DMC Embroidered Tablecloth

I picked this embroidered table cloth kit in a charity shop ages ago, I'm not exactly sure when I brought it but I know I've been slowly working on it bit by bit since 24th July 2017.

I paid two whole English pounds for it and luckily the entire kit was intact and it said on the back that the original price was around £20.

I love having a slow sewing project to do and this one was perfect.

It came with the table cloth back ground with the design mark on in some sort of blue stuff? Which I'm now struggling to get the blue stuff off though, I thought it might be like an iron away type thing but it isn't. Rikki suggested that maybe I could try washing it away but I'm not sure I trust embroidery to stand up to a good scrub. Any suggestions?  

The pattern is of little yellow flowers and daisies. The kit came with all of the threads include but it was a bit touch and go as to if the yellow threads were going to run out or not.

A lot of the pattern was back stitch or satin stitch. I really enjoyed watching my satin stitch improve over time. 

I used my Grandmas wooden embroidery hoop to keep everything taut as I was sewing. It was a complete life saver. I;m not sure I could have kept things looking neat without it. 

Rikkis Nan actually spotted this project and thought it might be a change from cross stitch [she's a huge cross stitch fan!] so we got her one of her own for Christmas and now I'm thinking I might need another one to do for myself! 

I sewed a lot of this while watching "The Handmaidens Tale" it was a great project for watching telly because it keeps your brain fairly free. 

In other news! 

- Well to be honest there's not a lot of news? I brought some new thigh high boots. I wore the pair I brought last year to death so it seemed like a fairly sensible purchase.

-I've got a whole night of sewing ahead of me which is pretty exciting. 

- And that's it really! 

Much Love

Frankie 

xxx

DIY Embroidered skirt

Anyone who's been within three feet of a shop recently might have noticed the huge trend for embroidery on clothes at the moment.

Now technically I don't "follow" the most recent trends. However I do love a bit of embroidery so it would be rude not too. I briefly considered making a little denim skirt and embroidering that but as luck would have it Rikki's Nan was getting rid of two button front skirts and offered them to me.

Well that was one job saved, next I just needed to decide what to embroider. This is actually my second attempt, my first attempt was a much more densely embroidered design in reds. It didn't complement to colour of the skirt and the idea of having that amount of embroidery focusing everyone's attention on one of my hips didn't exactly fill me with good feelings. Plus the embroidery had made the skirt all puckered up and nasty looking.

Naturally instead of giving up I spent an hour and a half unpicking all of my hard work and started again. This time I opted for pinks for the rose because it worked better with the blue and decided just to embroider the outline. 

Its a lot more of a subtle effect which I'm hoping means I won't be put off wearing it even after the trend is dead and buried. Luckily the skirt was a good fit out of the bag I just took an inch off the length [short legs]. Looking at these pictures its a bit snug but LOL Easter! 

I definitely prefer this to my first attempt. I used two strands of embroidery and a simple back stitch. I didn't use a hoop instead I just kept things taught using my hands.

So yeah I actually kind of love it and on the plus side no one else has one like this! 

In other news!

We are halfway through our second week of half term, we have no car and lil man has a cough..... Its great.......... [He made me drag the playdough box downstairs yesterday, spent five minutes playing with it and declared himself bored]

We still have a house full of Easter eggs and its far too tempting!

I cannot wait to be able to sew properly again! I've already said to Rikki the first chance I get I'm having a good long session!

I ran down the road in my pj's this week after the bin men. To add more detail, my pj's are a camisole and "french?" knickers? and I heard the bin lorry but thought I hadn't put the bin out [we have fortnightly bin collections so if you miss it you end up with a months worth of rubbish to get rid of!] Anyway as it goes Rikki had already put it out when he left for work, which the bin men took great delight in telling me! #mortified 

Much Love 

Frankie!

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End of Year Teacher Gifts

I have serious issues with the idea of teacher gifts. I don't even remember buying my teachers gifts when I was at school. In fact im pretty sure when I left college I just went to the pub and brought my teachers a round of drinks.

Anyway at Lil Mans nursery some of the mums were starting to trot out the gifts (one per teacher I might add, and there's like four of them) and whilst part of me thinks yes they do a lovely job of looking after my baby boy bu they also get paid for it?

