2014: The Year of the Magnificent Teresa Wentzler

My dear friend Carla is holding her own SAL:  "2014: The Year of the Magnificent Teresa Wentzler" and she inspired me to also make something of TW - something I've never done before and completely out of my comfort zone.

I decided to do Futurecast as that pattern gave me the most scope to choose colours that I liked and avoid the dreaded pinks and purples. I didn't have that many variegated threads that had more than one colour in them and decided in the end to use DMC 4010 for it as I liked the pale blues, greys. beiges and umm yeah there was a bluish purple in there too lol.

It took me 2 days to choose all the colours I wanted to use, though I would have preferred to avoid the purples, I soon realised that the greys were going to be too similar to the other colours to show up much so I decided on using the pale blue as my colour group 1 starting colour, pale beige as my colour group #2 colour and the purple as the third group. I ended up using silver as the metallic and pearlescent white as the other colour even though I was originally planning it the other way round.

These are the colours I ended up using: 

My main colour group was blue with the inspiration colour being 162 - I chose 813, 826, and 827 as the other 3 colours in the colour group.
My secondary colour was creamish - I chose 3866 as the colour and 3782 as the medium colour to go with it.
My tertiary colour was greyish purple, with 159 as the light and 160 as the darker shade to go with it.
My metallic is E168 (silver)
The crystal ball was done in pearlescent E5200
Back stitching around the silver was mostly done with silver thread except around the wings where I used 826, which is also the colour I used for the back stitching around the blue of the dragon. I used 3782 around all the secondary colour stitches and 160 around the third colour stitches.

Having picked the colours and carefully looked at the pattern I realised that using my usual 18ct Aida was not going to cut it due to the 1/2 cross stitches it had - though it's possible to do them on Aida it's no fun trying to guess the middle of a bunch of threads on such a small scale and then hoping that it looks ok. I decided to see what else I still had lurking in my drawer and box. I rediscovered the lovely pale green/blue splotched overdyed 28 ct Lugana that Carla had sent me as a prize many moons ago and after some careful auditioning decided that it would look lovely.

As I'm a fabric miser I carefully measured the amount of fabric needed for the project and realised that if I cut my piece in half I would have exactly enough for this project and still have some leftover for another project, which in my book is a perfect solution.

Although I was determined to wait until I'd finished the border of my 8th century floor tile before starting the dragon I just couldn't wait so I chucked it aside and started it on the second day of the IHSW. I got quite a bit done that day as, for the most part, the pattern wasn't as daunting as I'd feared.

I decided to take photos of the project every day and make a blog post but sadly I never got round to the blog posts as I was too busy with life and stitching. Fortunately I DID make a photo every day so there are progress shots of it. I decided to make them into a single .gif with the shots so you can see them all at high(ish) speed.

I had quite a bit of trouble with the pattern as it turned out - some of it was due to not being used to doing 1/2 cross stitches and I'd get confused where I was supposed to put them and where they were supposed to nest with each other and other stitches - some I spotted on time and fixed - some I only found out about later and if it didn't look off I left them as it was.

I also discovered about half way through that the back foot was a stitch short - as I’d worked down from the leg to the foot and then along the tail to the left and I didn't want to remove a good 50 stitches I decided that having the foot a stitch short was bearable, though it did make doing the foot a bit more difficult later on.

I then realised that I'd made an even bigger goof with the end of the tail - I'd managed to get it 1/2 a stitch off height wise and didn't noticed till I'd almost completed all the silver stitches along the back. Here again I didn't want to deal with so much frog stitching and decided to make it work - and as you can see I did!

The backstitching took a bit of thought as I worked but overall I'm happy with how I decided to highlight the colours I used.

For the beads I made a special trip to the lovely treasure hoard in Eindhoven which is so stuffed with crafty things that people can barely move. I found the perfect silver beads to use along his back and also found some blue that exactly matched DMC 826. I also picked up some white beads thinking that they too might look good.

