Cross Stitch Update 2.2

It's been a while but here I am. Busy busy busy!
Here's what I've been working on:

Do you know what it is yet? I won't say a word!

Yesterday was April 12, and guess what... we got snow! This is pretty silly, mother nature.

I don't think this is what they mean by "April Showers"

 

Out With The Old...

...In the with new! In this case, pincushions!

 

 I made this lovely cactus a few years ago, but it's starting to get a little beat up. FACT: I am very clumsy. I've dropped the poor thing so many times, the bottom of the plastic pot it's in is cracked, and the rocks I used to weigh it down have been falling out.

 

 

Having replanted my Valentine's Day rose plant a few weeks ago, I decided the pot it can in would be perfect for a new pincushion. It's very cute and has sentimental value, so it needed a special use.

 

I had a hard time deciding which fabric to use. I wanted that to be special too, and not just something that happened to coordinate with the color scheme or anything (I don't really know how to match colors anyway). I chose my favorite fabric, one that I usually fall back on when I can't make up my mind. Strawberries are always cute. Someday I want to have about 50 different matryoshka fabrics as well.

 

 Hopefully I won't drop this one. Something I like about it is that if the cushion gets beat up it'll be easy to replace it. I don't know what I'm going to do with my faithful cactus, but I'm certainly not throwing it out.

 

 

 

Cross Stitch Update 2.1

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you're all spending the day with your families and maybe watching Ben Hur. As for me, I've been working on my latest cross stitch. It still doesn't look like much though!

Can you guess what it will be?

I also found an old stencil I made but never used. It's Kid N Play! Inspired by their 2Hype album, I decided to put it on a blank Tshirt.

 

 

Making a stencil is pretty simple. What I do is draw an image on a piece of paper, which I then tape to some cardboard, usually the kind that cereal boxes are made of. Then I use a cutter to cut out the image. It would be a lot easier and look better if I used a craft knife, but I don't own one. Once I'm done cutting it out, I am left with two pieces that could potentially be used as stencils, depending on what style of image I want.

 

For this project I used Polymark fabric paint, which is a dimensional paint. However, I didn't want it to be dimensional so I used a paintbrush to smooth the paint. Easy peasy, and you're left with a "new" shirt to show off!

 

 

 

Vernal Equinox

Today is the first day of spring! My favorite season, so full of life. The smell of dirt and the new growth surrounding you. I look outside, hoping by some magic that the snow storm yesterday was just a dream, and I see this.

 



Not just yet. I'll have to wait a while longer. At this rate, we might skip spring altogether and jump right into summer! This time last year, it was already in the mid-70's. Ah, well.

I started my newest cross stitch project. Someone wants a James Bond stitch, so I am using the iconic image of the gun barrel, with a silhouette in the middle. It's a simple image, but this time I am using 10 different colors instead of the 5 I usually do. I'm also doubling up on floss, meaning I am using two strands instead of 1. I want to eliminate the small amount of white in between all my X's.

That black bar looks pretty solid.

This one is also a bit bigger than usual. I have the feeling I am going to have to make a trip to the store to stock up on some more floss, lest I run out.
I also have a vacation from work coming up soon, so hopefully I will get on the crafty train. Sometimes it's tough to motivate myself after a long day at work. There'll be no excuses on my vacation however!

A Finished Stitch



I've finally done it. After 46 days of hard work, my Jack Nicholson cross stitch is complete! The first thing I do when I finish a stitching project is iron it.

 

 

 

Next is the framing. This is personally my least favorite part, but with the help of this awesome tutorial it's much easier!

 

 



What do you think?

Now it's ready for my Etsy shop. I have no idea what to charge for it though!

 

Time to look forward to my next project!

Dr. Severin, Teddy Bear Surgeon

I am in the habit of rescuing doomed stuffed animals when I can. I hate the thought of them sitting in a dump, or neglected on the side of the road.

Meet "Yellow." I found him sitting next to someone's trash barrel, so I scooped him up, took him home, washed him and gave him the love he needed. There was, however, one small detail, for which he may have been thrown out. That was his left eye; it had a tendency to fall out, or get lost inside his head.

This little sweety needed some 'surgery' to fix him up.

I came up with a quick fix for this problem. I took a small scrap of fabric and cut a small slit in the middle of it. Then I sewed around the edge of the slit, without tying off. The color of the fabric and thread doesn't matter, as it is going to end up inside of the bear's head.

Next I put the eye inside of the whole in the fabric, carefully aligning the fabric with the gap between the black and white parts of the eye (seen above). I pulled the string tight, making sure it was in that gap. Now I tied the string.

If I had some extra eyes, I think I would make flowers using this method!

The trickiest part to me was putting the eye back into the socket just right and sewing it up. Find a matching color thread for this part, and make sure that the fabric you sewed the eye to is in a good place to be sewn to his face.

It's not perfect, but at least I don't have to worry about losing an eye! I think he even looks a bit happier now. For a cute, patchy look, you could sew the fabric to the outside of his head.

Cross Stitch Progress 1.4

Here is a quick little update, hopefully I will have some real content coming soon.

 

 

Very close to completion!

 

 

Here's the beautiful view I get to see on my drive home from work.