Tea Towel Tour Complete

I recently wrapped up the Craftster Tea Towel Tour, and I couldn't be more pleased with what was returned to me. I started with a very pale green cloth napkin and asked for an underwater theme from my fellow swappers. I bound the napkin in a favorite Flea Market Fancy print that reminds me of seaweed. Here's a full shot of my towel:

I started the tour by embroidering an initial design for myself to set the tone for the towel. I decided on this octopus design from the Badbird blog.

The towel first traveled to SarahJ2001, who stitched up a cute little seahorse:

Sarah forwarded the towel along to IamSusie, who added this great little Nemo fish:

Susie then sent the towel across the pond to Kitten Wrangler, who created a coral made entirely of french knots. The texture on this one is amazing:

The towel then traveled back to the U.S. and landed in the Bay Area with ritapizza, whose contribution is this beautiful mermaid inspired by Heather Ross' Mendocino line of fabrics:

For its final stop, the towel made its way to PearliePie, who added another piece of undersea plant life:

I had such a great time participating in my first Tea Towel Tour. It has really helped me develop my embroidery skills and add a new dimension to my sewing and crafting. I hope to be able to rejoin the tour for round 6!

Stitching Updates

Seems like sewing has taken a back seat to embroidery the past few weeks, as I've grown more comfortable with the medium and more excited to introduce it to more of my projects. I thought I'd post an update on some of the stitching that's been going on around here.

First, I participated in the inaugural "Hand Stitched" Embroidery Swap over on Flickr. For this swap, we were assigned secret partners and asked to embroider something for them that was based on their preferences & style, and suitable for hanging in an embroidery hoop.

I was lucky enough to pull Paloma (aka Three Kitchen Fairies) as my swap partner. Paloma stated that she loves birds, cupcakes and, among other things, black & white polka dots.

Well, do you remember the little birds I stitched a few weeks back based upon some prints from Etsy seller beethings? Turns out there was a third design in that series, featuring a bird atop a happy smiling cupcake. Perfect!

Here's how it came out:

I was even able to work in some black & white dots via one of the border fabrics I selected. The only problem? In my web surfing travels, I found another design that I felt was equally perfect for Paloma. You see, her blog is called "three kitchen fairies" after her three beautiful daughters, so when I came across this embroidery pattern, I just couldn't help myself but to stitch it up for them:

On the receiving end of this swap, I received this wonderful little design from Amanda (amandahall25). Fall is, by far, my favorite season of the year, and I tend to gravitate towards autumnal colors, so this was PERFECT for me. It's already hanging in our kitchen! It's based on a pattern from one of my favorite embroidery designers, Corinne of SeptemberHouse.

(image taken from amandahall25's photostream)

As I've mentioned before, I've also been taking part in the Tea Towel Tour, hosted over on Craftster. Being part of this group has been so great, because it's like I took a crash course in embroidery! It helped me to learn new stitches & techniques, find great new resources for patterns, and overall just be inspired by the awesome talents of all of the group members.

I recently finished up my portion of the tour. Here are the final three designs I stitched up for others:

First, some lotus flower and hummingbird patterns frommy Sublime Stitching books for Kitten Wrangler, who was looking for designs based on Indonesian designs and motifs.

(Fish by ritapizza and circle designs by Pearliepie)

Here's a close-up of my portion:

Next up was a towel for IamSusie. The stitchers before me had mostly gone with floral and nature-themed designs. I took my cue from them, selected this badbird pattern and tried to draw inspiration from the colors used in the previous designs. Here's what I came up with:

Here's a great shot of IamSusie's entire towel before heading off to receive its final design:

Finally, for my final design of the swap, I embroidered a Jeep onto SaraJ2001's towel. She didn't have an overarching theme for her towel, but each of the stitchers before me selected something about Sarah from her online profile to represent on her towel. I saw that Sarah's dream car is a green Jeep, so I found this image online and stitched it up for her:

And finally, I just wanted to show off some more embroidery that I won from a giveaway on Rita's blog for Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day a few months back. The prize was an original embroidered design on a 20" pillow case. Here's what I received from Rita:

Isn't it the best? As soon as I can pick up a pillow form for this cover, it will live on my 3 year-old son's bed. I love my crafty friends!

I've been on a bit of a quilt block tear lately, so it'll be back to sewing for my next post!

