Doctor Who gifts

I made this for my bf, who is a big Dr who fan, as a valentines gift - I have given it to him a bit early because he's visiting me right now and I wanted to see his reaction in person, so it's now safe to also post here as he watches this blog too :) It's cross stitch of a Dalek - the soufflé girl one - holding a soufflé. It's made with several embroidery stitches I found over on Sharon b's Dictionary of Stitches for Hand Embroidery and Needlework  It's really great and has lovely clear pictures :) As he's not into pincushions I filled it with rice so he can use it as a paperweight or zap it in the microwave and use as a pocket hand warmer.

Stats:
Size of embroidery before being sewn: 3 1/2" x 3" / 8,9 x 7.6 cm
Fabric: 18 ct Aida, dyed with coffee

The Dalek:
Size: 1 1/8" x 1 1/3" / 2.96 x 3.39 cm
Number of colours: 22

The rest:
Colours used: Misc reds both plain and variegated.

Something else I also made for him is this Tardis biscornu. It's also filled with rice. I started it way back in November but didn't finish it in time to send it for Christmas and then I was ill so I kept it till he came here instead.

Stats:
Size of embroidery before being sewn: 3,3" / 8,5 cm square
Size of completed biscornu (corner to corner as seen in the lower images): 2 1/8" / 5,4 cm square
Fabric: 18 ct Aida

The front:
Colours used: 798 (blue) 310 (black) glow in the dark (E940) and florescent yellow (E980)
Total number of cross stitches: 1144
Total number of backstitches: 392

You can find the pattern here

The back:
Colours used: 798 (blue) for the backstitching and variegated red for the bow ties.
Total number of cross stitches: 36
Total number of backstitches: 216

You can find the pattern here

I used glow in the dark to join the sides together to make the biscornu.

Finish it in 2013 project: January overview and WIP update post

It's the beginning of February and high time I made an update on where I am in the Finish it in 2013 project! I've copy/pasted the first post and will be adding updates for each item so you can see before and after pictures :)

New Project:

I am also going to start a "large" and complicated new cross stitch project this year based on a photograph by a really talented Alaskan photographer who was incredibly kind and said I could make a cross stitch of it. The photographer is Mike Gates, go check out his site - his work is amazing!

The pattern was made for me as a prize for winning a competition on dA. It's 10 inches wide  x 14 1/2 inches high = 180 x 261 stitches on 18 ct Aida and it uses 147 colours. I am truly intimidated but I did ask for the pattern to be as close to the photo as possible and didn't limit size or colours and I certainly got what I asked for!

Update: I have dyed the fabric for this using coffee.

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The Current WIP's:

Sagittarius star sign by Lanarte - central area complete
Update: No progress made on this.

Air and Earth Biscornu -  1st colour (of 4) of the air side done. 

Update:  I finished all 4 sides to make 2 biscornu. This is on hold till I have buttons to finish them with.

8th century tile floor embroidery in greens and blues.  
Update: I have managed to complete 2 sides of this now

Sampler - barely started
Update: I decided to use for the TAST SAL(see sidebar for a link to the project blog) and see if I can make some sort of picture with all the different stitches have done the first 3 weeks so far.

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The UFO's:

2 sleeping bunnies - a Priscilla babyland embroidery - about half done but I *so* hate doing 1/4 and 3/4 cross stitches.

Dog embroidery (portrait) made from a photo years ago by a company - about 1/5th done.

Dog embroidery (standing) made from a photo years ago by a company - barely started.

Autumn leaves needle book WIP - embroidery is 1/2 finished.

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The Finishes can be found if you click the tab "2013 finishes" at the top of the page.

IHSW, TAST, and more

I didn't get as much time as I'd hoped to stitch during the IHSW, nor did I have as much energy as I'd like - I'd seriously underestimated how long it takes to recover from pneumonia and how easily I tire still, which is also why this post is so late - I just have not had the energy left after dealing with everything else.

What I did manage to achieve was a start on a bookmark for a special someone, which I finished last night. The completed bookmark is 7" x 1 " / 17,5 x 2,5 cm. the little blue figure is a Lego minifig the recipient chose from their collection for me to use as the inspiration. He said that he thought the minifig looked dead because of the X eyes and the fact that he's lying down which he thought was extra fun - that's kids for you lol. The name is done with red variegated thread, the rest with standard DMC floss. Made on a scrap of 18 ct Aida.

