Springtime paper beads

I had hoped to have a few more sets of paper beads to release this spring but life sometimes gets in the way. They were supposed to be available at the start of April but my sister was in a car accident and it was all hands on deck to deal with family stuff. Thankfully she is OK but the car was a write off.

Anyway, back to the beads. One set is reminiscent of a Moroccan pond in the moonlight - and called Moroccan Moonlight. There is something about Morocco's art and architecture that I just love.

The second set is Celtic Inspired. The pattern reminds me of Medieval manuscripts with its flowing leafy vines and bright colours. These ones are in green, pink and purple with a distressed vintage background.

As always, they are available in my Etsy store

Sew, time for a change

At long last, I finally managed to get some hand embroidery patterns up on Etsy. I have been embroidering for over 30 years (boy, does that make me feel old!) but I always struggled to find the kind of patterns I wanted to embroidery. Now, with embroidery being so popular, I am seeing other people embroidering using the kind of images I like. But those stitchers are still drawing their own patterns. Would you believe it took me this long to draw my own animal images to embroider? I guess I'm a bit slow. I am hoping others might like to embroider wildlife too so I have made the patterns available for sale on Etsy.

First up is a collection of six mammals - one rabbit, one hare, two red foxes and two British badgers. The picture below is of some of the pieces I have stitched. I used stem stitch and seed stitch for them all but have mixed things up with the badger by using acrylic paints to paint the embroidered images after stitching. The fox on the mini cushion was appliquéd using Bondaweb/Under Wonder then machine stitched into place.

This little rabbit (one of my favourite patterns) was embroidered using stem and seed stitch with a little satin stitch for the eye and made into a needle case.

Then there is a collection of six British garden birds - two robins, a wren, a coal tit, sparrow and chaffinch. Again I used a combination of hand embroidery stitches (stem stitch, back stitch), acrylic paint on the robin in the picture frame and appliqué on the robin on the cushion.

The coal tit on the notebook cover, however, was free motion embroidered. This is my first successful free motion attempt and I am really pleased with it. It took a while to accept the wiggly nature of free motion embroidery though. I guess I'm still a perfectionist at heart.