The Accidental Embroiderer

A flock of bright birds

My friend Cherri (https://www.instagram.com/cherriberi1/) enjoys entering sewing competitions and from time to time asks me to help with some designs. Recently she entered a competition to design and make a simple grey felt bag, and after some consultation with her I came up with a couple of cheerful bird and flower designs in a folk art style, that we felt would help "cut" the grim grey felt fabric that she had to work with. That kind of fabric can really suck the colour and texture out of anything embroidered and appliqueed on top of it, but in this case the colours were so bright that it actually worked quite well. A paler background might have made the final purse a bit too "loud"

 

The first side of the bird-and-flower bag...

 

...and the back of the bag

A somewhat eccentric freebie

Some time ago I asked blog readers what sort of designs they'd like to see offered as freebies. One reader suggested cardinals, so a few weeks ago I did a pair of cardinals. A more unusual request, however, was for a llama or an alpaca - I'm embarrassed to admit that I can't remember which the reader wanted. But we have alpacas in our neighbourhood at the wonderful farm where we always get our free-range Christmas turkeys.

http://www.barrabronzes.co.uk

Craig, the owner, uses them to protect the birds from predators, so I thought I should try alpacas first. So in honour of Craig and his alpaca helpers here's a free alpaca. Not everybody will have a use for it, of course, but it might come in handy for some people. It's got a nice textured furry body, just like the real thing, and is for the 5x7 inch (130 x 150 mm) hoop. The design (in .pes v.6) is here, and the worksheet is here. Bear in mind that alpacas come in all sorts of colours, so you don't have to follow the colour suggestions unless you want to

 

Foxes watch out! There's an alpaca about...

 

And while we're talking about requests for freebies, if you'd like me to do something special, that maybe you can't find anywhere else, just drop me a "comment" describing what you'd like to see. I can't promise that I'll do it, but I'll certainly give it a try

A mysterious bird

I've spent yet another couple of weeks spent working on large projects which aren't yet finished, so I have to post yet another design from the past. I have absolutely no idea what this one is all about - what inspired it, or how I intended to use it. It's just called "Pastel Bird" in the files, which doesn't ring any bells at all, so goodness knows where it came from. But it's cheerful and sort of fun - again, it would sit well on a cushion or something like that

 

The mysterious pastel bird