Yeah I know I'm mean but I don't remember anyone getting me a worlds best barmaid mug.

So I decided the best way to not feel like a massive cow who doesn't appreciate them was to make something for the nursery. So I decided to embroider some cushion covers with some of mine and lil mans favourite book quotes.

We opted for winnie the pooh "as soon as I saw you I knew an adventure was going to happen"

"There's no such thing as a gruffalo?"

and Dr Seuss "You're off to great places! Today is your day, your mountain is waiting so..... get on your way!"

It kind of turned out as a win win! I got to give a gift but I didn't have to buy anything! 

I handed them over this morning and I think they went down well!!!

In other news boy have we been busy!!!

Thursday, I had Lil mans end of year assembly [He didn't participate apart from to say his one line, In his defence he was tired but still!] 

Friday, we went to see Rikkis Grandad because he'd had a knee op, and then I went out with my friends because one of them is leaving to teach in Thailand. I had a lovely night out and wore my tartan pencil skirt although I did have to let it out a bit and reinforce the side seams because I had visions of them splitting when I sat down!

Saturday , we were suppose to be at a BBQ but the bad weather meant it was cancelled! which was actually pretty lucky for me as I was suffering from a Mumover![Mumover- When you wake up the morning after a night of not drinking but feel like a big bag of dying because you've stayed up past 11.00pm]

Sunday, the boys went to the football and I stayed in and watched movies with Rikkis Grandad. Which was lovely until I banged my head on the bathroom cabinet and had to spend an hour with a bag of peas on my head [Yes I had a massive lump on my head and fully sulked because I hurt myself! And I had a massive headache to boot!] We did manage to fix my hand crank sewing machine between us though [more on that another day!]

Monday, went to finalise some wedding stuff! Which was lovely, and the venue is still the absolute bomb!

Tuesday, went to the zoo! I got sunburn! [Review of zoo will be coming this week!]

Wednesday, Rikki went to help his brother move and I looked after my two nephews with Rikki's Nan and Grandad [note: Children do not like warm weather it makes them grouchy!]

and today? well today I'm going to try and put my house in some sort of order!

And them maybe sit down and have a little rest!!! 

Much Love

Frankie 

xxx

Experimenting with Embroidery Feet

I don;t like to toot my own horn but I was a pretty dab hand at free machine embroidery back in the day. It was a focal point of my art textiles alevel and I spent hours whizzing around on the machine.
I found it very relaxing [Apart from the time I caught my finger in the needle.....that was not relaxing]

Anyway I was pretty disheartened to realise that 6 years of not practising has left me VERY rusty. I brought my foot off amazon for under £2.00 and it fits my machine like a dream.

First I practised some free motion quilting, I'm not sure what the techniques are called but I like the squiggle one and the pebble looking one best. I still need a lot more practise before I try this on a quilt first.

And then I tried to do a picture, I ran out of thread before I could do the eyes properly so please forgive how creepy he looks! This is still very wiggly! 

I enjoyed doing it again, but I need a lot more practise before I can start using it on quilts! Although I have no idea how I'm going to negotiate that amount of fabric under the dammed thing and still stay in control.

In other news, I so tried! this muggy hot weather is really messing me up sleep wise! 

Much Love

Frankie

Vintage Patchwork Picnic Blanket

We needed a picnic blanket and I needed something to occupy my time whilst my iron was broken. Using the cheats method of making half square triangles seemed to do the trick.

The fabric used for the HST was upholstery and curtain remnant fabric that was given to me by a friend, no piece was bigger than a4 so it lent itself to patchwork.

I pieced the HST randomly so they were all going in different directions, I like that it sends your eyes on a crazy trip trying to find patterns. And it makes for quick piecing, no messing and checking which ways which, just pick two and sew them together, then sew your twos to twos, then fours to fours etc etc. I'd love to try this technique in solids or low volume prints for a really modern look.

I added the centre embroidered square because I only had 8 HST blocks. I like the effect though, I love it when a disaster turns itself around. 

The embroidery was from a really old project in fact it was one of the first things I wrote about in 2014 . Its been gathering dust in my sewing area since it was finished.

I applied it to the red floral fabric using a zig zag stitch. Technically I should have turned all the edges under and made it really neat, but at this point I wasn't loving how it was looking.

