cuteness overload

I spent yesterday treasure hunting in Quakertown, Pennsylvania and it was a whirlwind trip because I went to four different antique malls and shops. Exhausting but I figured, since I'd driven an hour and a half, I might as well do as much as I could while there. I found some great stuff but I'm still processing everything (logging in prices and info for future reference, soaking and washing linens, then picture taking) so it will be a few days before I start showing you the goodies. But I couldn't wait to show you this sweet embroidered towel. Are these the cutest dog and cat portraits ever?



Amazing how just a few simple embroidered lines can convey such personality! Nice use of chain stitch for the bows, too. Click through to my Flickr page to see some closeup shots of the animals.

C is for...

Cats, of course! I love all kinds of embroidery but I always seem to be drawn to ones with cats and kittens. Yes, they're kind of sweet, but cats are very playful so lend themselves to all sorts of situations. Playing with yarn, jumping rope, fishing in goldfish bowls—you get the picture. Here are some things from my collection:


Embroidered quilt block


Vintage stamped-for-embroidery tea towel


Redwork quilt block


Embroidered linen guest towel


Embroidered pillowcase


Another tea towel; made into a pillow I called "Let's Hear it for the Boy"


Wait a minute—we're not vintage!

I had to sneak in a picture of my girls. See why I love cats so much?

latest vintage finds

It was nearly 50 degrees here yesterday. We still have plenty of snow—no matter how warm it is there's so much of it to melt and it's going to take a while. Since it was so nice and I've been feeling really cooped up the past few weeks, I made a spontaneous trip to the local antique mall. And came home with a bag full of great stuff.

A pair of Mr. and Mrs. embroidered cat pillowcases



Two funny little embroidered farmers, done mostly in cross stitch



Lots and lots of hankies to make sachets with, but two that I don't think I'll be cutting up. Both are in autumn colors and I just love the designs. So modern!





Some buttons, rick rack, aprons, embroidered napkins, and two vintage purses round out the batch. It was nice to get out and shop and I'm looking forward to all the upcoming events and trips farther afield to my favorite antique malls and flea markets this spring.

veggies

I usually make my fruit and veggie towels as custom orders, but I thought I'd make up a few for the craft show I'm doing next month (more about that later). I have a cool, old, wooden towel rack with feet that's the perfect size to sit on a tabletop. I'll hang the embroidered towels, like the one shown here, on the rungs and pile the simpler towels (the ones with fabric and rickrack) on the table below.



This design is called Vegetable Polka and has a cute green pepper and tomato dancing. Don't you love her ruffley lettuce leaf skirt? Yes, those are tiny tomatoes in the feedsack fabric along the bottom!



I have the original of this pattern that I won on Ebay a couple of years ago. You can purchase a reprint of the design, along with Garden Waltz (featuring a carrot and beet) and various other musical motifs at Patternbee here. Really cute for tea towels!

Sorry for disappearing last week. I spent ten hour days in my studio sewing products for the upcoming show. I have no idea how much product to bring but I figure, better to have too much than too little!

not quite chicken scratch

This is the last of my finds from last weekend's trip to Kutztown.



The seller who I bought this from had two and the first was traditional chicken scratch made into a pillow top (another idea for using this style of embroidery) with a ruffled edge. Nice but nothing you hadn't seen before. The one I bought had that little something extra. More like a lot extra!



The small crosses have a twisted thread which is a great variation of the traditional double cross stitch. To do this variation, make your cross first, then the straight line from left to right. Then, when making the final stitch from top to bottom, loop your thread over the center of the crossed threads and the left-to-right thread.



There are also great examples of the ribbed spider's web stitch using twenty threads and skewed into a spiral. This is done a little differently than the spider web stitch. Instead of simply passing under and over the cross threads, the threads get wrapped over each cross thread, forming a raised tube. It could be straight but, in this example, it's twisted to form a spiral. Will have to try this to figure out exactly how it was done.



The spiral designs alternate with woven crosses, also done over twenty base threads. In this design the thread is woven in four sections back and forth over the five threads in each corner.



All done in ivory-colored lightweight wool on a heavyweight red gingham background. It looks just like lace from a distance. I can't even imagine how long it took to make this—the work is flawless. I'll probably frame this piece because it really does deserve to be preserved and, because the threads sit on the surface, it could easily get snagged.

