.  You won't find these exact designs in there, but the book (it was from the early seventies I think) was a huge inspiration for the embroidered letters.

Can you tell these letters were embroidered under great pressure? ;)

I'm actually thinking of making this design (or something similar) into a pattern so every one can have their own Snow Owl Pillow! 

Covered in Stitches: an Embroidery Contest!

Today is the start of a wonderful contest over on the Feeling Stitchy blog and I am terribly excited about it! When I came across the awesome Jillian Tamaki Embroidered Book Cover Designs earlier this year, I thought it would be a neat idea to host an Embroidery Contest on Feeling Stitchy with the theme 'book covers'. As you probably know I love books and I had a great time a couple of months ago when I made my Doubtful Guest Embroidery for the Book themed swap I was involved in. So hopefully the theme will inspire many of you embroiderers out there as well. Besides that, there are some fabulous prizes to be won, kindly provided by small Embroidery supply businesses. I would like to enter and win them myself but of course I can't so I'm putting many of those items on my Christmas Wishlist. Like this one:

A Party Fox Crewel Kit by Takofibers.  How wonderful is that?!

You can read all about the Contest here, and join the Covered in Stitches Flickr Group here. I hope to see many of you there! It would be lovely if you could help me spread the word about this Contest on your blog, twitter etc. My Feeling Stitchy colleague Carina made a lovely button for the Covered in Stitches Contest which you can put on your blog. You can find it right at the end of the Feeling Stitchy post about the contest!

A New Winner!!!

I still have an Accuquilt Baby Go! Fabric Cutter to give away!  I have tried my very best to find the person The Random generator first picked out of the hat but to no avail... So the second number that it picked is no. 82: Charity. Charity said: "My favorite block, hmmmmmm , I think it would be log cabin. It is so versatile". Congratulations Charity!   update: believe it or not but no word from winner no 2 either, on to draw no.3!

I will be back tomorrow to tell you all about the contest I'm launching on Feeling Stitchy!

Challenge

A little while ago I signed up for the Fat Quarterly Shades of Grey Designer's Challenge. I imagine there will be more of these challenges in the future and you don't have to be a 'real' designer to join in. So if you have the chance, sign up too. It's fun!

Jan DiCintio of Daisy Janie (organic) Fabrics sent each contestant (I think there are about 10 of us) a scrap bag full of scraps of her line Shades of Grey and some nice extra fabric to go with it. I instantly had an idea of what I wanted to make, changed my mind, changed it back again, then thought of something else and returned to something close to the original idea but better. It's half finished now and it certainly was a challenge. It still is a challenge actually because I have been waiting for something I bought on Ebay; an extra (but important) thing to add to the project. If it doesn't arrive in time I will have to think of something else..eeeep! Anyway... next week it will be up on the Fat Quarterly Blog and then I can show you all what I made with these lovely versatile fabrics.

Half a monkey and a Badger with a Skunk's tail...

I'm making a little something for my friend Katy (of I'm a Ginger Monkey blog and Fat Quarterly fame). She has a new(ish) sewing studio and I offered to make an embroidery for her rather empty studio walls...a couple of months ago... Yes, I'm much too late with sending and it's still far from finished but I hope the cuteness of this Ginger Monkey with his Thimble hat makes up for the late arrival.

In the meantime I'm also still working on my Badger pattern. And with working on my pattern I actually mean I have been unpicking a lot of my Badger Embroidery. First I removed his tail. Somehow I had my badgers and skunks mixed up (I often draw from memory, without an example) when I made the initial pattern drawing and gave my Badger a Skunk's tail. It had to go obviously... After that I unpicked his coat (it didn't fit very well) and drew a new coat in a smaller size.

Oh before I forget... I have a 20% off all patterns Sale going on in both my Follow the White Bunny shop and my Etsy shop. It ends this Friday and you need to use the coupon code BUNNYSEPTEMBERSALE on check out to receive the discount.

Completely different things...

Look who is making his appearance in one of Britain's coolest crafty magazines, Mollie Makes? It's my little Pindsvin! Thank you Justine for instantly making a photo for me of the feature as I don't have a copy of this months issue yet! 

Now something completely different. Today I received this awesome swap package in the mail from Sarah-Jane

Sarah-Jane was a bit, ehm... late with sending so the arrival of these lovely goodies was totally unexpected but wow, what an amazing package it is! I think I will use the fabrics (of Sarah's  sweet fabric line Children at Play ) to make a lovely lap quilt for Luna! And that magazine is right up my alley, I love making stuffed toys, something I absolutely need to do more often.

Again something completely different...if you love to embroider you need to keep an eye out for my posts on Feeling Stitchy. There will be an absolutely wonderful contest soon, with beautiful prizes that I think embroiderers will LOVE! So make sure you free your dairy of all appointments the next month or two to stitch your entry. The theme is one that is close to my heart and I hope that you will all find it inspiring as well!