The Accidental Embroiderer

Two more large panels and a short break

It’s back to the large panel project this week. I’ve been working hard on a lot of different things but can’t show them on the blog as yet, so I’ll return to this old project, which involved making a collection of very large panels - 10 ½ x 16 inch (272 x 408 mm)

Here are two more of them, featuring flowery motifs. Cherri (who stitched these out) did them on a strongly patterned background fabric, and although this makes for a very effective overall impression it also makes it difficult to pick out the embroidered details, so I’ve cleaned up the background of these images up on graphics software to make them a bit easier to see clearly

 

 

 

You can see what I mean about a strongly patterned background making it difficult to see the details. But you can take my word for it that the overall effect with the background is very effective, and the pattern really adds to the overall effect

Now – next week we’re off for a very welcome holiday in the English Lake district. It’s a beautiful part of the country, in the county of Cumbria, and we’re really looking forward to it. But it does mean that I won’t be back blogging until sometime in June, so June’s freebie will be a little late. But it should arrive eventually, and will be another one for you cat lovers. So see you in June!

 

Some more leafy freebies

At the end of March I posted a couple of freebies, which may not have been very exciting in themselves but which might have proved useful if you were making quilts or various different kinds of decorative embroidery. They were simple and stylised and would fit in well with other brighter, more eye-catching designs

Well, several people said they liked that sort of useful design, so here are three more from roughly the same school. They’re all variations on the leaf-and-stem motif, and I hope will come in handy for some projects. They’re all for the 4x4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and they all have just two or three colours – green for the leaves, and dark green and dark brown for the stems

 

Leaf square number 3

 

Leaf square number 4

 

Leaf square number 5

 

Here is the file for number 3, here is number 4 and here is number 5. They’re all in .pes v.6 - hope they work well for you!

 

 

A new approach

I love working with applique – the combination of several different fabrics can give such interesting effects, and when you combine applique with embroidery, the result can be quite exciting.

My only problem with applique is all that heavy, stolid satin stitching that’s usually used to finish off the “join” between the applique, and the background fabric. That heavyweight outline can be OK if you’re working with a simple cartoon image, but if you have something a little more delicate and subtle, the thick border can really destroy the effect you’re looking for

So I’ve been playing around with ways of finishing off that rough applique edge, and recently have come up with what you might call a “natural frame”. It’s an embroidered motif that dodges around the rough edge of the applique, inside and outside, and spreads its pattern around the edge of the appliqueed fabric

Here’s one of the first ones that I did. It’s not perfect, but all the same it’s interesting. The two kinds of green pond weed frame the frog, and in doing so they distract the eye from the rough edge of the applique. They don’t disguise it entirely, but they do makes it look a little more natural

 

Frog among the pondweed, version 1

And here’s a version stitched by Cherri, where the vivid pattern of the background fabric adds even more drama to the little scene

 

A more dramatic version

I’m quite pleased with this approach and at the moment am engrossed with ways of applying this technique to other designs. More results will appear in the coming weeks!

A really big Easter design

I was going to post something different today and not another design from the extra-large series I've been doing - the ones that are sized 10 1/2 x 16 inches (272 x 408 mm). After all I posted a large design last week, so maybe it was time for something a bit different – I don’t want to bore readers with too much of the same thing! But then blog reader Jacqueline sent me a really lovely Easter card with a rabbit on it, and I suddenly realised that a nice, spring-like design with rabbits on it would be the most appropriate thing I could put up. And there in the collection of large designs was just the thing I needed!

Some Happy Easter rabbits and flowers

It’s stitched out by Cherri (for whom I’m doing these designs) and what with the flowers there too, perhaps it makes a nice welcome to spring

A happy and peaceful Easter holiday to all, and a happy springtime

Back to the big ones…

Back in February I posted the first of what was to be a series of VERY large embroideries, designed for the 10 ½ x 16 inch (272 x 408 mm) hoop. Well, that’s large for me, anyway, although I’m learning that there are even larger hoops out there

So here are two more as part of that same series, two birds in rather a similar, exotic style. They're stitched by Cherri and embellished with some background free-motion stitchery.

 

Two big, exotic birds

This is going to be a really impressive project when it’s finished. I’ve rather lost track of exactly how many things I’ve digitised for it, but I think at last count there were something like 16. That is going to be some big project!

 

A couple of rather boring freebies

Well, it’s almost April so it’s just about time for some new freebies. Maybe they’re not very exciting - just some leafy squares – but all the same these simple designs can be very useful sometimes, in making decorative objects or as additions to quilts. And you could always duplicate, mirror and flip them to make a larger square out of them

Leafy square 1

 

Leafy square 2

I have a few more designs in this “leafy square” series and I’ll be putting some of them up as free designs in May or June, so you might want to wait until you have the complete set before deciding where to use them

Once again there’s no need for a worksheet. They’re both for the 4 x 4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and there are just two colours – moss green for the leaves and emerald green for the stems. Here is number 1, and here is number 2, both in .pes v.6

By the way, a small number people have had problems downloading files from the blog. If that small number includes you, just drop me a line (via the "Comments" section of the blog) and I'll send them to you as e-mail attachments

 

Some more strange designs

A couple of weeks ago I posted two designs that I was doing for a quilt – the designs requested were quite unusual and reflected the interests of the person who was going to receive the quilt. So I had to design and stitch some mushrooms, and then a frog, and this was about the first time that I had been asked for embroideries of such interesting subjects

Well, this week we have two more more unusual designs. More mushrooms - chanterelles this time. And strangest of all we have three snails! The thought of making an embroidery of snails had never ever occurred to me

Chanterelles

 

...and some snails

 

It’s been a lot of fun designing and digitising these unusual things, and quite a change from what I normally do. Maybe I should try to break out of the “conventional” box a little more often!

 

 

A spectacular entry

Regular blog readers will know that I do a lot of work with my friend Cherri, who lives in Florida. Cherri is an enthusiastic maker of quilts, and I am only too happy to design and digitise anything she might need for her work. Recently she had what was to me an eccentric request – to make a large number of designs of bugs and beetles. So I set to work. I’m still not sure exactly how many I did but there were a lot! And here is the result, on display at the AQS Quilt Show, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

 

Cherri and the Entomologist's Dream

 

She calls the quilt The Entomologist’s Dream. Now if that’s not an original idea, I don’t know what is! If you want to see more of her work, have a look at

https://www.instagram.com/cherriberi1/

 

Two little free cats

Judging from the response to the recent cat designs I’ve posted, there are a good number of cat lovers among blog readers. So - here are a couple of free ones for your collection. They’re very old designs – I must have done them more than 10 years ago - but they’re none the worse for that. They’re quite small, for the 4x4 inch (100 mm x 100mm) hoop, because I did them in the days when you couldn’t get hoops more than a few inches across. I certainly wouldn’t limit myself to that size today!

The Black Cat

They’re all embroidery (no applique) and once again I’m not bothering with worksheets as they’re pretty self-explanatory. All you have to do is follow the colour instructions and you should end up with something much like the stitchouts

The Brown Cat

Here's the black cat, in .pes v.6, and here's the brown cat, in the same format

Some more Big Birds

A couple of weeks ago I posted the first of some very big panels I’ve been doing for Cherri – these are all for the 10 ½ x 16 inch (272 x 408 mm) hoop and I think she intends to make cushion covers from them. She has asked for several bird designs, which is fine with me. Birds have got to be just about my favourite subjects

Anyway here are four of them sitting in a row, embellished with an assortment of half Mexican, half folk arty floral motifs. Yes, I can see them on a cushion very well!

 

Four Big Birds, all in a row