Updated to add the size of this piece, which I should have stated before because it has so much going on in a not-very-large space. It's just 18 inches square and each spiral block is 1.75 inches across!

chicken scratch sunsuit

Rebecca sent me this photo of her daughter Elizabeth in a sunsuit that she made from purple gingham and embroidered with white chicken scratch embroidery (using my Stitch School lesson found here) all around the collar. Most people seem to use chicken scratch designs on aprons and I wanted to show you how pretty it looks on other items, too. She said it took a long time to cover the area but it was pretty simple to do otherwise. And she was pleased enough with the results to use it again in the future.

I apologize if you were looking for the link to this stitch in my sidebar. Not sure how it happened but it disappeared from the list. It's back now and thanks Rebecca for letting me know it wasn't there. And for sharing the photo of your finished project with us!

rickrack redux

I found this very pretty embroidered runner at the flea market last weekend and wanted to show you how the rick rack was attached.



It's simply tacked down with a single stitch on just the top curves (the bottom curves hang over the hemmed edge so all you see is rick rack). The bottom row shows what the back side looks like.



Here's what happens at the corner turn:



This is pretty for a runner but probably wouldn't work so well for clothing—it's not very sturdy and could easily pull off with rough handling. But I love how simple it is and think of all the color combinations you could come up with!

going to the dogs

I never knew where that expression came from but it means going to ruin as in food that isn't fit for human consumption (i.e only good enough to feed to dogs). Poor dogs. None of this has anything to do with my post today but it's so hard to come up with catchy titles and I do have some doggy things to show you. Both are newly listed items on my website.



The first is a new pillow featuring an embroidered Scotty dog that I recycled from the corner of a vintage tablecloth. I think it's probably machine-done as I've seen it several times before and it always looks exactly the same. In fact, I think I made a pillow a couple of years ago with the same motif. This one is all about red, white, and black and I've used three coordinating prints in those colors and some vintage red buttons at the corners. This almost looks Christmasy with the little red berries and red bow around his neck.



The other is a set of six rectangular linen cocktail napkins—three white and three black—with appliqued poodles in the corners. I love the tiny stitches and little red collars! One napkin has a yellow spot near the edge but the others are in good condition. A nice example of 60s cocktail culture—break out the Salty Dogs (vodka and grapefruit with a salted rim)!

quilt blocks

I love to find vintage stamped-for-embroidery quilt blocks, even if it's just one or two blocks from a set. I might feel differently if I were making quilts but the single blocks are perfect for pillows. I can embroider them to match whatever fun fabrics I choose to use for the rest of the pillow, and they work up very quickly.



The cute blocks shown here are from a batch I found on Ebay last week. Forty four blocks in all, a few of which were already embroidered (and not very well, either) but most were undone. Just a couple of repeats and most were images I hadn't seen before.



I love the combination of cross stitch with simple embroidery on these and they'll make wonderful children's pillows after I've finished embroidering them.

I finally finished the big custom embroidery job I was working on and now I'm trying to finish up all the bits and pieces of projects I started and never finished. Some just needed a few French knots; others just facial features on animals (I don't know why I always save these for the end—I should do them first!) Most of these almost-done projects are baby things and you'll soon find them for sale on my website. I've been neglecting the baby section lately and this is my attempt to fix that.

I'm seriously sick of all this rain we're having here in the northeast. My sinuses hurt, the strawberries in the garden are waterlogged and bursting, weeds are sprouting like crazy—everything is a mess. I'm getting lots of embroidery done but a little sun would be nice. Please!

tea towels

Yesterday afternoon I drove to a couple of my favorite nearby antique malls. I always look for cute and unusual examples of embroidery and I wasn't disappointed—three tea towels, each with a different look and feel.

The first is a really nice idea. A section of red linen is sandwiched between two of white linen. Over the sewn seam is white feather stitch embroidery and at the bottom of the red panel is a mostly satin stitch bunch of holly leaves and berries. All very nicely done.



The second is a cute cross stitch parrot on a perch and I love the pink and white striped border. This one isn't in perfect condition—kind of faded and with a few holes along the edge, but I think I'll be able to use it for something.





Third, and last, is a pretty blue-bordered towel with hollyhocks (I think) done in applique and embroidery. I love the use of the little circles in various shades of blue—simple in themselves but combined together to form the flower. I think this is probably from the 1950s but looks modern enough that it could have been made today.



The embroidery is just straight stitch radiating out from the center to form a circle.



The rest of my purchases weren't all that noteworthy—a few hankies, aprons, and buttons. Both malls aren't quite as good as they used to be and I hope this isn't a trend as I start my summer shopping.

he likes it!