I sewed one of the two Elements biscornu's together - the fire and water one, which I won't include now as it's not yet got the button on, looks exactly the same as the last one and I'll make a separate post with both of them once completed.

I also cut out 2 cloaks from fleece for the kids that I still need to sew together, and, as there isn't much to look at apart from a pile of fleece I won't be showing photo's of them yet either.

This year I'm joining in with the Take A Stitch Tuesday project where every Tuesday (or almost every Tuesday) a wonderful lady shows how different embroidery stitches are done. Since I want to expand my stitch knowledge this seems like a good thing for me to join in with and hopefully it will be fun to do. One of my many UFO's was a partially finished frame that I couldn't remember what I had started it for. I realised that this would make the perfect frame for me to try and do all the TAST stitches in, hopefully also creating a pretty picture in the process.

 I have already done this weeks stitches for this - not much as I don't want to run out of space prematurely and I can always add more later. I am also working on completing the frame of cross stitching.

Elements biscornu's + IHSW

This weekend is IHSW and, although the kids are home this weekend I still hope to mostly complete the two Elements biscornu's (I still need to buy new buttons for the centres but I'll do that when there is less snow on the ground). I may also finally get round to measuring out the fabric needed for my large project of the year and dying the fabric several shades darker to give it a nice background before I start working on it. 

Not embroidery related but still stitching: I need to appliqué the 12 months of Christmas project circle to a background so I can continue that, this will be done by hand so I also consider this stitching. 

A couple of days ago I made this and uploaded it to deviantArt but was too dead afterwards to also make a post here, so here it is after all:

It's freezing cold outside, with snow ankle deep on the ground and, as I've got pneumonia (on the mend though - the antibiotics seem to be helping), it's best I don't go outside unless it's a dire emergency. However we are running out of bread and don't have enough for lunch, so I had to bake something. Times like this I'm not really up to kneading bread so I dug out my favourite spelt bread recipe which requires no kneading at all!

This recipe is one ANYONE can make as long as you have the ingredients and an oven. The first time I made this I didn't include any of the seeds and it worked nicely as well, though I'd suggest adding a bit of extra flour to compensate for no seeds otherwise it will be too wet.

This time I pulled out all the stops and didn't just add sunflower, sesame seed and linseed but also pumpkin (50 gr) and poppy seed (15 gr) and I scattered sunflower and pumpkin seed on top as well.

I'm really happy how this one came out and can't wait to see the kids reactions when they get home for lunch as they LOVE fresh home made bread

 They did in fact LOVE the bread and it had completely disappeared by the next day!

All 4 sides are now complete. I had to do quite a bit of ripping as I'd miscounted the width of the darker blue one and also miscounted the hight of the green one. as I was lazy and didn't count the fire one but used the green and blue ones as guides I ended up with the fire one being one stitch too high AND one stitch too wide. So out it all came and I re-did the sides I'd miscounted. I also had to do a bit more ripping on two of the spokes of the fire one as I'd missed a corner stitch. After I'd taken the photo's I also noticed that I'd missed a single stitch on the dark blue corner spokes but decided that as it wouldn't be noticeable on the completed product I would leave it as is (on the fire ones it would have been noticeable as the backstitching would have been almost touching in places).

All I need to do to complete these is cut them out, stitch them together and stuff them.

For those of you wondering how my health is: The antibiotics have been doing their job and I'm much better - didn't need any naps today and haven't felt totally exhausted just by being awake and pottering around a little.

Air, earth and water biscornus + TUSAL

I did remember to get the green thread I needed to complete the earth biscornu on the way from the doctors to the pharmacy (I literally have to bike past the shop so didn't go out of my way) so was able to finish the earth biscornu side. I am in the middle of doing the water side of the fire and water biscornu - this time in plain embroidery cotton and not silk. The red backstitching is the frame for the fire side.

I've not been all that well for a while now and the visit to the doctor was to see what was up. Turns out my cold wasn't a cold but pneumonia so I've been told to rest lots and have been given horse sized antibiotics tablets that I somehow have to take (Since I can't swallow pills in general these are impossible so they get broken into 2 halves, crushed into smithereens, mixed with the really sour oj I hate and knocked back like I'm drinking shooters). Resting lots means lots of sleeping and reading/embroidering to me so I'll see how much I get done in the coming days.

