Tea Towel Tour: The End

My towel was returned to me filled with some wonderful stitching! My "no theme' ending up being a cat theme which I think is great. So here it is.......

Thanks so much to the ladies in my group for such awesome stitches!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!


Pattern is from Aunt Martha's

Tea Towel Tour: Part 5

Well the time has come. I have stitched on my last towel for the tour. I'm sad to see it end but I'm also very excited to get my towel back! Here's what I did for sew~amy's Volkswagen camping towel---a little blue Bug.


TTFN!

Tea Towel Tour: Part 4

I've finished up the design for cupcakeguru's towel. She had a Halloween theme and I used a pattern from a iron-on transfer that I found at the flea market last year. It's a huge book filled with all kinds of designs. I may do a post about it later. But I went with this Trick-or Treater. I think he looks pretty scary! I added the words on the bag. I only have one more towel to stitch on and this tour will be all finished. I'm sad to see it end!




Here's the towel so far. Only one more person needs to stitch on it.

Off to a good start

I've started stitching up some things for the holidays already. I'm trying not to get so behind as I did last year. I pretty much left myself a week for gifts last year because of a huge Christmas swap I decided to do------which I vowed to never do again. So hopefully things will not be so bad this year. I don't really know who I'm giving these to quite yet, I just ironed on a bunch of designs I've been wanting to stitch for a while. These will most likely be made into ornaments because they're on the smaller side. So here's what I've go so far.

These great Julie West designs from Sublime Stitching that I've been wanting to do.

This one looked like a tree to me so I gave it a trunk.


I also did a couple things from the Black Apple patterns so. I love these patterns so much. Check out the Black Apple blog also for more great art from Emily Martin. She's really fantastic.

Cute hedgehog.

Bunny wearing a striped dress.

Ghostie.
Then a couple things from a huge Aunt Martha's holiday pattern set. There are some really great things in the set from Thanksgiving to Christmas and some really super cute designs too. I'll be using a lot of patterns from this.

I mean how sweet is this little angel. I just had to use cotton candy colored thread for this. Too sweet.

And this cute caroler! Seriously... how sweet is he? My french knots still aren't perfect but I think they're about as good as they're gonna get. I would strongly recommend this transfer set if you want cute Christmas designs. I really feel like I'm making good time so far. I have TONS more to do of course. I'm really trying not to buy much at all for the holidays this year. I'm trying to save for a wedding you know? Plus I have great family and friends that appreciate handmade gifts. Off to stitch some more!

Dirty Things

I've been putting off writing about the NSFW swap because I'm really not sure if my partner has received her piece yet but I can't wait any longer!! Over on flickr the Phat Quarter group did a NSFW swap--NSFW meaning not safe for work if you didn't know. So this one was wide open for raunchy language and sexy situations. I received this amazing piece from schinders. I was so excited that she was going to be making something for me because I am a big fan of her work. She definitely didn't disappoint with this Dirty Pillow!

Saucy huh? I love it. Be sure to check out the rest of her work. It's really fantastic.

I was pretty pleased with the piece I made. I got the idea from a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of a guy in a business suit with his junk hanging out. Quite a stunning image really. I stitched on fabric that has little balloons on it though for a bit of whimsy. I had also just found these small doilies at Big Lots for a quarter each and really wanted to use one. So I thought I'd cover up the NSFW part of this piece and then stitched Peek-A Boo on it. If you raise it you'll get the naughty surprise. I love it.

The whole piece.

Peek-a Boo

The surprise underneath--a pretty pink penis. I think it's hilarious. I really hope it makes it to my partner. She lives in Australia so it had a bit of a trek. So now I'm just working on things I want to do--Christmas things, gifts etc. I was ironing on transfers for at least an hour the other day to get things ready. Busy busy busy!

Coraline Swap:Part 2

Here's what my amazing partner melvinator sent me for the Coraline swap on Craftster. This absolutely stunning Coraline doll!

The face, arms and legs are all made out of clay and the body is soft and filled with sand--just like in the beginning of the movie. I am in awe of her sculpting skills.

She also made this cute necklace that has the three hidden places of the ghost children's eyes and an extra mouse ball. So cute.

So another successful swap in done. I really enjoy swapping. I love making things for other people, but no swaps for a while. Must focus on the holidays now.