Remember the baby quilt I was working on for my friend Jenny and showed you all the stages of it's creation here on my blog? Well, I delivered it early last month but forgot to get a picture. Jenny, of course, has had plenty of things to occupy her time besides taking photos. Until yesterday. She emailed me some pictures last night and the quilt looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Thomas is pretty cute, too!

for the birds

In spite of the two inches of snow we got yesterday afternoon and last night, it's 40 degrees today and the snow is quickly melting off. In my studio it's already looking very much like spring. I didn't set out to do a bird theme for my spring pillow line but, as I was going through my linen stash, birds kept popping up. I think they were trying to tell me something so, OK, it's not a bad idea :)

I have quite a lot of things that still need to be embroidered—I'll get to them next—but, for now, I'm concentrating on using up pieces that are already ready to go. I finished four pillows yesterday, two with bird themes. And I have several more tops done! Will finish the backs later today.

This little guy is from a pillowcase I bought last spring at a flea market for $3. It had a very stubborn yellow stain running across the front right above the bird so I had to cut it a bit closer than I would have liked. Sometimes you have to work with what you've got.





Likewise for this one. I used this piece for a pillow a couple of years ago but I was never happy with the result. And, when I photographed it, I noticed a yellow stain that I hadn't seen while I was making it (note to self—always check linens outside in natural light). I threw the whole thing in my reject pile (yep, I've got one of those). Yesterday I revisited it, took the whole thing apart, then cut off the stain and ended up with a narrow piece.



And this is what I ended up with (still need to do the back). Much better the second go-round!



Which just goes to show that there's no right way to design something. And that's also why I don't design multiples. It would be easier, sure, just because anything done in production-line fashion takes less time. But I'd rather take matching motifs and create something completely different with them. Like this pillow that uses half of an embroidered vintage runner.



The other end is exactly the same, but I'll do a different design with it. Not sure what yet but there are some pretty blues and purples in the birds and I might go in that direction.



All of the pillows I'm working on now will be listed in a few weeks. It's been a while since I've done new pillow designs and the older ones are still on sale at my website. If they don't sell soon, I'll be taking them apart for reworking. It's hard to know why something doesn't sell. Poor design? Not connecting with the right customer? Bad economy? Who knows? But, judging from my recent redesigns, whatever they become next will probably be better than they were before!

shopping trip

What do you do when you wake up on a Saturday morning and it's minus twelve degrees outside? Go shopping, of course! Hey, it was warmer in my car than in my house :)

Actually I had planned this trip earlier in the week. For some reason, since around Christmas, I've been selling tons of vintage buttons. And I do mean tons. I'd had an order that was so big it filled one of those flat-rate boxes and cleaned out about half the buttons on my website. So, I really needed to get some new inventory. Luckily, one of my favorite vendors at an antique mall about an hour away had lots of new stuff so I easily replenished my supply. That and the two auctions I won on Ebay should keep me in buttons for a while. At least I hope so. Now to get them sorted, photographed, priced, and listed. This is going to take a while so don't look for new listings until next week at the earliest.

I also found some cute aprons and linens, some of which have petit point embroidery like I talked about a few weeks ago. So, I'll leave you with some eye candy today. I have a custom embroidery job to get started on so I'm heading into my studio for the day.


A petit point rooster in bright colors from a set of six ivory linen cocktail napkins


A petit point clump of violets and matching border from a vintage handkerchief


A dresser scarf with designs on both ends—cross stitch girls in red bonnets with orange and red French knot flowers

holiday aprons

As you know I've been busy stocking my web site with goodies for holiday shopping. This morning I added twelve vintage aprons including three with holiday themes. One features a jazzy print with trees and colored dots on a black background:



Another is white with a border print of holly and poinsettias:



Just a quick interruption to direct you to Georgia Peachez's blog for some photos of her gorgeous holiday fabric collection. I'm loving the use of pink with the reds and greens.

My embroidery fans are going to love the third apron. It's heavy white linen with a cross stitch tree, bells, and holly. And there are several cool details. At the top of the tree and bottom of the bells, a rhinestone "jewel" was added. And there's nice use of gold metallic thread—actually it's more like very skinny ribbon. I haven't really talked about ribbon embroidery but you can embroider with anything that fits through the hole of your needle. Wide ribbon makes for some great three-dimensional effects!


The whole tree


French knots, lazy daisy leaves, and a rhinestone jewel.


The ribbon has been fastened down with couching.

All are for sale on my website. And don't forget your discount code "HOLIDAY" if you do decide to buy.