Embroidery – Page 3 – Hopefully Creative

Black Skelly Cat

Little skull faced cat plush.

I know someone who really loves skulls and because I wanted to make her a gift, I looked for a plushie that had something skeletal on it. I settled on Choly Knight’s Sugar Skull Kitty Plush, a free pattern from 2016. As usual, the instructions and the pattern were great and I quickly got going with embroidering the face and stitching down the felt pieces. I just needed to put the pieces under the sewing machine to finish it, but for some reason I couldn’t get myself to do it, so it stayed in bits for several weeks.

Once I finally got going again, it was very quick to finish. Just stitch the body/head piece together, fill it and then stuff the little arms, legs and tail. The tail is attached in the one place and cannot move. The fun thing about this pattern, though, is that it calls for decorative buttons to attach the legs and arms. I wanted to make those movable, so I used some instructions from another pattern to make sure that the limbs weren’t solidly attached. I think it gives the thing some extra charm.

Now it gets to live in a house filled with other skulls. I’m sure it’ll appreciate that!

Penguin Embroidery

A little penguin necklace for those days that needle a little more joy.

One Tuesday, I was sitting in my house, enjoying my day off and thought: what will I do today. The answer turned out to be ‘browse for small embroidery patterns and make a tiny hoop necklace’. I’ve had these small hoops in the collection for a while, but forgot they existed so I bought more not very long ago and then promptly found the others. I hadn’t actually finished any yet, so now was the perfect time. I figured out how big the embroidery could be (14 by 14 stitches in the circle) and went on to look for ‘alpha patterns’. I think they are used for friendship bracelets, but it works well for cross stitch too.

The pattern I used was of a little penguin and made by RIVAI. You can find it here. I added some extra stitches to the bottom to fill the frame. I only used four colours, but they were very effective. The black penguin has a white belly, an orange beak and a light blue background. It’s just that little bit derpy that it becomes adorable. It also makes me think of the Pengu cartoon penguin, so that brings much joy!

Taking a Dragon on a Walk

Now that I’m working from home, I need to see more friends on a daily basis. So I decided to make a friend who wouldn’t be influenced by quarantine. I bought the dragon backpack pattern from CholyKnight in December and never dared to actually start. It took until the stay-home-order and throwing the budget out the window to get going.

Getting the fabric was the biggest mental hurdle. Initially I wanted minky, which was what the pattern make advised. However, I was only able to find flat minky in Chinese webshops and not in any local-ish ones. There was some that had raised bumps, and I didn’t think a bumpy dragon would look good. In the end, I settled on something called wellness fleece and got a meter each of bright red, dark grey and black. Where the colours would go was to be the next hurdle. After some deliberation, the back was going to be grey, the belly red and the nails and horns black.

The pattern pieces were taped and cut from the fabric. My floor was COMPLETELY covered in fluff. Fluff everywhere. I only made two changes to the pattern and the first was to change the shape of the wings. There are four types of wings included in the pattern but none of them tickled my fancy. So I googled toothless wings and drafted a pattern based on that. I also decided that I wanted the wing-spine to be a different colour, so I cut that and figured out the order of operations. I was amazed that my sewing machine managed to get through 6 layers of fleece and a layer of foam.

I didn’t have many problems when sewing this new friend, although there were some. According to the pattern, an ‘advanced skill’ was to install a hidden tail pocket with an invisible zipper. This posed no problems. For some reason however, just basting on the bottom straps was the thing I had to rip out multiple times. Very frustrating.

The second change I made was to change the straps. The original pattern includes straps that are just webbing, but that isn’t very comfortable if you ask me. Therefore, I decided to draft some curved straps, based on the straps on my larp backpack. I even used the same fabric as I used for the bottom of those straps. The plan was originally to use back webbing and strap adjusters, but the local sewing shop only had 2 cm and 3 cm wide webbing and 2.5 cm adjusters so that wasn’t going to work. I was very happy to find 2.5 cm wide red webbing in some deep dark recesses of my hoard. That was sewn on top of the straps with some dense zigzag.

Finally, I managed to put the remainer of my new friend together – taking some extra care around the straps to make sure they weren’t sewn into the seam. Cursing a little here and there when there were lots of layers and finally handsewing the last details in place. Once he was done, I took him on an outing to the supermarket to show him life outside my house. He’s probably going to be quite useful since his main pocket is quite large, I can fit most of my underarm in there.