While I was in the shop I had a look at the embroidery fabric and found a nice brownish linen that was almost finished - sadly the bolt did not admit to what it was but I later found out that it is a 25 ct linen.  End of bolt pieces are good to take to measure as we all know and after having a chat with the guy who owns the shop and telling him that I'd come all the way specially to go to his shop he was nice and gave me what was just 1 cm less than a meter for 75 cm's worth (a meter is 36 inches so I got 35,5 inches for the price of 27 inches) a great deal! I was also tempted by the threads as I had wished that I'd had more colour s to choose from so I completed my collection of the 40XX series and got myself all of the other colours. Fortunately I'd had to baby sit for my ex one night of his kid’s weekend and I had some extra cash burning a hole in my pocket so I was able to splurge for a change.

 

I ended up using the silver beads in the border as well as along his back as I found that the lovely blue ones were too big and the white ones were too small - a typical goldilocks situation.

The completed embroidery looks like this:

And I will be using it as the front of my diary cover for this year - as soon as I've decided which colour to use for the back, spine and inner side of the cover.

It's been a while...

So long in fact that many of you who I don't speak to elsewhere may have forgotten me - however here is another of my famous update posts with everything but the kitchen sink in it - but only because it's full of dirty dishes the kids still have to do.

I didn't complete any further embroideries or other projects till the beginning of January when I completed the embroidery in picture above.  The description below is mostly from my Deviant Art submission of the artwork.

The background: When Cookie Clicker did it's Christmas update it had a lot of strange Santa's that you can upgrade to via some more normal Christmas related things and an elf embryo (yes really) and this is the final one called "Final Claus". Of course it was just weird enough to embroider so I did!

I took great care to match the colours from the artwork in the pattern maker (PCStitch 10) while making the pattern but it came out a bit darker than I wanted, however I was able to make it seem a bit lighter with the red border fabric I chose for it.


I really enjoyed making the embroidery it seemed to come alive as I added more stitches and I love how it looks so 3-D due to the shading of the eye.


I hand sewed the border fabric to the embroidery to make sure it was perfectly straight along the weave of the Aida.

Colours: Made with 3 shades of green, 3 shades of red, white and 6 shades of brown DMC
Fabric: 18 ct Aida and Hoffmans quilting fabric from 2006 or so.
Embroidery: 2 1/2 inches/6.35 cm square
Completed piece: 7 1/2"/19.05 cm square

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I've also been working on a little something for a friend that hasn't been received yet so I'm not going to talk about it - silly post always being so slow.

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 Then I went on to do a lovely dragon which is so wonderful it deserves a post all of it's own so expect another post in an hour or so after I've had a go at making a progression image of all the photo's I took.

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 Tusal: I have been good and kept my jars with the threads as time went by but have been less than good about taking photo's of them - As it's dark now I can't take decent photo's of the jars so will have to postpone it till tomorrow.

Mini Pumpkin Box

This all started because I needed to test my arm and see what it could take - if I could embroider yet or if it hurt too much after my arm injury. I'd been joking around for a while that I'd make one of the cookies from the Cookie Clicker game I play.  The latest update of the game has Halloween themed cookies and one of them is a pumpkin. I decided to do that one as, if it worked out and I was able to finish it on time I could then also enter it for the Deviant Art Artisan Crafts gallery  Trick or Treat Contest for the fake pumpkin category.

I made this on a scrap of even weave that I had left over from the fruit sewing kit I'd made. It took quite a bit of effort to manage to do this as my arm and had really didn't like me doing this all that much but as it wasn't really painful I decided it would be ok to keep going as I'd been told that was ok as long as it didn't hurt.

The embroidery took me about 5 hours to do - about 4 times longer than I'm used to for such a small piece. Once it was done I needed to do something with it as a tiny embroidery all on it's own wasn't going to cut it. I remembered that I also had a couple of bits of thick cardboard from making the fruit sewing kit so i grabbed them and cut one strip into 2 squares of 2 1/2 inches and the other into 4 strips of 2 1/2 x 1 1/4. I dug around the bits of fabric I had handy and found a pumpkin fabric and a autumn leafy print.

I first sewed the pumpkin embroidery to the square that would make the lid then I fixed the outer fabric to the cardboard by doing a herring bone stitch to pull the edges around the card, next I folded over the seam allowance of the pumpkin fabric and sewed that down with smallish stitches. Once all the pieces were made I sewed them together with a whip stitch. I added a little orange leaf bead to the lid as a way to open and close it.