Tea Towel Stitching

So the Craftster Tea Towel Tour that I mentioned a few posts back is well underway! I've already completed my first two designs for the other swappers and thought it was a good time to share.

My first design was for PearliePie, who requested a "wild west saloon" themed tea towel to use in her home bar. Her home bar (called Fat Can Candie's : ) has a wild west meets punk rock theme. Isn't that the coolest? Anyhow, I decided to stitch a buffalo image from one of my favorite online resources for embroidery designs, Andrea Zuill's Badbird blog. (The Badbird shop is a favorite of mine on Etsy, too):


I was very pleased with how this turned out. My favorite part? The little berries made from french knots of variegated thread.

Next, I received my good friend Rita's apron. I felt a lot of pressure on this one, because Rita is an amazing stitcher and all-around talented and crafty person, and I really wanted to pick a special design for her. Her theme is "kawaii / cute / anthropomorphic things" (yeah, I had to look them up, too : )

(By the way, Rita's celebrating the grand opening of her shop, Mochi Studios! Head on over there and show her some love.)

I searched high and low for inspiration and actually had several ideas, but knew that I found the perfect idea when I looked at another of my favorite Etsy shops, beethings. I fell in love with a series of prints featuring tanager birds atop smiling pieces of fruit.

Because I thought it was proper etiquette, I reached out to the artists and shop owners -- Jeff and Shay -- and asked permission to stitch their designs.Fortunately for me , they obliged! In fact, I think they were a bit tickled to see what I would do.

And here's what I did:


I had a bit of a time with this one, mostly because I tried to do some satin stitching and ... well, my satin stitching leaves a lot to be desired. I also had a rough time with their eyes ... I kept making them either too big or too small. Overall, though, I'm happy with the result.

And here's Rita's apron so far, on its way to the next stitcher:


This swap's a lot of fun, but the biggest challenge is that it's so fast-paced. You have one week to turn around each item from the time you receive it until you have to send it along. I think I have to learn to keep it simple and not bite off more than I can chew!

Tea Towel Tour ... (pssst!! giveaway inside!)

Whew!  Another jam-packed weekend gone by waaaaaay too quickly.  I hope yours was a good one!  Before moving on to my crafty updates, some news: sadly, the Frogs suffered a devastating 5-0 defeat in their season opener.  But since they don't keep score, I guess that doesn't matter!  Still, aren't they the two cutest frogs you've ever seen?:

While Mrs. Quilt Dad was performing her Assistant Coach-y duties, the little one and I explored the soccer fields.  Here's the little bugger when I tried to take his picture:

What can I say?  The little guy takes after his dad!

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was dabbling a bit in embroidery.  Here's some progress that I've made on the piece I showed last time:

I've been so excited about working on this stuff that I actually went ahead and joined an embroidery swap!  (For those of you who read my blog, that's really no surprise, is it??  : )  Yes, it seems that the bug has bitten.  It's called the Tea Towel Tour and it's hosted over on Craftster.  I first learned about this swap from my crafty pal Rita, and I was excited to hear that another round was opening up.

The premise is simple ... everyone in the swap is placed into groups of 6.  A small towel (or napkin, or apron, or pillowcase, or whatever) travels from swapper to swapper, collecting a small embroidered design at each stop along the way.

Here's my piece.  I started it with a small picture of an octopus, and then bound it with one of my favorite Flea Market Fancy prints.  The cloth napkin is a really soft sage green and the pattern is by Andrea Zuill, who writes the awesome Badbird blog.

I've asked my fellow swappers to stick to an oceanic / underwater theme.  I'm so excited to see what they come up with!

If you want to follow along with the action or check out the work from the prior tours, visit us in the Flickr group.

I'm a researcher by nature, so when I want to learn something new I tend to read as much about it as possible.  I had some leftover gift card balance at Amazon, so I ordered a couple of books to give me some tips and inspiration:

Wait!  What's that?  It looks like I accidentally added 2 of the "Doodle Stitching" books to my cart!  Rather than sending it back to Amazon, I took it as a sign that it was time for a giveaway.

So, if you are a quilter that's been itching to try your hand at embroidery (like I was) and think this great book would give you the inspiration you need to get started, leave me a comment and you'll be entered to win!  Just tell me how you'd like to use your new embroidery skills, or what kind of project you think you'd like to make.  I'll even throw some extra goodies in with the book.

I'll pick a winner (via the Random Number Generator) on Thursday, September 3rd.  Good luck, and spread the word!!