Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Second One Complete.....On To The Third.....

 So I started the Cat & Mat from a vintage Creative Circle kit. Remember them? If you were a needle crafter of the 80's?, I'm sure you must have attended at least one home party. Anyway I ran across a bunch of these Creative Circle kits at the thrift store, and couldn't resist this pretty kitty!
 However as you can see, I couldn't stick to the color scheme and instead came up with my own version, which is a little brighter. I have an idea for using the finished piece, but not for a picture, and while I loved doing it, there was a bit too much satin stitch. I tend to get bored easily, so in the end, It took a little longer than anticipated to finish, but finish, I did, yeah!
Now, looking for something a little different, I'm trying some Brazilian Embroidery. Brazilian Embroidery is a dimensional embroidery, and while it looks a bit challenging, so far it's proving to be pretty easy with some spectacular results!

I also forgot that I keep a small project in the car for when I have time between runs. That project, at the moment, is a small crewel embroidery bird. When I remember I'll try to get a photo of it too.

That's it for now.
Hope you are having a wonderful week!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

On To Embroidery

Again, time has gotten the best of me.

The weeks are flying by, but I've managed to complete at least one project and hope that more will be following.

For a brief time I was on the knitting path and completed a couple of projects......but then, as usually happens, my brain went into "numb" mode and the one pair of socks I started...well.....they didn't quite make it to completion, although I started to turn the heel, and...well....at least, I have a stitch counter marking the row where I left off so I can continue on my way, when I hit "knitting" mode again (I hope).

The embroidery began to form in the back of my mind, when I realized how many embroidery items I had done from, oh...say about 20 years ago, or so. My Mom has some, my Aunt has some and I have have a few things, hanging around. While my Mom was packing up (they retired South), she ran across a few things that I don't even remember making.

This lead me to a very vintage kit, that I found at the thrift store, and instead of auctioning it, well, I decided to make it, instead. The fact that the base fabric was burlap fascinated me, and the kit was referred to as "fringe craft" just added to the allure. The kit was produced when I was just a wee one, so it's amazing that it survived un-opened after all of these years.

    
This shows what the completed item is supposed to look like....






Everything that was included in the kit, and burlap on stretcher bars ready for working.



 

The progression of the project which involved mostly chain stitch, some lazy daisy and a touch of straight stitch. For the fringe on the birds you wrap yarn around a specific size cardboard strip, and cut so that they are all the same length. Then you use a steel crochet hook to add them to the design. It was a lot of fun, but "fringing" took a bit of time, and got a little monotonous after awhile, however I forced myself to finish and was very pleased with the results.





Now I just need to turn it into a pillow!

What do you think?

Oh, and I've already started my next embroidery projects! Yeah!