As it warms up here it's been a busy busy spring already! (sorry for those of you in the land of the cold and snow). The cute little froggy is from being out and about in the woods last week- he was just relaxing on some reeds... I had an odd weekend other than the crazy weather here in Louisiana- I'm single again for the first time in a long time and it's kind of odd. I'm hoping to focus some of this energy to get things done for ME.

I got the door that's been leaning in my studio actually hung on the hinges this past weekend. It's from my old house and when I moved, the landlord told me to go ahead and take a door if I wanted it for the new house (they were selling half the properties they owned). The only unfortunate thing is that the door is about three inches to short at the bottom! It's definitely entertainment to see how many kitty toys are under the door when I get home.

Some Cool New Crafty Freebies:

* Orange you lucky! has a great free embroidery pattern of a bunny for the spring and easter!

* And this morning Creature Comforts posted a great link to a site called Canon Creative Park (japanese site, but in english!). She also had some great free aqua and orange mailing labels which you can find here.

* I also recently checked in with Amy Butler's website for the first time in a while and they've updated the free patterns page with lots of new fun things to make (all in PDF).

* Anna Maria Horner has a great new free quilt pattern up on her blog for her new quilt called "Folk Dance".

* Fat Quarter Shop has an adorable free pattern for a heart shaped pin cushion.

* Purl Bee makes me want to knit again with this fantastic spring scarf pattern.

enjoy :)

I recently purchased the book "The Stumpwork, Goldwork and Surface Embroidery Beetle Collection" by Jane Nicholas from Amazon after drooling over it for a while. A friend of mine had sent me a link to it several months ago and it had been on my wishlist for a while now.... combined with about $10 in mechanical turk money, I splurged.

I have to start with the fact that having this book in my hot little hands makes me wish I had splurged when he first sent me the link! It's a lot more substantial than I first expected it to be- no slim crafty book here. It's 405 pages and hardcover, think reference book. Even better than just featuring the embrodery, the book is scientifically accurate as well and talks about history, taxonomy, and the people behind the love of beetles! It's absolutely intricate and detailed, and while I admit I bought it to drool over I may actually have to try my hand at a few of these to hang over my desk!

Jane also has a cool website Janenicholas.com where she's got books, kits, and galleries of her other works. Next on the purchase list, Stumpwork Dragonflies....

As promised, finished monster dishtowels for a housewarming gift for my brother! I was really happy with the way they came out and he's going to get a kick out of them! coming soon- review of the new creative vision machine!

I've been busy recently so I haven't posted as many updates as I might like. I've been getting ready for the semester to start, and teaching at the fabric store as always. I've been running a monthly embroidery club, where every month we've been working with new techniques and working on projects. This month we worked on embroidering towels since the pile makes embroidering interesting to say the least.

My brother just moved to a new apartment, with his first real job... so I figured I'd do some kitchen towels for him. I debated making something classy and stylish, but then if it didn't go with his decor at some point he wouldn't use them. So I figured I'd be better off to go with ridiculous/fun and that way there was no worries. They wouldn't match anything. Ever. So he'd use them.

I got a cheap set of towels, rags, and pot holders at Target for $6, and figured they'd be perfect. As I sorted through my embroidery designs, I debated lots of options for something fun. I ended up using the Viking #62- Crazy Creatures Collection, and stitched #1, #10, and #14 on the towels. Below is the final color of #14 doing the outline.

I haven't posted in a while and I'm sorry- My personal life is a bit of a disaster area right now and I've been super busy with the end of the semester and the start of summer field work.

The uber-fun monkey pillowcase pictured is an awesome fun little embroidery project. The money head is chenilled in the hoop, and then cut afterwards- it was easy and fun.

(warning mild profanity ahead)
If you haven't been passed on this link to Locher's you must simply check it out. They fuse deceptively sweet tops with classic styling and delicate embroidery. They jump out as being different because of what they say and how they say it. This shirt is simple my favorite (since I'm a caffeine junky), it simply says, "I really need a fucking coffee." Others says things like "I hate Children," "Dirty Little Lovemaker," and "I don't play nice."

The line was started by a nice little swiss girl "straight out of the sound of music" who discovered a vintage hankie with exquisite embroidery. She realized that the embroidery was special and that work of that class is rarely found today. She became determined to bring back quality embroidery on tops that would be fashionable today and to combine those two spirits. Her current line fuses each embroidered blouse or shirt with a playfully dirty saying. She says her tops are "something mommy wouldn't wear and daddy shouldn't see," calling the line "perversion with a touch of class."