Stats:
Size of embroidery: 1 1/4"
Colours used: 7
Number of stitches: 239
Size box: 2 3/4" wide  x 2 3/4" deep x 1 1/2" high

Apple and apple/strawberry jam

This time of year when fresh apples are plentiful I like to make apple jam. It's not something people tend to make which is a shame as it is the yummiest jam ever, especially when it's made with strawberries too (though people who don't like strawberries would probably disagree on that point hehe). If you like apple sauce but want something a bit more grown up then apple jam is for you! It's also very easy to make and doesn't require any special equipment.

Equipment you need: 

• Large pan (I used a 5 litre/10 pint pan but larger is probably safer)
• Wooden spoon
• Jam jars:  4 - 5 jars with a metal screw lid per kg/2 pounds of fruit
• A slotted or perforated spoon if you have one - otherwise a normal spoon will do.

See - nothing really special needed :)

Ingredients for about 4 jars of jam*:

•  1 kg / 2 pounds roughly grated apples** (on a 4 sided standing grater I used the largest one)
• 1/2  kg / 1 pound of  granulated sugar
• 1/2 kg / 1 pound of jam sugar
• A pinch of cinnamon (optional)
• A teaspoon of lemon juice (optional)

Instructions:

1. Put the grated apple into the large pan with the cinnamon, lemon juice and add the granulated sugar only.
2. Put it on a low heat and stir the apple and sugar together - it will be quite dry at first but s the sugar gets wet from the apple and starts melting it will soon become liquid.
3. Bring it to the boil slowly, stirring all the time - by doing it slowly you give the apple some time to cook which results in a better flavour later on.
4. Use the slotted/perforated spoon to remove any scum (white bubbly stuff) that floats on the top of the jam.
5. Once it's getting close to the boil add the jam sugar.
6. Stir it in carefully and keep stirring till the jam is boiling even when you stir.
7. Take the spoon out and let the jam boil for 4 minutes exactly.
8. Meanwhile wash the jam jars up in the hottest water possible - you need the jars hot when you pour the jam into the jars and carefully dry them on inside as water in the jam is a bad thing.
9. Keep the jars warm in the oven on a low setting.
10. When the time is up turn the heat off.
11. Do the next bit as quickly as you can - you need to do this while the jam is still close to the boiling point.
12. Get the jars out of the oven and place them on a tea towel to protect your work surface and avoid them shattering.
13. Fill the jars almost to the top with the jam.
14. Close the jars as tightly as you can with the lids and then turn the jars upside down.
15. This will create the vacume seal jam always has.
16. After 5 minutes turn the jam the right way round (don't leave it any longer or the jam will stick to the lid and not move down.)
17. Leave to cool while still on the tea towel, add a lable with the type of jam and the date.
18. The jam should be kept in a cool dark place when sealed and in the fridge when opened.

Enjoy!

  If you wish to make apple/strawberry jam just use half apple and half strawberry and don't use cinnamon.


* Please note that I'm using whole pounds even though a pound is less than half a kg as its easier to weigh and it doesn't make difference to the end result except there being slightly less jam. Just choose either pounds OR kg and stick with that and it will be fine.
** I used Elstar - a crisp semi sweet apple - I'd suggest using any apple you like to eat.

TUSAL update

This time I'm giving you a 3-in-1 TUSAL update as it's been a while since I have taken photo's of my TUSAL jars and put them on my blog. What is a TUSAL? It's a Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long! Check the side bar for a linky to the lovely lady who runs it. Quite a lot has been created lately but not always stitching related and as I only keep the threads from embroideries the jars are not as full as they might be. I am only including photo's of the embroidery things I've worked on, however everything mentioned is on my blog.

July

 In July the only thing I embroidered was the raccoon embroidery so the jar is empty aside from the tails of threads and the threads from the kit that I didn't use as they were too short for me to keep.

August

In august I worked a bit on the apple and on the failed mystery project B

 

September

 

In September it got a lot done I finished the apple and stitched a complete sewing kit.

Non stitching wise I made an e-reader cover and a cable pouch for the e-reader cable. as well as completing a recycled plastic messenger bag, a crochet plastic basket and a tiny little pouch that is the right size for a few coins or 2 AA sized batteries and a small quilt top.

A little bit more fruit... or is it a lot?

