The Accidental Embroiderer

A freebie for August and a short break

Regular blog readers will know that every year I exhibit with NEOS - North-east Open Studios. (North-east Scotland, that is) It’s a big and very exciting event and involves exhibitions of hundreds of artists from all over this area. NEOS isn’t until early September but the date is getting ever closer, and I’m beginning to get nervous that I might not have enough things ready for exhibition. So I won’t be posting on the blog regularly until after NEOS is over, although I‘ll post September’s freebie as usual

And talking of freebies, here’s a summery flowery design for August, which was inspired by all the wild roses we have growing here.

Flowers for summer

It’s for the 5x7 inch (13 x 180 mm) hoop and there are a LOT of jumps in it. This was unavoidable in a design with so many separate parts but I hope they won’t be too much of a problem for you. Again I don’t think it needs a worksheet – there are four shades of reds and four shades of yellowish tones, which are the flowers, followed by different reds and yellows for the centres. Just choose colours you like and they should be fine

Here is the design, in .pes v.6. By the way, a few people always have problems downloading these freebies. If that includes you, just drop me a line (via "Comments") and I'll e-mail it to you

Fish from the past?

Looking back at the records, I see that I’ve been writing this blog for at least 10 years, and probably more. The problem is that my record-keeping in the early days wasn’t up to much, and I rather lost track of what I posted and what I didn’t. Anyway I’ve found this panel of fish in my files, and I don’t THINK I’ve posted it before.

 

A splash from the past??

As I remember, I sold it at some exhibition or other, but I still have a scan of the original. I’ve been musing over it and I think I’ll carry on the idea a bit further – that is, I’ll do some more similar fish with different decorations. That way they can all swim together in an even bigger school and perhaps grab some more attention at a future exhibition

Another different applique border

Some time ago - on the 26^th of April, to be exact – I posted a picture of an experiment I’d been doing to try and make the borders of appliqueed material more interesting. Rather than using the plain heavy satin stitch border you usually see, I tried to disguise the border and bring it into the design a little bit

Well, here’s another example of the same thing. It’s a portrait of a robin sitting in some branches (it’s a European robin, as you can see – not the American version!) and the robin is sitting on an appliquéd patch

 

The robin on his appliquéd background

The applique border has been used as a stem of the tree, and so it has leaves growing out of it, and there’s also another twisty twig with yet more leaves stitched on top of it all

Overall I’m quite pleased with the result. Of course all designs can’t be conveniently turned into this kind of thing, and in many cases you have no choice but to let the applique border be seen clearly for what it is. But it’s nice to be able to try something different from time to time

 

A more conventional freebie

After that rather mad cartoon cat in June, this month we have a somewhat more staid and conventional freebie. It’s just a simple floral design, which you might be able to combine with the leafy freebies in March and May this year to contribute to a quilt or cushion. It’s very straightforward – just embroidery with no applique

 

A simple flower (well, three flowers...)

I hope you'll find a use for it. Here is the design (in .pes v.6) and here is the worksheet

An unusual project

 I just don’t know where the time goes – it’s ten days since I posted here, and I usually like to put something up weekly. Never mind – as it happens I have a nice large finished project to show

Some time ago I mentioned that I was doing some designs for someone who wanted to make a quilt for a young relative. She asked for some very unusual designs - mushrooms, snails and a frog among others – which I found really interesting to do. I stitched out the designs while she assembled all the stitchouts and came up with this fascinating version

An unusual layout

It’s not a conventional quilt layout, but none the worse for that. It could be used as a bedspread or hung on the wall, and it’s such an imaginative piece that I think it will be appreciated by the recipient for many years to come

Finally - a freebie for June

Well, I’m back again after some time away – some of it VERY enjoyable (in the English Lake District) and some of it not so enoyable – we both came down with mild cases of Covid. However it wasn’t really terrible – not unlike a summer cold – and I hope things are now back to normal. But it’s well past time for June’s freebie, so let’s see what you make of this one!

A stripy furry cat

It’s a little cartoony cat made with the “scribble” technique that I’ve been playing with so much. It’s simple enough to do, but you will have to consider the colours carefully. I stitched this example with a kind of light-brown applique fabric, and you can of course use any colour of fabric that you like, but you will have to choose the colours of thread to “tone” with the fabric

Also, although the cat is appliqueed on, there is no finishing edging on the cut fabric, which means that the edges are raw and may be a little rough here and there. But I did this deliberately, because even if there are any loose threads or rough edges, they will just contribute to the hairy appearance of the cat. If you really don’t like the threads around the edge, you can pick them off with a pair of tweezers

The cat is quite heavy and textured, so it would probably be best stitched on a firm fabric – I don’t think it would sit well on anything very lightweight. A robust cotton or a light canvas should be fine, but skip the voiles and the chiffons this time!

Here is the design, in .pes v.6 and here is the worksheet. Good luck!

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