thursday threads {august stitch along}

Posted on 2012/09/05 by daisyeyes

Welcome back to Thursday Threads! I try to dedicate Thursdays to showing off either an embroidery project of mine and/or other stitching goodness from around the web. This week I’m so excited to share my latest stitch along.

If you haven’t visited the blog feeling stitchy and you embroider (or aspire to) it’s an awesome resource. They have a great community on flickr and I’m always amazed at the creations I see added in the group every day. Once a month they host a stitch-a-long. A free pattern is always offered (and boy do they vary!) and then you stitch it any old way your heart desires.

This month was a pattern by Cate Anevski and it was super cute. What was most amazing were all the different ways people stitched this one cute girl. One of my most favorite people is getting ready to move her girls into the same bedroom, so I decided to make some special embroideries for the occasion.

I decided to try some applique and she provided some scraps from their coordinating bed quilts.

I experimented a little with some different stitches and also combining floss colors to try and get their hair color. One is more of a red head and the other a blondie. The hoops are wrapped with some of those quilt scraps and measure about 8 inches. Not making this a great hang alone sort of hoop, but hopefully a great addition to some sort of wall collage in their new space.

This is a super fun pattern to stitch and easily lends itself to so many different variations. Why don’t you head over here and get your free pattern and get stitching yourself!?

And for fun…look at this awesome stitched door? Wouldn’t that be so cool to have?

thursday threads {June stitch along}

Posted on 2012/06/20 by daisyeyes

I’ve been steadily stitching, the likes of which I haven’t done in months, to finish up this month’s stitch along. I admit I had a hard time getting into it, but once I finally figured out my plan I ended up having a blast.

I decided to only use 2 main colors. I had 3 different shades of blue and then a gold (although I did use a cotton black for the words). I used a split stitch for the golden banner and a plain back stitch for the whale and all the crusty stuff that grows on a whale with a few french knots thrown in

I tried a rope stitch with my own variegated thread (2 darker blues to 1 lighter) for parts of the waves and used a solid darker blue with a stem stitch for the opposite waves.

Overall, I’m stoked with how it turned out. Probably one of the best things to come off my hoop in a while.

Next up, I’m bound and determined to start on this and get it finished with a pattern written for the shop by mid-July. We’ll see!

I’m also entering a stitching contest The details are here and more on what I’m stitching next week.

thursday threads {wip}

Posted on 2012/06/14 by daisyeyes

This month’s stitch a long for feeling stitchy is a narwhale. I don’t know what that is, other than a unicorn looking thing, but it’s a fish and my rooster is crazy about fish. Therefore this month’s embroidery is dedicated to him.

After a little thread shopping, I came up with this gold (his room is a variety of browns) and a mix of blues for the whole embroidery. I’m trying my hand at limiting the number of colors of thread and instead using a variety of stitches and also thread widths.

After spending just a tiny bit of time working on it, I’m finally getting into it and had to share my progress for today’s thursday threads.

I’m in love with french knots (perfect for barnacles) and probably my favorite “line” stitch is the split stitch (perfect for banners). Next up, i tackle some of the waves: the plan is to make my own variegated thread of varied widths. I can’t wait!

a nice pat on the back

Posted on 2012/05/15 by daisyeyes

In a week where all I seem to have done is cut out felt and expressed very little creativity, I got a great boost for those days when I can get a little more creative.

Head on over here to see what I’m boasting about!

And if you are here from feeling stitchy, make yourself and home at I hope you feel very welcomed and appreciated!

a tutorial & stitch along {pillowcase skirt}

Posted on 2012/05/06 by daisyeyes

I’ve had this pillowcase for a while and was going to make a pillowcase dress, but the other day decided to try my hand at writing a tutorial for a pillowcase skirt. I made a skirt out of vintage & thrifted cases a while ago, but only having one case this time decided to add a little something to the bottom. It was also time to participate in the monthly feeling stitchy stitchalong so I decided to make a little apron for the skirt and “kill two birds with one stone” as they say. The instructions are for a size 5 skirt, but can easily be adapted for smaller sizes. So here goes…

a pillowcase skirt tutorial:

First, gather up all your materials:
- one standard pillowcase
- 3/4 yard of coordinating tulle
- coordinating ric rac
- thread
- roughly a fat quarter of white (or coordinating) fabric for the apron and embroidery
- embroidery pattern (found here)
- 3/4″ wide elastic
- small piece of interfacing

Lay out your case on a cutting mat and measure 14″ from the open end up and cut across.

After cutting you should have something like this:

Next you are ready to cut your tulle strips. Strips are cut width of fabric x 5″ wide. I folded my width of fabric in half to fit it on my mat for cutting. Cut 3 strips.

**This is where I did things a little backwards. Typically you would now sew your 3 strips together short ends to short ends to make a large loop and then baste. I opted to indent my basting a little bit and make the loop last.**

Next baste your 3 tulle strips together. This is where going slow pays off in order to keep all the layers on top of each other while you sew. After you sew, pull the basting a little bit to make it fit around the inside of the case. After fitting it almost together, sew the short ends together to make a loop.

When you get ready to sew the tulle strip to the case, match up the basting stitch with the hem stitch on the case.

Flip the skirt right side out and you should have something like this. The tulle should hang down about an inch below the case bottom.

Here’s an inside view of the tulle strip after it has been sewn on:

Now you are going to cover up the hem seam and seam from the tulle strip with some ric rac. Line up your ric rac on the seam and you can go ahead and measure out how much you need and sew!

