I promised my Stitchery Club members this month that we'd not only have the five new patterns to embroider but I'd include five lovely projects as well.
And this is what has kept me extra busy the past few weeks.
But you know, I enjoyed every minute.
I design embroideries for a living, and that's pretty time consuming because each one is a long process starting with a vague idea and a sketch pad.
One design can take between an hour or a week to fine tune on paper, then I need to choose background fabric, feature fabric and thread colours.
Next, the hand drawn design is scanned, cropped and cleaned before being printed out to check the size and quality for preparing later as a PDF pattern. Then I trace it onto fabric, applique pieces may be added and stabiliser is fused behind the block in preparation for hand embroidery.
Finally the the stitching begins.
Depending on the size and intricacy of the design, and also how much free time I have during the daylight hours, this can take two days or a week. A large design I'm working on at the moment has already taken a week and needs another before it will be ready.
When the design is completed I press it, check for errors or missed stitches, and set up the photographs.
I can take 50-70 photos in different settings per project and from there I choose about three or four I like which will then be formatted and made ready for the webpage.
Final step is to bring my notes together with the stitchery, write the pattern and format everything into a PDF file ready for customers to download.
Adding in five projects this month kept me on my toes more than usual, but I truly enjoyed creating each one because most of my stitcheries live in large containers waiting for a one-day project to house them...my intention to do so is real, but the time rarely eventuates.
Anyhow, let me show you what I've been making from the December stitcheries. I'll take you through each stitchery design and show you how it's come to life as a project...
"Sweet Dreams" became a lavender sachet.
I love the idea of this hanging by a ribbon over the bed head, the scent of lavender wafting around my head as I drift off to sleep...
"Dream House" was bordered to create the house effect and then bound in lace as a mini quilt before being sewn to the front of a simply made cushion.
This will be wrapped and waiting for Cully May under the Christmas tree...
"Buttons" is such a cute design when displayed as a wrapper for a large jar of, you guessed it, buttons...
"Hope" is a beautiful quote by Lady Bird Johnson and needed only a lovely ornate frame...
"Flourish" transformed into one of my most useful projects for the next year. I think many of us have unfinished projects so you may find this notebook cover with a reminder message stitched along the spine just what you need too...
Which one was your favourite design or project?
All of these stitchery patterns PLUS the project patterns will be inside the December 17 issue of
The Stitchery Club.
And there's more.
If you join before the 16th I'll send you one of my older issues from November 2015 (which has 7 Christmas patterns inside) within 12 hours of receiving your membership notification.
Well, I'd best be off from here and attend to the lasagne I'm making for dinner tonight.
Mr E loves his pasta, especially ravioli and lasagne! Today was his final day of the 2017 school year and we're celebrating him having the next six weeks of summer break so a special dinner was most important.
There's a bit more work for him to do on the Jeep but it won't prevent us from heading off on a few overnight trips here and there...which means I need to prepare some new stitcheries to work on in the car so back to the sketch pad for me.
God bless you all, and may the weekend ahead bring you laughter, peace and rest.
hugs