In fact I still don't I only really finished it because I'm working on my quilting skills. Speaking of which, I quilted around the centre square and did a triangle sort of thing on the edges, I'm not sure if you can see in the pictures and I'm not sure what to call it. It was really quick though and I think it makes a nice effect. I didn't use batting because I don't have any, and didn't think it was worth the purchase [can you tell I'm not a quilting purist?] Instead I used a piece of heavy upholstery fabric. I think it works well because this quilt isn't intended for snuggling just for eating off. The upholstery fabric also means its pretty heavy so hopefully won't fly away.

I backed it with this fox print fabric that I won in a giveaway on Marie's blog. Whilst I love the print its not the sort of thing I would use for clothes but I think it makes a pretty nice quilt back. 

I stitched the binding by hand, which didn't take long as the quilt is only about one metre square. Not big enough to sleep under but big enough to eat off.

So here's my verdict, I don't love it. In theory I should, I loved the idea of using the HST so that the floral prints would end up looking like a crazy wild flower garden. And I love that I had to use an embroidery at the centre and that the embroidery fits with my wild garden idea. But I just don't like it.  I showed it to my sister and she commented its not in my usual quilt style were I tend to go for a very modern look like here and here.

In fact when I've gone for a slightly more "twee" look Its still not looked quite as vintage as this.

So now I think I need to make a new picnic blanket in my style and work out what I'm going to do with this one!

Anyone want a picnic blanket?

Much Love

Frankie

xxx

Buffy Quote Embroidery Hoop!

I love Buffy the Vampire slayer, I love the clothes, I love the stories and I REALLY! love Spike.

I also love Angel but I think spikes my favourite.... OMG just googled, Spike and Angel together, Their is some serious photo shopping skills out there!

Anyway apart from the fact that everybody who lives directly above a hellmouth appears to be all kinds of beautiful, I also love that one minute your watching an awesome fight scene and the next Joss Whedon [the writer] hits you with something incredibly poignant and accurate. Like this:  

"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it" 

I mean you can't do that Joss! I came here to see awesome fight scenes and crush on Buffys wardrobe! You can't make me FEEL things!

 But it is awesome and definitely worthy of some embroidery action! I also love the speech from the episode "passions" but it's really long!

Anyway its an old hoop, and some scrap fabric and just some simple embroidery cottons from stash. It was a pretty quick project actually I made it whilst waiting for Rikki to come home from his night shift. He thought he might get an early finish like 12.00am, so I waited up and got some stitching done too. [I also watched a film called "her" that was about a guy falling in love with a computer. It got freaky pretty quickly, and by freaky I mean "freaky"]

I decided to make the word Live stand out by doing it in chain stitch, otherwise known as my favourite of all the embroidery stitches!!!

And I tried to do a font kind of thing, but it was hard because I was free handing it!

And yeah, pretty simple, hopefully when we move I might find a little nook to hang this in!

But for now I'll leave you with some pictures of the attractive men from Buffy.

Yes I also harbour love for Xander and Giles, Omg Giles! I bet he knows how to make a cracking brew!

Much Love

Frankie

xxx

Embroidered Wolf Cushions!

These were my Mum and Dad Christmas gifts. They go away in their camper van a lot and for some reason [I'm not sure why but there is a story there] they have a wolf on the back spare tyre cover. He even has a name but I can't remember what that is either.

So anyway I thought they might like some cushions to spruce up the inside of the van [I mean there are only so many personal touches you can add]

So here's the one I made for my mum its very floaty and swirly and girly. I tried to stick to the general colour scheme of the van which is turquoise [in fact I also backed them in a teal fabric with leaves on but i forgot to take a pictures]

Its just a basic running stitch but I think it looks really clean and cute. 

I especially like the the eyes and the small details.

This is the one I chose for my dad, basically its a mirror of my mums but I made it more masculine by going for a more geometric style. 

I personally think it looks awesome, you can tell they match but they are not too matchy matchy!

I really like all of the triangle detail and the fact its a little more abstract.

Here they are together, I think they look good but if I were to do it again I'd have them facing opposite ways. 

Oh I love making Christmas presents by hand!!!

Much Love

Frankie

xxx

Finished cushion.

so I've finished another custom order for a cushion.

you've seen this embroidery before but know its all sewn up! The idea is that the little girl is the client herself wearing a coat her father brought her from his winnings from a competition.

