I love Urban Threads! They are the best site for contemporary embroidery (and pretty cheap too!) I got an email from their mailing list yesterday.
Look at this cute bag made from a couple of t-shirts. If you are interested in trying one, here's their tutorial: Ruffled T-shirt Bag. And if you love embroidery, be sure to browse their selections!
I've been checking out some of the photo pools and project swaps posted at Flickr. Did you know they run groups there? I just found that out right before I started one.
Some of my favorites I have found are embroidery groups. Here are three of my favs:
I was surprised by the number of people hand stitching stuff at these places. Stitched by Hand has over 2,000 members and Embroidery has an unbelievable 6,298 members!
I've also applied to a tea towel swap group called Tea Towel Tours. The way that works is a group of people take turns sending a tea towel to the other members to have each one embroider a spot with a specific theme in mind.
I met the artist of my latest project in the Embroidery group:
Spider Queen aka Delilah
The design is "Spider Queen" by Andrea Zuill. I named her Delilah. I did her face with only one thread to get the fine detail (she's about 5 inches across.) I think I am going to frame her in a hoop and give it to my daughter.
I thought of adding some words. Remember this from the childhood poem? "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."
A funny thing happened while I was stitching Spider Queen. Are you old enough to remember the movie "A Star is Born"? Do you remember the song "Queen Bee" by Barbra Streisand? It got stuck in my head while I was stitching, LOL!
The song has some great lines about black widows:
"You think you're the same cos you go the same name,
but the widow has a mobile home!
Remember what I told you, she's got eight arms to hold you
and she's never gonna let you roam!"
"She'll put you to bed, truck on your head
and wrap you as a midnight snack.
So if you see a spider, don't you sidle up beside her!
Why'd you think the widow's wearing black, Jack?"
That last part kept going over in my mind again and again! Another funny part of the story: I saw this movie with friends while I was at college in Greensboro. We went to the Carolina Circle Mall Theatre.... where high school Byron was working at the time. Small world!
This past weekend, I ordered a couple of downloadable embroidery designs from Aimee Ray. I could hardly wait to stitch one of them. So, I did. It's been a l-o-n-g time since I stitched very much. When I was a kid, I did embroidered all the time, stitching on jeans, denim purses, you name it.
I returned to my roots and stitched this design called "Think" on the back of a denim jacket. I believe it turned out okay (not nearly as nice as Aimee's, but fine for me.)
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed hand embroidery. I look forward to doing more of it, probably right there on the jean jacket.
Machine Quilted Art Quilt
Here is an art quilt that I made following a colored pencil drawing that Meredith drew. I gave it to her this past Saturday.
It's about 30"x20" and is raw edge applique/quilting. I used an enlarged copy of her design to transfer the pieces to fabric. I secured the pieces of Kona Cotton with Heat'n Bond, then stitched them down free-motion style. I stitched circles in the black border to quilt it.
She said she really liked it. I hope so.
Eye Candy
I've been collecting the selvage of fabric (the side with the writing) for about a year now. I hope to do something really cool with them like they show at Karen Griska's site (the circle skirt dress in the right sidebar makes me drool!) In the meantime, here's a picture of my box of selvages. Yes, the white actually has the writing on it, in white.
These are the skeins of embroidery floss that I bought for my renewed embroidery passion.
When I gave Meredith her quilt, she gave me this picture, she colored with pencils. Good job, eh? She suggested that I make this into a quilt. We shall see!