As I said on my apple post:

This was made for the #stitchingpirates Sailing the fruit contest however as the rules say that there must be 2 pieces of fruit this is not my final entry - I need to add something else before it is eligible.

Well the pieces you see with the apple are the "something else" I added to make it an eligible entry. I first planned to do a 3D  strawberry which was originally mystery project B but it turned out to be too stiff to be able to make a strawberry out of it so I knew I had to make something a little bigger. So I then decided to make a tangerine to go with the apple but creating a pattern as I went along making the tangerine (as I just *knew* that people would want to make the tangerine and there was no way I'd be able to make a pattern once I'd completed the piece) was slow and I didn't think I'd be able to finish this on time. So I looked in my pattern scrapbooks to see what I could find that might work.

  It all started with the raspberry embroidery which I completed in less than a day but once it was done I didn't know what to do with it and it didn't really seem to suit the apple so I set it aside to think. The pattern I'd found in my scrapbook to make the raspberry also had some other fruit so I decided to move on to the strawberry with the initial plan of using the strawberry next to the cherry as a needle book but the strawberry turned out to be so bit that would have been a little bit too large for the needle book, and the two together would have been bigger than the bit of embroidery fabric I had left. At that point I decided to just do the strawberry and leave the cherry for something else, though I now also didn't know what to do with the strawberry either.

Full of doubt as to what I was doing for this but knowing that even if I skipped the apple completely and just went with the strawberry and raspberry it would not be "enough" I decided to keep going with the embroideries thinking that at worst I'd have a set of fruit that went together as they all came from the same pattern. I looked at the scraps of  embroidery fabric I had left that was the same as what was already present in the other embroideries and had a think as to what I could do with them. I still wanted to go with a sewing kit but couldn't see how I could use the strawberry for it. I decided to make a needle book out of the raspberry and considered using the cherry for a pincushion but realised that it would just look odd. I did know that with the round shapes it would look nice on the flap of a scissors case so that's what it became.

The last pattern of the 4 for the fruits was far too big for the fabric I had left as it was a long string of berries  but I picked out a couple of the berries and used them. I didn't want to make a square our of it as I had the idea of a single dangling tassle at the bottom so sacrificed 2 of my hexagon papers to make elongated hexagons and using a bit of red fabric as the backing and a scrap of ribbon I had on my desk I made a scissors fob out of it.

By the time I'd finished all these pieces I realised that I could make a box with the strawberry if I lined pieces of cardboard with fabric, so, as I didn't have any fabric glue, I had to do it the old fashioned way: by stretching the fabric over the pieces of cardboard and then carefully sewing a second piece of fabric to the first. The piece you see above is the base which was given a piece of felt as the outer side so I had to stretch the lining first before adding the felt. For all the other pieces I stretched the outer fabric over the card and sewed down the lining. I needed more fabric around the edges of the strawberry than I had so I sewed some strips of red batik to the outside of the embroidery and placed that on 2 pieces of batting (one smaller than the other to make it dome a little) and then stretched it around the cardboard. I then sewed all the pieces together using DMC perle thread and a large needle - it was rather painful sewing this together and by the time I was finished my hands really hurt.

I wanted to be able to fully open my box so didn't sew up the sides of it As you can see I also added 2 little pockets to 2 of the sides. What isn't so visible in these photo's is that the box is covered with read and white fabrics - 2 red and 2 white for the lid and 2 red and 2 white for the box itself - swapping them round so no 2 are next to each other.

Stats for all the items:

Apple:
Colours: 11 DMC colours blended together to create 30 different colour groups.
Fabric: White 28 ct Even weave
Size: 2 1/2" wide x 1 3/4" high / 6,35 x 4.45 cm

Berry:
Colours used: 6
Fabric: White 28 ct Even weave
Size: 1/ 3/4" x 1 1/4"

Cherry:
Colours used: 6
Fabric: White 28 ct Even weave
Size: 2 7/8" x 4 1/4"

Raspberry:
Colours used: 7
Fabric: White 28 ct Even weave
Size: 2 7/8" square.

Strawberry:
Colours used: 10
Fabric: White 28 ct Even weave
Size: 5 1/4" wide x 5 1/4" deep x 3 1/4" high