Anyway her mum kept the buttons and then the client herself decided to get rib of her button stash (guess who helped there!) but wanted to keep these three buttons because they are special!

She want it incorporated into something for her home and before I heard the story I was going to go in a completely different direction!

Anyway it was lots and lots of fun to crack out the old embroidery skills again and to do something that's so personal!

Much Love

Frankie

xxx

Soft play, kurt cobain, vomit and embroidery.... Yep that pretty much sums up my week!

This week hasn't exactly been chaos, well at least compared to some of the weeks I've had (Christmas with the flu immediately springs to mind).

For started I've finished off an embroidery for a custom order with a lovely story, although I think that the story deserves its own post when the cushion is finished.

It's not my usual type of embroidery I mean there's not an owl in sight, but I do like it! It's based on pattern covers from the 1950s and 1960s. 

I'm particularly pleased with my French knot gold buckles on the shoes.

And the French knot buttons on the coat which didn't photography well so you'll just have to take my word for it that they are excellent! 

It's a very sweet face, embroidered face are a weakness of mine so I'm glad this turned out well. 

I'm other news, I've started to re read love and death the story of who killed kurtCobain as a teenager I was obsessed with rock music and I think I probably read most things written about his death and life. Every time I read anything to do with Kurt Cobain I assume he killed himself and everytime the evidence points to murder, there's really too much to ignore. 

Plus I love a good conspiracy theory! 

This week me and little onitwit attended the nursery trip to a soft play area called "just kidding" in Stoke which was lovely and clean. We were having a lovely time until little knitwit became lethargic and said he wasn't feeling well. A quick temp check showed that he was burning up , so I popped him in the car and drove him home early. When we got home he promptly threw up on his daddy (I know right, at least it wasn't the car eh?) he's feeling a bit better now, but I'm worried in case we've passed it on to other children, although he was fine when we left in the morning. 

Anyway poorly lil knitwit meant that most of yeaterday was spent providing sympathy and cuddles! But I did manage to start a new knitting order as well! 

Anyway I'm off to stop him climbing the walls, he's still a touch warm and has a cough but otherwise he's really perked up and is missing nursery! 

Much love

Frankie

Xxx

the eureka moment...

I don't have many bright ideas, in fact my last bright idea might have been not to overfill the washing machine so I don't break another one.

But last night i did have one of my eureka moments, you know the kind of moment where you almost wish you had an audience to appreciate your moment of genius? I didn't have an audience, instead I had a bowl full of pasta bake and teen mom on record.

so anyway my eureka moment has been cut and is ready to be stitched and I am supper excited about it! I was starting to get into a funk with my sewing and I'm glad to see that I've snapped out of it!

I like having eureka moments, in fact during my first gcse textiles class I had a eureka moment, we were asked to design a small case for carrying around essential sewing equipment like needles, pins, and a bobbin. And I made this.

a nice little drawstring bag, with a doughnut shaped pin cushion. why doughnut shaped you ask? well you see you can slot a little bobbin in the middle of that doughnut so it doesn't get lost! Yeah I know right.... EUREKA!

The funny thing is though because it was a textiles class we had to design it before we could make it, and after I'd designed mine and gone to find some fabric samples I came back to find the girl next to me drawing exactly the same design. EXACTLY! I could have cried! Its so rude to copy some else's work! especially when you don't even know what the little doughnut is for! She swore blind that it was original but the fact that she'd chosen the same colours and written the same annotations seemed a bit fishy to me.

Anyway I went home and told my mum , who told me in no uncertain terms that I better work my hardest to make mine better than the other girls. Which I did, and although we stayed friends for many years I never trusted her again.

Anyway I still use my little baggie and I think about that every time!

but know for some more updated news!

- I've had a lovely surprise from my big sister and her husband which I will be blogging about shortly.
-  Me and Mr knitwits nanny planted some marigolds in my flower patch. (even if she was impressed by my gardening spoon)
- the first tomatoes on my tomato plant are starting to ripen!
- I've been doing some super chunky knitting!

- And I've started a custom embroidery! which I'm really enjoying! Even if the teensy tiny stitches are taking ages!

so there's not much to show but its all go!

much love

Frankie

xxx