So far, he’s wonderful and I hope that I can show him around to more people.

Spiders and Dinosaurs

I made even more shirts from the free fun summer tee pattern. These ones were cut from jersey fitted sheets. I got a blue one and a white one. The pattern has shoulder seams that are far towards the front. Since the white fabric wasn’t very long, I only managed to get two fronts out of it. I then determined what the shape of the shoulder piece needed to be and cut that out of the blue.

Once the actual sewing was finished, I couldn’t figure out which side was the front. Then I had the bright idea to add some embroidery to the front. So I looked through my pinterest boards for some inspiration. I’d already decided to do a lace-collar-spider thing, but on blue, so that wasn’t an option. So, dinosaurs it was. I pinterested a lot and couldn’t find something that I totally liked, but I used this as my inspiration to draw something myself. It’s a little sitting dinosaur that is looking up to the sky. This shirt has been worn quite a lot so far. It’s very cute.

I also cut the complete shirt from the blue fabric. Then I went in search of the perfect lace to fake a spiderweb. I found some in Amsterdam that I bought, but then I went to a local shop for something else and thought that I might just take a look. There I found the perfect lace. This lace was sewn partly around the neckline and then covered by the neckline binding.

Throughout an episode of Blown Away (Netflix show about glassblowing), the lace was handsewn down. At the end of the lace, a bit of embroidery was added to mimic a spider. I think this one is very fun. It’s also been worn regularly already.

Skyline Skirt

At some point in the past (my downloads folder claims August 15th, 2018), I decided that I needed a skirt with the skyline of my town on it. So I scoured the web looking for a picture with the skyline and managed to find one on a Christian website that seems to have been taken down since. The picture went though some fine MS Paint-ing and had all the coloured background removed. I then printed the results on A3 paper to see how large it would need to go to be able to cover a skirt. That was .. September 2018 and I promptly forgot about the whole thing.

About two weeks ago, I remembered this project and decided to go ahead and try to get it started. Step 1, find a good skirt pattern. Step 2, cut out the pieces of the skirt from the smallest bit of fabric possible. Step 3, serge the sides of the skirt pieces and put them together. Step 4, measure the amount of coverage the skyline needs to be. Step 5, print the skyline again because the older version was too short. Step 6, embroider the skyline on the skirt. Step 7, finish sewing the skirt together.

Step 1 was a bit of a struggle to start with, since making choices is HARD! At the end I made the choice for Simplicity Naaimode 27’s model 3-4 (aka Simplicity 1324). A knee-length skirt with a contrast mock wrap at the front. Going through the hoard, I found a piece of fabric that I also used for a larp thing ages ago. There was only little fabric left, so the skirt pieces were on one grain, while the front bands and waistband were on another grain entirely. The sides were serged and put together after which I measured and printed the right size skyline. I sat down for a night and managed to stitch the skyline in with some thick white thread.

I did make a change the skirt and added a pocket in the right seam, since skirts without pocket(s) are not useful bits of clothing if you ask me. In the same vein, I also added belt loops to hold my keys.

On Friday there will be a little reunion for employees and I figured that would be a good time to test whether this skirt works. It should be somewhat appropriate, I hope.

Pants: Red, Long, Swordfish Butt

It was Hot in Holland. Severely hot, being unable to fully function-hot, melting from just sitting and watching tv-hot. Still, I managed to get my ass into some gear and create a pair of pants. I seem to be getting better at this whole ‘finishing the insides’ business of making pants. There are no exposed seams in this thing anywhere. The sides were finished with the selvage and the majority of the seams was flat-felled or otherwise enclosed. The pockets were edged with the excess of the pocket lining. Doesn’t it look pretty!

The pattern was a version of the plaid pants pattern that I’ve been using. The changes included slimming the legs a little and putting a curved waistband from another pattern on it. There are also a number of belt loops and the pockets are made from the woodland fabric. The closure is a snap and a hook & bar. I needed to add back pockets, and I figured I’d put a nice design on them. So I looked all around the internet and discovered a series of pictures of animals drawn in one line. I really liked the swordfish, so I decided to embroider two of those on my butt pockets.

I wore them to work, and they stayed up all right. A bit warm but that’s because it was very hot here.

Next up, Pants: Red, Short, Striped.

Prompted Crafting

I have been busy over the past weeks. I’ve been busy knitting (a sweater, I now only need to do the one sleeve and shorten the other sleeve), quilting (making the top for a bed-foot quilt) and embroidering (what you will see in a little bit). What I will show you today was made over the course of 1 evening after having tidied up all my sewing stuff.