Tea Towel Tour: Part 3

Well I guess I'm about halfway through the tea towel tour now that I've finished fabricfriend's towel. She had a pretty cool Day of the Dead/religous kitsch theme going on. I looked at all kinds of design online from boxing nuns to skeleton Jesus's but none really stood out. Then it hit me........the bleeding heart with thorns. It's a perfect fit for the towel and I'm so happy with how it turned out!




Here's how it looks with the other designs on the towel so far, greenlightgo's Day of the Dead Frida and sundayafternoonhousewife's Lady of Guadalupe (I think).

Coraline swap part 1

So here is what I made for my partner for the Coraline swap on Craftster. This was a really fun swap. The movie is so wonderful and full of so many wonderful characters. Check out the Coraline website for fun little things like getting your name spelled out in circus mice, too. Here's what I made. My partner's favorite characters were Spink and Forcible so I used the Other versions of them for this necklace and added some buttons.

Then I made a set of ornaments figuring it was close enough to Christmas. Some embroidered, some just in felt. I painted up this little black box that I bought at a thrift store and out them all in there.

For the ornaments I did a rag doll Coraline with button eyes, Wybie, Cat, a scotty dog with wings and the chicken oven mitt that the Other Mother uses. The scotty dog pattern I used is from here.

Close up of Wybie

and rag doll Coraline.

The piece I'm most proud of is this pillow. I spent a lot of time working on this--lots of seed stitches. One side shows Coraline going through the tunnel to the "other" side. I got the image here. I really tried to work with different color values--lights to darks. I also added the button key. I'm super pleased with it.





The other side has the Other Mother in all her creepy glory. She's quite frightening I think. I also did the three little ghost children who I thought were cute but kinda creepy too.



The ghost children.





I really hated giving this pillow away. I may need to make one for myself because I'm so pleased with how I did the shading and coloring of the tunnel. Other Mother turned out totally creepy, too. I can't wait to see what I'll get in return. That's the best thing about swapping--a surprise that you know is being made just for you. I will have to stay away from swaps for a while though. I need to start on Christmas gifts. I want to make most of my gifts again this year and do NOT want to be rushed like I was last year so I'm starting early!

Spooky

Continuing to catch up on my crafting goodies I've made I thought I'd post some Halloween things I've done. I love Halloween and wanted to spook our place up a bit. There's only so much you can living in an apartment. I have no yard to fill with things or anything like that but I've got lights and some awesome bloody hand prints in my windows. I thought my kitchen could definitely use a Halloween towel so I put this together using three Sublime Stitching patterns: Vital Organs, Zombies and Monsters and Gothic Grandeur.

Spooky huh? Here's some close-ups.

Creepy kitty is from the Zombies and Monsters patterns and the rest is from Gothic Grandeur.

Zombie #1

Zombie #2

Creepy corner using Gothic Grandeur patterns.

Other creepy corner using Gothic Grandeur and Vital Organs patterns. I like how it all came together and the zombies are really cool.

Then I did these patterns that I've been wanting to do for a while now from this site. They are free and super cute! There's............

.............scary bunny ghost................

...........vant to suck your blood bunny...................

...........bony bunny...........................and.............

...probably my favorite..........Frankenbunny. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with them so just made them into little hanging ornaments---felt on the back and some Halloween ribbon.

Pretty cute if I may say so. Happy Halloween!

Tea Towel Tour: Part 2

If you remember, I'm in the tea towel tour #5 over on craftster. I've finished two more designs on the towels that have traveled to me. First up is sundayafternoonhousewife's towel. She wanted us to do something that was representative of our state like the state bird, or flower etc. NC"s state bird is the cardinal, which I love but it is also the state bird of several other states including some of my fellow participants. So I decided to do our state flower which is a dogwood. I did a pink version because, well, a white one wouldn't show up as well on a white towel. I also did an outline of the state in Carolina blue and added the Hatteras lighthouse which I think is very representative of NC.

Then I got greenlightgo's towel which has a nature theme. I decided to use this pattern set from Aunt Martha's. I used the persimmon design because it reminded me of the persimmon tree we had growing up. I finally got to use my linen thread also! They are really great--super soft and the colors are very nice. I thought the linen was a nice fit for the design.


I'll have three more towels to stitch on and I can't wait. I also can't wait to get mine back with everyone's stitching on it. How fun. TTFN.