Wednesday 22 September 2010

A fruitless week so far...

So, last week was a crafting failure where I managed to get pretty much nothing done.  This week hasn't faired much better.  On Friday and Saturday nights I worked on my embroidered angels, but got no other chance to craft.  I went out with my mum on Saturday and we visited a craft shop we've never been to - Pear Tree Yard - if you live in the Nottingham area, it's well worth a visit.  It was like an Aladdin's cave!  Stuff everywhere and really good value.

Sunday was spent in domestic slavery, cleaning the house and doing the washing.  At the end of the day I only had the energy for thread winding (more on that later!).

I settled down on Monday and Tuesday after work to carry on with my stitched angel friends.  I decided they DID need a border and so sewed a stem stitch wavy border, with purple lazy daisy flowers in the corners.  I'm now adding other flowers around the stem.  It's still not finished!  I am such a slow stitcher.  Here's how it looks now:


And here's a close up:
I'm pretty happy with it.  The only problem is the size.  I was intending to turn it into a little cushion to hang on a door or something, an ornament, but it now measures about 18cm wide x 16cm high!  I think I'm going to make it into a real cushion.  When my boyfriend-that-was (now husband) moved in, he had a whole stack of cushion pads - I have no idea why!  They are quite small and are about 10cm bigger all round than this embroidery.  I had cut the linen before I started and it's not too much bigger than the edge of the border, so I think I'll "reverse applique" the embroidery into the front of the cushion, if that makes sense!  I've never made a cushion before so this could be a disaster!  Watch this space...

Back to the always exciting topic of thread winding!  I bought a thread holder box at the craft shop on Saturday and was full of excitement about having lovely neat thread.  So I sat and wound bobbins on Sunday night and put them in my holder.  It's now full and I've still got all my purples, browns, blacks, creams and whites to wind!  I'm going to need another one:

As you can see, it was all lovely and colour coordinated, until I put the one purple and 5 grey bobbins I'd wound in! 

I'm babysitting tonight, for the very person the stitching angels cushion-to-be is for, so I've had to bring along my knitting to take with me.  I'll be making some more hats for the Big Knit.  That leaves me just tomorrow night to finish the stitching if I'm to enter it for Finished for Friday.  Can I enter that if technically it isn't finished, just the stitching part is??  I don't want to miss another week and somehow I don't think a mini hat cuts it!

5 comments:

Libby said...

OH! I love your little stitching!! The border with the flowers is adorable!! I like to do Lazy Daisy's too! and look at you! with your floss all wound up, looking so neat and pretty!! I'll have to post a picture of mine..all thrown in a box twisted and knotted!!
Have fun babysitting!
Libby

CJ said...

Wendy,
Your stitching is beautiful!! I so glad you are playing along with my Christmas Countdown.
You may right click on the Snowman button on my sidebar and save it to use on your blog. I still haven't figured out how to make the fancy ones yet with the HTML code - lol!
Happy Stitching!!
Hugz,
Cathy♥♥

Chookyblue...... said...

nice stitchery.........I also love to play with and sort out my threads.........had them in colours but have now changed it to number order........lol........

Lisa said...

Hi Wendy! Thanks for stopping by my blog this morning. It's funny you mention a picture of "the dress"... the aqua nightmare... I actually looked for one last night, and and was relieved when I couldn't find one... Good Lord, that dress will haunt me for~evah!
Have a great day!
Oh, and I love your stitched angels and the wavy border!
oxo,
Lisa

Charlie said...

Hi Wendy
I really like the way you have your colors organised... really beautiful !