Halloween Mermaid plus Ghoulies & Ghosties

Seems weird to me to be stitching Halloween designs in July, but the stitcher wants what the stitcher wants.   I saw this cute witchy mermaid stitched up on the Midnight Stitching blog.  There was no reference to its origin and I thought the blog owner had designed it.  I wrote to her and she quickly returned my e-mail to let me know this is part of the "Stranded Jacks" patterns by Plum Street Samplers.  I love the titles on Plum Street designs.. so inventive.  I couldn't wait to stitch it up.  The top photo is oddly blurry.  I guess my hand was shaky.. witches can be quite scary, at times.

I went for a stand-up finish.  It's only 3" on a side when completed so I can stand her right by my computer and glance at her from time to time.   The fabric is 18 ct hand-dyed aida from my long ago acquired Enchanted Fabric stash.   I made a braid out of three of the colors in the design.  Braided just like a hair braid with 2 full 6-strands lengths of each color.  That's much easier for me than doing twisted cord.   I usually sew on trim, but this time I glued it.  The little green ribbon hides the spot where the cord ends come together.  I definitely need to find a better way to handle that part.

Next I stumbled upon Lizzie Kate's "Ghosties & Ghoulies"  design. So cute and I wish the photo did justice to the card finish.  Again, the fabric is 18 ct hand-dyed Aida in a nice brown color and the mat card stock is true black like the ribbon trim.  The outer card is a cream color.  I picked that ribbon up in a clearance basket at A.C. Moore the last time I was there.  I knew it would work for a Halloween card of some sort.  This is the first time I tried wrapping the ribbon around the mat so the raw edges are hidden.  It was a bit bulky, but this ribbon was kind of stiff, so maybe a regular ribbon would have worked better.  At any rate, I like the effect.  I added one teeny star sequin on the left. Somehow that spot looked bare.

And now I'll get on my broom and fly back to July.

Wedding Card

So this is the third summer in a row that I have a received a wedding invitation.  I won't be attending this long-distance wedding, but of course I've made a card to accompany a gift ($$).   For a long time I have wanted a reason to stitch Luli's heart design.  Click that link to get the free pdf chart if you are interested.  It's perfect for a wedding card, but to make it fit, I had to stitch it over-one.  It's done on a light mocha 28 ct count Cashel.  I changed the main color to blue (DMC 322) after I saw a finish using blue on someone's blog.  It's always so hard to find the right fabric to get enough contrast for white designs without killing my eyes.  Over-one is hard enough.  I added a few white seed beeds and I'm not sure they even show up all that well.

I did a free hand drawing and cutting job to make the skewed heart-shaped window.  Worked out pretty well.  The mat looks really nice with the cream-colored border.  I thought about doing a ribbon bow or something, but those add bulk and since I'm mailing it, I preferred that it be as flat as possible. That little trail of multi-colored hearts had to do for the understated embellishment.   While looking for inspiration, I did see a nice scrapbook punch that can make little slits that would allow you to thread a ribbon through the card nicely.  But I resisted the urge to add yet another tool that I would use infrequently to my limited storage space.