This was because I found my embroidery floss and a loop. Then I remembered that a friend had complained that the toilet seat came down on him when he was trying to pee. This is of course a very dangerous situation, pee might go everywhere! (This is dangerous because cleaning is not my most prized hobby, so I’d rather avoid it where not necessary). However, it isn’t always immediate obvious that the seat will come down again. I blame it on the house that is as crooked as a witches nose.

Click on the video to see what I mean. Do not that there is a toilet in this video, so if you.. hate toilets, it’s not safe to watch.

Now, I decided that I had to protect myself and the male population from this annoying fact, so I made a nice little embroidered piece of wisdom to hang above the toilet. My bathroom has about 25 things where I can something, so there was bound to be space somewhere.

It says: “Boys, please sit or be surprised by the lid!”. Lid rhymed, even though it should be “seat”. Cheer for some inaccuracy (I prefer the rhymyness over the accurary)! I quite like these one-night-quick-fix-projects. However, let me try and finish the sweater before real winter sets in..

Deadline Work (5) – Apron

I used to wear a shirt with a lot of pockets when I went larping (here). However, I found out that this was not very practical. It made a lot of noise, I lost a lot of stuff and running was extremely difficult. That’s why I decided to make the backpack. The skirt did have some redeeming qualities, namely the two large front pockets where I could store my books. After testing out the backpack at the last event, I discovered I really wanted those pockets back. So I made an apron. With pockets.

I went through my ‘do something with this you were unsatisfied the first time around’ box, which has bits and pieces of discarded projects to find the skirt portion of this dress (here). I removed the centre back panels and zipper and created ties out of the panels. I can probably reuse the zipper in the future. I hand hemmed the sides of the apron and attached the ties. I found some brown home dec-ish stuff and made two large pockets. I embroidered a raven on one of the pockets as my character is a firm believer in the god Raven (of knowledge). It’s a very faint outline, but I know it’s there.

I also attached some small leftover pockets to hold my pencil and other small bits that might be handy to keep close. This is the finished thing, front and back:

And this is me in full costume. You can see the shirt, the apron, some belts and other things I wear. I’m quite packed with stuff, while some others wander around with practically nothing. To each their own, as they say.

You can just see the straps of my backpack, I’ll finally post the last update on that backpack as the last entry in this series.

Backpack (intermediate 1)

I’ve been working on my backpack since I previously mentioned it (here). I sadly did not finish it by the time I wanted to use it for a Larp special, which was the 15th of March. However, during that special something happened that made me rethink the pack a little, more on that later. The day of and on the way to the special I had been working furiously on the bag. I managed to get the straps on, although the fronts were not sewn to the backs yet. I added the flap in its two parts (front and back). I sort of sewed the lining in. It clearly was not finished yet.

During the special, I found out that they wanted me to become a priest (I did not want that, but they made me anyway). So I figured I’ll embroider a raven (the symbol of the god I was to be a priest of) on the flap. Luckily I had not yet closed the front and back of the flap, so I could easily embroider something on the back. I did a quick Google search, found a magnificent picture and decided that this was so much for personal use that I could use it. On the left you see the original, click it for the link to the source. On the right is my embroidery.

Sometime before starting this piece I read a blog post about filling in embroidery using long and short stitches (here), to be able to create directional embroidery. It’s not as clear but I know I’ve used it and I think it works a lot better than stitching willy nilly, which I used to do before.

So on with the rest of the bag. I’m getting there!! The new deadline is the 11th of April. I hope I’ll manage.

Ducks part 2

So, here are the details of the duck’n’lizard skirt. I scoured the web comic looking for nice pictures of the duck and lizard that I could crop and enlarge to be the same size (250 pixels either wide or high). I found quite a lot of them, and subsequently printed them out on tissue paper. I cut them out, and taped them to a strip of white fabric. Then I embroidered them.

Took a while, but I managed to get them all done. Here are the strips in full, with my feet for scale (and because I couldn’t not take a picture of my feet).

Here are the ducks and lizards in a bit more detail, oh and a stuffed rabbit. I think they are wonderful! When I wear the skirt, it doesn’t seem too childish, so that’s good! I really like it! Ducks forever!

So thanks Dave for making such a fantastic web comic! I’ll enjoy the ducks!

Category: Embroidery