It being TUSAL time of the month (see the link in the bar on the left hand side for more info) I've made a photo of the jar I started in December. It contains threads from the clown embroidery I finished and the air, earth and water biscornus I have been working on. Not as much as previous months but well.. I also do other stuff hehe.

Air and earth biscornu: Update

Things are progressing on the biscornu front - or at least they were till I ran out of the darkest green (699) that I'm using. You may notice that the X is missing from the top right corner - that's because I just ripped it out due to me forgetting to do the first stitch on the corner, as I'd only removed the stitches in the corner I had to fiddle with the ends to tidy up the ends.

I need to go close to the shop where I can get more thread tomorrow morning so I've decided to wait till then to get more. In the mean time I'll start work on the fire and water #2 as the first will be heading to a certain someone in Alaska soon ;-)

Stats:
Size of embroidery before being sewn : 2 1/4" / 5,75 cm square
Size of completed biscornu will be approx.: 1 1/2" / 4 cm square
Fabric: 18 ct Aida

The Air side:
Colours used: ecru, 3753 (light blue), 932 (slightly darker blue) and 931 (darkest blue)
Total number of cross stitches: 632
Total number of backstitches: 488

The Earth side:
Colours used: 722 (lightest green), 703 (light green), 701 (slightly darker green) and 699 (darkest green)
Total number of cross stitches: 632
Total number of backstitches: 404

12 Months of Christmas

Introduction:

 I can hear you thinking "what on earth is she talking about? Christmas was last month, it doesn't last all year!" and you are entirely correct, it doesn't last all year. What this is, is a new plan of mine that I thought of because I was disappointed that I just didn't find enough time in the run up to Christmas to make some additional Christmas decorations as I had planned. So, I thought to myself, "What can I do to have the additional home made decorations without running out of time?" And the answer was actually quite simple: make something each month during the year. Each month I hope to find time to make something new and I will share the result. If I create the pattern myself I will also share it, otherwise I will direct you to where I got the idea/pattern from, however the plan is to think of each months creation myself. 

Some things I've been thinking of making but never got round to:

• Place mats 
• Additional baubles 
• Wall hanging (this might take more than a month) 
• A new door wreath (can't use real foliage due to allergies) 
• Napkins (Christmas deserves real fabric napkins) 
• Napkin rings/holders

Since I'm all about using what I already have as much as possible I'll certainly delve into the boxes of bits and pieces I've collected over the years, not to mention my rather sizeable fabric, bead and thread stash. I'll be sewing, quilting, embroidering and who knows what else to make these projects and my hope is that I don't need spend a penny on the projects and that I can do them all from my stash.

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The First project:

I had a 16 inch wide x width of fabric striped Christmas fabric that inspired me to start project 1 - what will probably become a tree skirt. I cut it using a 9 degree circle wedge template and cut it in such a way that the pattern continued all the way round the circle - a rather wasteful way of cutting BUT it achieved the pattern I wanted. This is what the fabric looked like while cutting:

I only wish my fabric had been wider - just a few more inches would have meant I could get 10 slices out of the width instead of 8 making it a 1/4 per run of cuts that I got out of the fabric which then in turn would have meant I got a nice complete pattern all the way round. Halfway sewn - you can see how much smaller it gets when the seam allowance is used:

And this is them all sewn together - to make a full circle I'd have needed 40 sections but I only got 38 from the fabric.:

At the moment it's on my bed with different fabrics underneath while I decide what borders to give it as it's a bit too short to cover up the basket my fake tree sits in.

As you can see it's a really effective way of using a striped fabric and really easy too!

Air and Earth Biscornu - Side 1: Air complete.

Today I finally finished the air side of the second biscornu. This one took quite a bit longer to make than the last one - mostly because I didn't do much embroidery over Christmas.

