Song lyric embroidery

I'm currently gathering together a load of prints and pictures to complete a gallery wall in my living room and wanted to add a few bits of embroidery in there.  I've been intending to do a song lyric embroidery for a while but couldn't decide what song/line to use.

The one I've gone with for the living room wall isn't the most profound lyric and I can't say it's one which particularly speaks to me, but The Doors are one of my favourite bands ever and Light My Fire has been one of my favourite songs since I was about 12 so I thought I'd just go with it!

This embroidery only took an hour or so to do which made it the perfect project for last week's Creatives Unite (Creatives Unite is the brainchild of Anna at Miss Beatrix.  If you need a creative outlet to stay happy and help you function properly, check it out!).

I've got a couple more embroideries to finish and I need to find a couple more prints before I have enough for my gallery wall but in the meantime, I'm getting lots and lots of inspiration from Pinterest.

My first blog post in aaaaaaaaages and it's probably better suited to tumblr but thought I'd ease myself back in gently :-)

Jenny

 x

What I made when I was ill

I've been feeling a bit flu-ish this week, not real, full-on flu, but bad enough to have to take it easy for a few days and drink lots of hot lemon and honey.  

Lying on the sofa, surrounded by tissues and boxsets of Sex and the City, I had a flick through an, as yet, unused present, The Busy Girl's Guide To Sewing by Carrie Maclennan. It's a good little book, more useful to a sewing novice like myself, I imagine, than someone who knows what they're doing already.  It's filled with supposedly quick little projects and I was suddenly filled with an urge to make the Keep-It-Neat Pattern Sleeve to store my embroidery in when I'm not working on it.  I'm new to embroidery (you can see my first completed project here) but have already found that two big fluffy black cats and white cotton fabric do not mix.  In an attempt to store my embroidery safely away from cat hair and busy paws, this is what I made:

I'm pleased with how it turned out, although even as a novice, I'm sure I could have easily winged it and made it myself without the book.  My sewing machine has only just come out of a three year long hibernation though, so I thought I'd play it safe for my first project!  According to the book, this should have taken me around 30 minutes to make...if that's so, then they were the longest 30 minutes of my life.  I think this is actually the first time I've made anything from scratch with my machine though, so I'm quite happy :-)

Finally, I just wanted to show you my cute little Cath Kidston needle holder which was a gift from a friend:

Isn't he cute!?

Jenny

  x

My first completed hand embroidery!

I have become a bit addicted to Pinterest lately and one of the first things to catch my eye was this quote which had been pinned by my Twitter Buddy, Anna Burnell (whose lovely blog you should check out, incidentally):

Source

If the quote kind of sums me up, it most definitely sums up my tea-drinking, bookworm Mum so I knew immediately I wanted to incorporate it into a gift for her.  I decided to have a go at hand embroidery and just hope it turned out pretty enough to wrap up in a big pink bow and present to my Mum as a birthday gift.  

I decided I wanted my embroidery to consist of a huge teacup sitting on a pile of books, with the quote across the top.  I roughly sketched out on paper how I wanted the finished embroidery to look: 

Sketch of embroidery layout

I traced the outline of my sketch onto my sheet of white cotton in tailor's chalk*  and got to work. I was originally going to embroider all the details but decided to applique the book covers on to add a bit more depth and because I liked the idea of them being solid blocks of colour but not the idea of the many, many hours that would take me to achieve in hand embroidery.

I had intended to leave the embroidery in its wooden hoop, but when I finished, I decided it would look better in a frame.  This also had the benefit of disguising the absolute disaster of tangled threads and knots on the rear of the fabric. I'm all about the presentation and hiding the chaos behind the scenes so this was a good solution. 

(Excuse the poor photography. I was in a rush and still had to iron my masterpiece and

 mount it on black card to stop the tangled thread disasters showing through the cotton)

Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out and really like the appliqued book covers.  They were fiddly to cut out from the fabric but they ended up looking how I hoped they would.  I'm also glad I used my own handwriting for the quote, rather than some nameless font or existing letters pattern.  It makes the gift much more personal and anyone who knows me will instantly know the embroidery is my work, due to my handwriting not having changed since about Year 3 (I can write in joined-up letters too, honest).  Most importantly, the birthday girl loved it, yay! 

I'm definitely loving the hand embroidery and have already started a little seaside picture for my own home.  I just need to learn how to effectively manage those knots and tangles...

Jenny

   x

*I now know tailor's chalk to be the work of the devil and next to impossible to remove from white cotton, grrrr.