hen party

Speaking of birds, I recently listed a new embroidery pattern on my website. Called Gossip Girls, it's a design taken from a vintage stamped-for-embroidery clothespin apron, and it features two hens—one in a polka dot bonnet, the other in an apron—gossiping over a fence. Such a cute design and one I hadn't seen before. Eventually I'll get to embroidering the original apron (found on Ebay) but I traced the pattern right away!



I've also added the option of purchasing my patterns as PDFs instead of printed copies. It's always been a problem for international customers to order patterns because the shipping can be outrageously high—often more than the pattern itself. It also solves the problem of being able to use the patterns over again—you can just print out a new copy. All you need to view and print the files is Adobe Acrobat Reader and you can download it for free here if you don't already have it on your computer.

Being able to offer PDF patterns also solves a huge problem for me, one that's prevented me from selling some of the larger designs. I'm only able to print 8 1/2 x 11 sheets on my printer and some patterns are larger than that (this new chicken one, for example, is 8.5" x 12"). For my own use I can print them in sections and tape them together but I can't sell and ship them like that. The customer, having the pdf in hand, can print out a new copy whenever she needs it. And with the option of printing the designs larger or smaller, depending on your project.

So, look for more larger designs soon. In the meantime check out the other great patterns I have for sale. If you like chickens, you'll love #VP103 Poultry Diner!

chickens

Vicki, of Pattern Bee and turkey feathers fame, has a picture up of the towels she embroidered using my diner chicken patterns. And I commented that I should show a picture of the pillow I did, forgetting that I already had shown the embroidery and fabrics in a previous post. Last August - yikes. I finished it some time during the winter. I often have pillows in various states of completion and it takes a while to finish them sometimes.

But I never followed up to show you the finished pillow.



This time, I stuck to my original plan and didn't make any changes to the design. The only thing I'd change now would be to make the outer borders (the chicken print) wider but the pillow is already 20x20 and the next standard size is 27x27—that's pretty big. I made this from the original stamped-for-embroidery towel and the design was set diagonally on the corner so I had to use it that way on the pillow, too. It took up more space than I would have liked.

You can find a tracing of this pattern (and a few others) for sale here. And don't forget to use coupon code STITCH SCHOOL when you check out for 25% off your pattern purchase. Good until the end of this month!