Category — Gifts

For Christmas this year I made several embroidered tote bags for family members. Most of them featured Craig House where I was married and where my mother-in-law grew up with her 4 siblings. One of my husband’s uncle’s runs Kilburnie, a bed and breakfast on the property, it’s a beautiful getaway if you are ever in the vicinity.

After stitching 5 totes with the Craig House on them I forgot to take pictures of each. Here’s one that went to one of the siblings, not sure which.

For one of my husband’s aunt’s, from the other side of the family, I used a pattern from Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts. The pattern was for the Blue Hen, the state bird of Delaware. (My husband’s Aunt lives in Delaware.)

Now that the holidays are over I have some time, and the ability, to share some of my embroidered gifts with you all.

Back in November I stitched this piece for my sister’s birthday.

The story behind this is that last summer my sister and her husband went to Paris for their 10-year anniversary. My sister has always wanted to ride a Segway, so we bought them a gift certificate for a Parisian tour by Segway. They had a great time and managed to get this awesome photo while on the trip.

I used a technique similar to the one I used for the Okie Stitch Along to simplify the photo and turn it into a stitch-able pattern.

I knew I wanted to frame the piece in the hoop without wrapping the hoop in ribbon. After much searching I found these extremely nice Hardwicke Manor hoops from Needle In A Haystack. They are top of the line.

Once I’d finished the stitching I followed these Embroidery Hoop Framing Tutorial on Carina’s Craft Blog.

My husband and I picked up this wooden tree in Puebla, Mexico. We both loved the colors, the simplicity and the puzzle-like fit of the pieces. When we got home it was displayed on our bookshelf for a few weeks before it inevitably fell over and onto the floor. Because it is made of very lightweight wood the pieces cracked and broke apart, ruining the puzzle-like fit. Since the tree can no longer be displayed I thought I’d transfer it onto a t-shirt so my husband can still enjoy it.

I started by tracing the pieces onto paper using just a normal pen. I filled in the spaces so I could better see what was tree and what wasn’t. I also wrote ‘Y’ or ‘O’ for yellow or orange onto the tree-tops (those aren’t leaves or fruits, just color reminders.)

The next step was to transfer the pattern onto the t-shirt. I used carbon transfer paper from Sublime Stitching which comes with both black and white sheets… very useful.

Last, but not least, I stitched it up using the split stitch. I chose the split stitch because I haven’t worked with it much. At the beginning of the tree it was pretty slow going, but by the end I think I got a lot better (and quicker) at the split stitch. It’s not the best for going around corners, but how else could I learn that if I didn’t just try it?

I gave it to Paul a couple of nights ago and he put it on right away. I think he looks great!

Just for fun I thought I’d create a reusable embroidery PDF pattern from the tree design. You can download it for free. Please upload photos of anything you make to the Brooklyn Embroidery Flickr Group, I’d love to see them.

My Aunt is lucky enough to live in Northern Arkansas near the Ozarks, one of my favorite outdoor destinations. For her birthday I thought a tote bag stitched with Sublime Stitching’s Camp Out patterns would be the perfect gift.

I plan to stuff the bag with some hiking snacks from my favorite local market, Sahadi’s. I picked up dried apricot, mango and strawberry, mixed nuts and cinnamon almonds.

When I found out my sister was getting her own community garden plot this year I knew I had to embroider something for her using Jenny Hart’s Garden Variety pattern. I decided to make a journal cover using wool felt that I could glue onto a journal for Kerri to log her garden progress.

I used a lot of new stitches on this piece. It wasn’t all backstitch like I normally do. The lady’s hat has some satin stitch, the flower on the hat has the petal stitch, and there are tons of french knots everywhere. I also lined the edge with stitches, but I’m not sure if that one has a name?

Working with the wool felt was really nice. It was very forgiving of misplaced stitches. The only tricky thing is that it soaks up ink like crazy. As I was ironing on the different elements, if I ran the iron over any already placed elements, they would start to fade or rub away. I also tried to use a sulky water-soluble pen on the felt and it was immediately soaked up. Because the ink was soaked deep into the felt it was also hard to erase. (I don’t recommend using the water-soluble transfer pen with felt.) Ironing was a good method, just be cautious about going over a spot again with the iron once its been transferred.

I think the sketches over at Wild Olive are just the cutest. Why is it that if you add a face to something it becomes irresistibly cute? Since I already did fruits for my sister-in-law, I thought I’d do some veggies for my mother-in-law. I used the Produce Pals pattern from her Etsy shop, and I think they came out pretty cute.

I used the IKEA napkins again and stitched all four veggies onto each napkin.

I received the pattern as a PDF document (within hours of ordering) and used a water-soluble transfer pen to copy the image. Luckily the napkins are quite sheer, otherwise this would not be an option.

A while back I picked up some simple white napkins from IKEA not knowing exactly what I would do with them. When my sister-in-laws birthday snuck up on me I thought I’d make her a collection of fruity napkins. Each napkin has 4 different fruit designs. She can fold them such that everyone matches or such that each one is different.

All of the fruits are from iron-on patterns from Sublime Stitching by Jenny Hart.

I think the pear is my favorite… or maybe the peach.

The grapes turned out to be more work than I realized, but they look fun.