Check them out!

I do and I love it. I do hand work too, but there's something soothing and relaxing listening to the machine run. (besides you can start the machine, and sew on a second machine and be twice as productive) It can also be quite hypnotic to watch the needle jump up and down.

I buy many of my designs at the shop I work at, but I also really like being able to buy my designs individually. Unfortunately design collections can be really expensive, and as cool as they may be, if I'm not going to use them all it's just not practical. So here's my reviews of some of my favorite places to get machine embroidery files online. Some of the sites are country specific (I'm in the US) so if you have a problem let me know and I'll see if I can find you the right link.



Embroidery.com is one of my favorites for downloading both packs of designs and individual designs. They're the online vendor for Cactus Punch designs and you can buy them individually as well as the whole package. They also sell lots of smaller vendor designs, and I've never purchased anything that has stitched out poorly. Make sure you get on their mailing list, they've got amazing sales.

I also have a coupons for 5 free designs from them... We hand them out at work for people to try the site and start embroidering on their new machines!
1. Go to www.embroidery.com
2. Enter your sewprize number in the box on the upper right hand corner AFG6K8PC427J
3. You can then download the 5 designs in your choice of formats

Ann the Gran.com

Ann the Gran has lots of designs as well, including large names like Dakota and Vermillion Stitchery. They also have a large section of the website devoted to free designs that can be stitched on items to sell, give, or keep for yourself. The free designs vary in quality as they've been digitized by users of the site and not necessarily an individual company or a professional.

Criswell Embroidery and Design

The Criswell site is full or gorgeous machine embroidered lace. They do sell through dealers as well so you may want to see if there is a store or shop near you that sells them. They're thread intensive, but are amazing once they're finished! My personal favorites are the snowflake lace and the Peacocks 2 CD.

Embroidery Library

Again- lots of designs and well organized. Also well digitized, and they offer various free and cheap designs. They have great sales a well and routinely have 17 cent designs.

Zundt Designs

These are some of the most elegant designs available. They've got religious designs, kids, lace, etc. They're amazing well digitized and again, stitch intensive. I have one of the butterfly CDs and it's unbelievable. They sell hard copies (CDs) and downloads.

Pfaff Software Online

These are a sampling of Pfaff Embroidery Designs online (often including the ones they use in their advertising campaigns). These are the FREE designs :) click on the Downloads sections, and then on "Showcase Sample Designs" for the different groups. It's a random assortment of files, all well digitized, but only available is *.VIP, *.PCS and *.DST. You can always convert them if necessary. Pfaff's home website also has a few free designs available here. The design to the right is from the Grand Elegance Collection by Pfaff (Not Free though, Sorry).

Inspira

Inspira designs have been bought by VSM (which owns Pfaff, Viking, and Singer), and are now available here. They're great for kids, but not so much of it is grownup looking. They're pretty straightforward designs, few color changes, and nice.

Bernina Designs

Bernina designs are in the same quality bracket as Pfaff and Viking. They stitch amazingly and they're expensive. So even better if they're free! Bernina has an inspiration gallery with free designs located here.

Viking Sewing

Viking again are high quality designs, and expensive. They have a selection of free designs on their website here and here.

Whew! That's a lot of links for you to look at- This is just a beginning, I'm sure There will be more to come.

I've been working on this great quilt at work for a shop sample, and I think I've finally figured it all out.

These designs are Huge which leads to my first problem. I'm doing them in the 'grand hoop' which requires that the machine sews one side of the designs, then you turn the hoop 180 degrees and it sews the other side. In addition there are almost 60,000 stitches, which leads to puckering and all sorts of other problems with the fabric. I'm using silk dupioni (which is amazing by the way for embroidery) so all I needed was enough stabilizer to make it happen.

I stitched one of the other designs out previously and had a lot of problems, so I doubled up on the heavy duty (Inspira - washable sticky back) stabilizer and it worked! so the design with some puckers will most likely become a pillow, and I'll redo that one for the quilt.

one a side note: These designs are from the Pfaff Grand Elegance collection, which has 10 of these huge floral designs. You'll be seeing more of them as I get going. The designs take about 3 hours a piece (with no thread breaks or problems etc).