Take me out to the ballgame..

Just finished a quick little key ring fob to send to my brother who is a bit under the weather at the moment. This is by Pam Kellogg, a freebie on the Kreinik web site. I fell in love with that cute little face the first time I saw it.




And thanks for all the votes of confidence in my faces and t-shirt. I love reading the comments.

Four Seasons T-Shirt

I wanted to give waste canvas a try to see if I could cross-stitch a design on a T-shirt. I thought that had good gift potential. Turns out to be very difficult to get the stitches looking even. I started with a little summer design by Mausimom on the left. Since I didn't like the result too much, I figured I would continue doodling on the shirt for the practice. So I stitched all four seasons with a kind of odd lay-out since I hadn't planned on doing this originally. I will say that the act of removing the waste canvas threads turned out to be an oddly soothing activity. I expected that part to be the worst. Took this pic with my new camera. A scanner would have revealed way too much in the way of crazy stitching. But you can click on the image to see an enlargement.



I'll use it for Jazzercise or a night shirt. It's a men's XL, not meant for regular wear anyway.

Doll faces

I joined a Cloth Dolls group on Stitchin' Fingers for fun after doing all of this experimentation with comfort dolls. Some of the ladies there do wonderful embroidered faces on their Dotee dolls so I thought I'd practice a little to see how to do it. Here are my doodles:



For the first two, I traced faces from a magazine ad using tracing paper. I pinned the paper to the felt and back-stitched through both the paper and the felt. Then I tore the felt away. For the bottom one, I just drew a face free hand onto the felt with a pencil and stitched over it.

I'll work on this some more. Doesn't take much time and when I get something I like, I'll incorporate into a doll.

It pays to be a mom

I recently became a Floss Mom for the first time. I have a lovely daughter in the Netherlands to whom I sent her first shipment of floss a couple of weeks ago. As a thank you, she sent me a package of her gorgeous hand-dyed fabrics in ornament-cut size. They are very beautiful as you can see below.



One piece in particular is of a type I've never seen before. It's Aida, but in two different thread counts laid out in a checkerboard fashion. Have to figure out a good use for this one.



The enclosed card is lovely too. It's made with a quilted motif on top. Not sure if you can tell from the picture, but it's puffy, like a little raised pillow. I think it was made by my daughter's sister (who in real life would qualify as my daughter as well, but this is stitch-ville):



You can see more samples of my daughter's work on her blog, Miek. It's in Dutch, but pictures are the same in any language

I'm a winner!

I'm so excited. I won a contest for a giveaway on Wendy's blog. The prize is a beautiful tatted motif that I plan to use for my next experiment making a snowman or snowlady doll. I can't wait to see it.

And I finished the dragon wall hanging. Here it is with little jungle animal eyelets around the edges:



And here is the back ready for easy hanging on just a nail in the wall. I also added drapery weights in the bottom to keep it hanging nicely without curling up.

Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy

Spent more time stitching than usual on this excruciatingly hot weekend and finished up a Love Quilts square for a wild west-themed quilt. I've had this design in my stash for 20 years. It's from the Stoney Creek booklet, "Best of the West". I once picked it up for a buck on a clearance table at my LNS of the time. The designs in it were not something I was interested in, but they were very well charted and the price was more than right. I've always wanted to stitch the cowboy bear for a little boy, but those guns in his holster stopped me because I know what a sensitive issue that is. For this quilt, it specifically states that guns are OK if not pointed at anyone, so I knew the design's time had finally come.