My Needlework Hero…

is Susan Elliot over at Plays With Needles! Just look at some of her work:

The “Giving Purse” she made for a charity auction

June’s bead journal page “My Symphony”

November (2008) bead journal page “Abundance”

My Needle’s Garden

August bead journal page “A Daughter’s Valentine”

As you can see, she employs many different media to create her artwork. Susan’s attention to detail and color placement is exquisite. The words she uses to describe how the piece came together and what it means to her are insightful and motivating. Susan takes you on a creative journey, from trying to make different types of leaves, to beading, to new techniques and everything in between.

If you have never visited her blog before, you should. You will get lost in her family, her art and her heartfelt genuineness. I know you will love her as much as I do!

I Have Been…

unusually productive with crafting lately.

For me, when I am sewing or doing needle work, I can “escape” reality. I become so focused on what I am doing that there is just no more room in my brain for thinking about the stresses of everyday life. I guess you could say it’s rather “Zen” for me. One site I visited recently described “Zen” as: something that places great importance on moment-by-moment awareness and ‘seeing deeply into the nature of things’ by direct experience.

I rather like that. Moment-by-moment awareness, although not really practical in everyday life, is a wonderful thing to explore in your down time. I feel it is necessary…like my crafting is necessary to my sanity!

We recently had some disturbing, life altering news. My Husband, the sole provider for our family of 6, has been laid off. Not due to anything wrong he did…in fact, his present and last supervising bosses both tried to get upper management to keep him.
“Sorry,” they said, “it’s just a matter of numbers.” Numbers. We are all just numbers.

Living in Michigan has been a scary proposition for many in the automotive and engineering fields lately. Closing plants, dwindling jobs…outsourcing. My Husband is an engineer. With a Masters Degree in Civil Engineering. Who said a better education will make you more successful in life? We are now in the company of a lot of well educated, jobless families. I worried about them, how they feed their children, themselves. Now I worry about us. We were just barely making all the bills that come with a house, a car, children… as it was.

So, are you nice and depressed now? Enough pity party for me…I think I need to go craft something. I’m sorry to be such a downer, I just really needed to get that all off my chest so I can move on.

This post was actually supposed to be about my needlework hero, Susan Elliot from Plays With Needles, but I think I’ll save that post for tomorrow.

Here a few pictures of what I have accomplished in the last few days. I have also supplied links to the tutorials! They were great stash busters.

First up is a pillow that I made based on Calamity Jane’s pincushion tutorial and the crochet button tutorial from Mademoiselle Chaos:

From My Art, My So Called Life

Next up, two armchair caddies based on Helen’s pattern from Hugs & Kisses (I made mine slightly smaller and without embroidery):

A pillow case from a vintage sheet and the first part of the edging for a pillow case crochet along that Cassie over at You Go Girl! is hosting:

And last but not least of my shares for today is a “Simple Party Clutch” offered by Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson! on the Sew, Mama Sew! blog (click here for tutorial):

Hopefully tomorrow I will have my originally planned post for you…and…pictures of my FINISHED (last night) tree!!!

I’m Knot Crazy…

…yet!!!

I showed you the well wishes project not too long ago. Well, I decided to give it a try, but of course, I have to make it my own! I really didn’t want to make the WHOLE thing embroidered, so I took some off white linen and used water colors to paint it.

I started working on the tree first, since that is what drew me to the project in the first place. So, here’s what’s in my hoop right now:

Since I have spent so many hours working on this I took a BUNCH of pictures!!

You can see the felt I put behind some of the layers to create more dimension.

I have learned one thing, though I still love french knots…I absolutely HATE bullion knots! I had a terrible time making them even! At least it’s a tree trunk and they aren’t perfectly even anyways.

I’m Still Alive…

I’ll have a couple pictures of projects in the next day or two.  In the meantime, I thought I’d share this cat video.  This is so me!!!

Well Wishes…

So last night, while at the bookstore I was looking through the craft magazines and this one caught my eye:

There are many lovely projects in this magazine, but the one that REALLY caught my eye was the featured project “Well Wishes” by Maureen Tarnok. This type of project makes my heart go pitter-patter! I can only hope to have the type of skill, someday, to complete something this detailed and gorgeous. What I fell in love with the most about this project was the tree:

Look at all those lovely french knots! Just about my favorite stitch! I am actually going to attempt, at the very least, to make the tree. I have some left over course linen from a Halloween project a couple of years ago and I think I will do it on there. I want something a little more substantial than just a cotton or muslin. We’ll see what happens!

Here’s a better look at the whole project:

Spring Sewing Party…

Click on the button above and find out all the details! Hope to “see” you tomorrow!

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First picture to share:

I bound two hand towels and one washcloth. The towels have a decorative strip going across the bottom. This was one of my stash busters, all binding was made with one fat quarter. Wish I had more of this material, I love how crisp and clean it looks!

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Update #2

This is the bag holder I have used for the last 11 years.  It was made from a sweat pant leg that was my now 20yr olds.

Here is my new scrappy bag holder!

 
My stash busting has gone well!

Next I think I’ll move on to hand embroidery.  Slower but no less satisfying!

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3rd Update

Well, I was gone for a little while doing Hubby/dinner stuff.  Spent a couple hours at the bookstore, one of my favorite past times.  As a result, I’m not quite as far as I hoped to be.  I should be able to get this project finished tonight and get started on the second one pictured.

We are going to watch Time Traveler's Wife while I finish my stitching.  I wasn’t sure I would get done with the movie before midnight, so I thought I’d do my post now.

This has been a lot of fun and SO productive. I look forward to doing this again sometime!

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Final Update:

Well I didn’t get to the second embroidery piece, didn’t even start on it!  I did manage to get the fishy one done though! 

I enjoyed this a lot! It was nice to be be able to see all the other projects that everyone was working on too!

Bias Tape…

I am going to be making something practical tomorrow and I need bias tape for it. What I found in my fabric stash, that I wanted to use, were two fat quarters. My dilemma was how to make enough bias tape to cover what I need. Well, I found this wonderful tutorial on how to turn a fat quarter into 5 yards of bias tape! Fantastic! If you want to learn how to do it, go here: Stop Staring and Start Sewing   Thank you Jona!!!

On another note, here are a couple of recent finishes:

For Valentines day I made myself a small heart brooch. It’s made of wool felt, vintage seed beads and various other beads.

I am also doing a free BOM offered by Cheryl over at Willowberry Designs. It’s called Under the Sea and it is absolutely darling! Here is the first block done and I will have the second one done in another couple of days! You can just glimpse some of the fabric I will be using, when it is time to finish it, in the background.

Happy stitching!