An angel? Me? Oh, my. {The Homespun Life – Embroidery}

I’m a bit late in telling you fun folks about this, but I’ve been doing a bit of guest posting of late, over at The Split Stitch. Sweet Sara, who stitches up all manner of glorious things as well as designing some downright adorable patterns, sent out a call for help a while back. She was having trouble finding the time to stitch up samples of all her new pattern sets, and was offering the sets for free to any kind soul willing to help her out.

You better bet I volunteered! I love Sara’s pattern sets, to begin with. And lately (as you may have noticed from the dearth of posts here), I’ve had less and less time for my own creative pursuits. I’d love to be stitching, but drawing up designs is something I just don’t have the time for at the moment. Sara’s situation gave me the perfect chance to get that needle and floss back out with some ready-made patterns. Score!

Anywho, myself and several others are participating in this fun event. Sara’s calling it “Stitching Angels”, and the intro post went up on her blog a few weeks ago. The progress update will be going up in a few days, but I thought I’d give you guys a sneak peek. Check out The Split Stitch tomorrow afternoon to join the fun!

Hand Embroidered Art Cards now available in the shop! {The Homespun Life Embroidery}

The hubby and I are moving from South Bend, IN to Houston, TX in just over three weeks. I have yet to pack a single box. Instead, I spend my time making these lovely hand-embroidered art cards while watching Glee on Netflix. It’s a problem.

WIPs and a Fun Announcement

Well, I’ve certainly been MIA for a while, and I apologize! Lest you think I’ve been neglecting my various projects as well as my blog, let me show you a few of the things I’ve been working on:

Embroidery: A pincushion only a mother could love, and boy do I love it!

As part of my recent forays into the art of embroidery (posted here and here), I decided to stitch myself a pincushion. After all, I needed one! And really, it was the plethora of adorable hand-stitched pincushions to be found in some of my favorite Etsy shops (From My Atelier, for one example) that motivated me to start down this path of addiction in the first place. So it was only natural that making one of my own would be one of my first projects.

It turned out to be a bit of a mess.

Embroidery: Stitch Samplers Don’t Have to be Boring!

As regular readers will know, I’ve recently been playing around with embroidery and I’m absolutely loving it. My first project was a series of birds, which I chose to stitch onto the corners of a bread cloth. Nothing fancy, but I had a lot of fun with it!

However, once I’d established that this new hobby was here to stay, I figured the next step was to throw together a few stitch samplers. A sampler is basically a collection of stitches, often done in rows, intended to serve as practice for learning new techniques.

Samplers are by nature fun to do, since you’re learning a wide variety of new things as you go, and the tradition of creating a sampler is an extremely old and time-honored one. That said, though, it can get a little boring just stitching row after straight row. It’s a lot more fun to also create something fun and decorative while you’re at it.

Embroidery: It’s Official – I’m addicted to yet another crafty activity.

You may recall my post from a few weeks ago mentioning that I may or may not have picked up a new hobby. Since then, I’ve stitched a fun little sampler, made my first embroidered linen pincushion, and finished off that bread cloth from the first post. I’ve got plans for a matching set of place mats and napkins next, and a fun little gift for my cousin’s kid’s first birthday. And after that, who knows? I’ve got piles of buttons and loads of designs floating around in my head.

The point is, it’s official. I’m addicted. I even gave it it’s own category in the Craft section.

Embroidery: I can neither confirm nor deny the rumor that I’ve picked up a new hobby. Or: Hey, look, I made a birdie!

I’ve had my eye on embroidery for several years now. I love the idea of sketching out a design and being able to make it happen on the fabric. So when, in a bout of depression and self-loathing brought on by Twitter (more on that later), I decided to go wander the aisles at JoAnns, it was no real surprise that I found myself loitering near the wall of embroidery thread.

Colors. Gorgeous, gorgeous colors. Delicious enough to eat.