Your skirt bottom should now look something like this:

Next it’s time to measure the apron pieces and trace your embroidery. (obviously this picture was taken after I embroidered. Just use your imagination)

Cut 2 apron pieces 7.5″ x 9.5″ and using a water soluble pen, trace your embroidery design and sew.

After you are finished with your embroidery, clip the long ends of your threads on the back and “seal” your embroidery by ironing on a small piece of interfacing. If embroidery isn’t your thing, you could always cut two pieces of coordinating fabric and use those as your apron piece.

Next, you will add ric rac to the edges of the apron pieces and sew them together. Sandwich the ric rac in between the apron pieces, right sides facing. Sew the two long sides and bottom, leaving the top open.

Turn right side out, use a chop stick to poke out the corners and press. You should have something like this (sorry it’s blurry):

Now you are going to line up your apron piece with the top of your skirt. Mine measured roughly 6.5 inches on each side.

Pin apron in place.

Now it is time to finish the top edge of your skirt. If you have a serger, use your serger to finish the top, while at the same time attaching the apron piece. If you do not have a serger, you can use a zig zag stitch to finish the top edge and attach the apron OR you can baste the apron piece and fold the top down 1/4″ and press.

Now it is time to make the casing for the elastic.

Fold down the top 1″ and press. You might want to pin the apron piece in place so that it doesn’t shuffle around while sewing the casing. Make sure to leave an opening in the casing to insert the elastic.

Cut your elastic 21″ inches and insert elastic into casing.

When you have pulled all your elastic through, sew the ends together.

Stretch the elastic all the way through and then sew the seam closed.

Voila! Now you are done!

thursday threads {04.19.2012}

Posted on 2012/04/19 by daisyeyes

This months stitchalong with Feeling Stitchy is calling my name, but alas the other projects have superseded it and I’m going to have to pass on this one. If you want to try your hand at some embroidery with felt applique, this is a great beginners project with a super tutorial.

That said, this is project number one: my son’s teacher is retiring and I blogged about this last week. I had wanted to take all the kid’s names and make a frame around this cute little pattern from Wee Wonderful’s but I couldn’t get the names to line up right. My second idea was to sew some notebook paper…and I love it! I am going to stitch all the kid’s names on the paper and this will be the backside of the totebag.

The flower fabric will be the front panel, with the little Wee Wonderful kids reading stitched onto the front. The geometric print will be the inside lining.

On another note, my little red traveling thread box was getting out of hand with all the hoops I have going right now. I ended up having to use some little snack bags to organize all my project threads. How do you keep all your threads together if you have more than one project going?

happy stitching!

thursday threads {04.04.2012}

Posted on 2012/04/05 by daisyeyes

I have set aside Thursdays as day to share embroidery or hand sewn projects that I’ve been working on or patterns that I’ve come across.

This Thursday I don’t really have anything of my own to share. The needle hasn’t really touched the hoop for days as I’ve been working on a bunch of other things. So, instead I thought I would share a few patterns I came across this week…

If you’ve never heard of Urban Threads, you need to check them out. They have loads of awesome and different embroidery patterns (for hand stitching and machine) and most of them only cost $1 to download. They also allow you to use their patterns in items that you might sell, which is crazy generous and harder and harder to find.

These birdcages were posted this week and I.love.them!

…image from urban threads

This would be a super pattern for a novice or advanced embroider. These lend themselves to so many different ways of stitching.

This isn’t a pattern, but I saw this listing on etsy this morning and they were screaming “make an embroidery of me!”

…image from etsy.com

Actually, that yellow one up in the corner with the orange flowers was in my play kitchen when I was a little girl!

Lastly I wanted to share April’s stitch along with Feeling Stitchy.

…image from feeling stitchy

The official post isn’t going to be announced until Saturday, but they posted a teaser today. If there was anything I would aspire to learn how to do, it would be to create and sew even half as great as their guest artist is going to be this month. She is pretty darn amazing. It will be awesome to see how she goes about creating all the amazing stuff she does.

march stitch along

Posted on 2012/03/11 by daisyeyes

I confess I never finished February’s stitch along. It’s still in the studio ready and waiting, but honestly I just can’t get into it with all the other projects I need to do too.

This month was a little easier to get into and more fun to stitch honestly. The pattern is from Wild Olive, who designs the cutest embroidery patterns ever! This one is no different.

I opted to stitch the pinata onto a tee for my chick. I’ve tried stitching onto dark colored material before and I’ve never had luck with the transfer method I used. This proved to be just as frustrating as before. I tried the embroidery transfer paper that you lay down and trace over. The pattern went on just fine, but by the time I was half way through stitching the horse outline, most of it was gone. I ended up free-handing the rest of it. I’m interested in trying the sulky iron-on dissovable paper, but have read mixed reviews. Would love to know if anyone has had success with this?

This month’s stitch along is a great pattern especially for a beginner embroiderer! Now I need to remember it when it’s time to do some birthday stitching!

saturday stitching

Posted on 2012/02/11 by daisyeyes

The winds are blowing outside and the balmy 60s have disappeared and left us with a freezing 20 degrees. It’s a perfect day to stay inside and catch up on some embroidery projects. I finished the blessing that was on my hoop (see sidebar) and it’s hanging to dry.

Next up on the embroidery front was my attempt at this month’s stitch along. I admit, this one had be quickly running the other direction. But I bought myself some wire and knew that I just had to try it out. Here’s a picture of my progress so far. I’m trying to make a “daisyeyes” nameplate to hang in my basement studio.

The Rooster got busy making an embroidery of his own today to deliver to his teacher on Valentine’s Day. He decided to make and “A” for the name of his school and quickly plowed through the straight stitch. I thought it needed a little something more, so I taught him how to do a chain stitch and I think he’s a natural!