MADE: Baby Jacket with Monkey Applique

I recently made this sweet little flannel jacket for the newborn of my friend & biz partner, Beth A. I just hope the tiny little guy grows into it before the weather warms up!

The jacket pattern is from an awesome book that I got for Christmas, One Yard Wonders. I highly recommend it - tons of great patterns! And the monkey applique is from a template of my own design.

Like to applique? Never tried it but want to? You can get your own PDF copy of my monkey template in my Etsy shop. Comes with detailed instructions to walk you through the process. It's fun & easy!

MADE: Cheshire Cat applique & fabric bird sculpture

This crazy cat was made for my friend who's having a baby girl. They're doing the nursery in an Alice in Wonderland theme. I was quite happy with how it turned out, this being the most ambitious applique project I've done to date!

And below is my most recently completed fabric sculpture. You may recall my post about the beginnings of this piece called, "Art Waiting to Happen." Well this is what happened:

Embroidery Show & Tell + Questions for Ya

So I just finished my first embroidery piece using a Sublime Stitching pattern - yay! I am so happy with how it turned out. I really enjoyed working with this pattern and saw it as a fun design challenge. I taught myself a couple of new stitches from The Embroidery Stitch Bible (a must-have reference book if you like embroidery!) and geeked out at the craft store picking out tons of new embroidery floss in beautiful colors.

The pattern I used is from the lovely Roaring Twenties set if you'd like to get it for yourself. It's super-cute! These stitched examples here are from Sublime Stitching.

What I love about these brilliant patterns is how easy they are to customize. They're just a guideline for the picture, but the colors & variety of stitches used are totally up to you. You could give a group of people the same pattern to work with & each one would come up with a different, equally awesome, finished piece. Compare & contrast my flapper girl with the one at left - quite different! They've added a beauty mark; I've added eyebrows & fill-in stitches to the feather. We've used very different color palettes, and I used a paisley fabric scrap that I happened to have hanging around.

Being a beginner at the whole embroidery thing though, I have a few questions for other stitchers out there:

How do you get rid of the hoop marks? Is there a trick to removing those? Or is it just a hazard of using thin fabric?

I steam ironed the bejeezus out of this fabric before framing it up, but the creases from the hoop are still faintly visible in the corners.

What's your favorite method for displaying your work? Do you typically frame a piece like this? Or do you just leave it in the hoop (eliminating the need to remove the hoop marks)?

I have seen this great Purl Bee tutorial for finishing a hoop piece, but haven't tried it yet. I'd love to learn more from those of you who've been embroidering for a while - please share your tips & tricks!

Milk & Cookies appliqued art for Miss Salty Oat

Just made this for my pal, Caitlin, who is moving away to Washington, D.C. this week. She's an amazingly prolific stitcher, sewer & all-around crafty gal who makes the cutest things! Her blog, Salty Oat, offers tons of inspiring photos & crafty tips. The name was also the inspiration for my art piece; the salty oat at Quack's is her favorite cookie. I hope this sewn version (along with a chocolate chip, just for good measure) will bring her sweet memories of Austin!

For the past few months, we at The WonderCraft have been lucky enough to have Caitlin as our intern, and we sure will miss her! She's been a big help to us and it will be sad to not see her smiling face around the shop anymore. We'll still be carrying some of her adorable work at Stella's though, such as handmade napkins and cross-stitched buttons & wall hangings like little Clarence. That will be nice. Wishing you all the best in DC, Caitlin!

Appliqued Kitchen Towels - Christmas in May!

Yesterday we had a WonderCraft meeting & I finally gave my biz partners
their Christmas gifts! Geez. It's May.

 

I made a seahorse towel for Beth A, lover of island vacations & scuba-diving explorer of the sea.

For Kim, a true Parisienne at heart,
an Eiffel Tower in the clouds.

And I designed this Robot Chef character especially for Jen, lover of robots & all things sci-fi.

I had every intention of giving these handmade goodies out during the actual holidays, but... I didn't get them finished until February or so, then I wanted to wait until we were all together & our schedules were crazy (although there were several times we were all 4 together when I just forgot them). But anyhoo, I finally gifted them & they were a hit. Better late than never! : )

Embroidered Neckties are cool!

Made this last night at The WonderCraft's "soft" grand opening at our new spot at The Art Pad. It was a trial run for the BIG Grand Opening we're planning next month. You can read more about it (& see lots more pics of the cool ties people made!) in my re-cap on our Get Crafty blog.


I had a great time helping people add some embroidery to their neckties. Beth A showed our guests how to screen print on them & even made some with our WonderCraft logo for the 4 of us to sport at the GO! Stay tuned for more details on that upcoming par-tay...