Stats:
Size of embroidery before being sewn : 2 1/4" / 5,75 cm square
Size of completed biscornu will be approx.: 1 1/2" / 4 cm square
Fabric: 18 ct Aida

The Air side:
Colours used: ecru, 3753 (light blue), 932 (slightly darker blue) and 931 (darkest blue)
Total number of cross stitches: 632
Total number of backstitches: 324 +  164 around the edges (still to do)

First Finish of the year: UFO #9 - Clown

This is my first Finish of the year and also the first finish for the Finish It In 2013 Project

It had gone unfinished for 2 reasons:
1. When I was originally working on it I made a mistake in counting and this is probably why I chucked it aside. I had, of course, forgotten this by the time I got round to working on it again so I adjusted the pattern a little to "fix" the issues as I worked on it, as there was no way I was going to rip anything out.
2. I had lost the pattern so thought I couldn't finish it till I had a good look at the cover image of the kit and realised that the picture showed the crosses well enough and, as I still had the threads that went with the kit, I could finish it after all.

It's not perfect but it's done and that to me is the most important bit for this particular project.

The stats:
Size: 3 3/9 inch x 3 6/8 inch / 8,5 x 9,5 cm
Aida: 14 ct / 5 squares per cm
Colours: 14 not sure which though as the packet doesn't say. 

The Finish It In 2013 project

So this year I want to complete ALL my remaining cross stitch UFO's fortunately it's not as big a job as it may seen as I already did a chunk last year as many of you may have seen already.

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New Project:

I am also going to start a "large" and complicated new cross stitch project this year based on a photograph by a really talented Alaskan photographer who was incredibly kind and said I could make a cross stitch of it. The photographer is Mike Gates, go check out his site - his work is amazing!

The pattern was made for me as a prize for winning a competition on dA. It's 10 inches wide  x 14 1/2 inches high = 180 x 261 stitches on 18 ct Aida and it uses 147 colours. I am truly intimidated but I did ask for the pattern to be as close to the photo as possible and didn't limit size or colours and I certainly got what I asked for!

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The Current WIP's:

Sagittarius star sign by Lanarte - central area complete

Air and Earth Biscornu -  1st colour (of 4) of the air side done.

Clown 1/4 finished - pattern lost, but picture clear enough to work from.

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The UFO's:

8th century tile floor embroidery in greens and blues.

2 sleeping bunnies - a Priscilla babyland embroidery - about half done but I *so* hate doing 1/4 and 3/4 cross stitches.

Dog embroidery (portrait) made from a photo years ago by a company - about 1/5th done.

Dog embroidery (standing) made from a photo years ago by a company - barely started.

Autumn leaves needle book WIP - embroidery is 1/2 finished.

Sampler - barely started

IHSW, Christmas baking and more

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are now enjoying that quieter time of year between Christmas and the new year - at least it always is for me. Now on to the updates:
I didn't get as much embroidery done as planned during the weekend as I was still recovering from being ill - needed lots of sleep so it was good the ids were at ex's for the weekend. All I managed was a small start on the air side of the next biscornu that goes with the fire and water one. No photo's of that right now as it's too dark to take photo's and ecru on white really doesn't show up well.

As every year I did some Christmas baking - this year I started with cookies on Monday using Sugarbelle's recipe and put them away till I had more time to ice them, which I did on Sunday. The plan was to ice them using royal icing as per her recipe but the amounts were too large so I stuck with the recipe on the Wilton's meringue powder packet. The cookies are delicious and having seen that Sugarbelle used flavouring in her icing I decided to do that too and made the icing lemon flavoured using lemon zest. One thing I found out is that my hands really, really don't like piping for any length of time (outlining more than 3 cookies actually lol) so i decided to go with the quick and dirty method of no outlining and either spreading it on or using shaped tips to pipe allover patterns.  Not the best looking but they taste good so who cares - my kids certainly don't... they loved them!

In between making the cookies and icing them I did a lot more - first of course was to get the tree up and decorated and get my Lego Christmas Village out. This year I used the bauble boxes and a white sheet set up under the tree to put the village on and it really does look good at night when the lights are off but the tree is still lit. The kids always have a lot of fun playing with this and used the angled slopes between the different levels of the boxes as ski slopes for the Lego skiers.

On the Thursday before Christmas it was time for the bi-annual Christmas fair at the kids school so it was time for me to bake something for them to sell there - this year they wanted 48 mini cupcakes so that's what I made for them a couple of hours before the fair so they were at their freshest.  Half were chocolate and the other half vanilla topped with a same flavoured butter cream icing. (I'd used a different recipe than I usually do - a local sweetshop was selling this packet of powder to make the butter cream with but I didn't really like the end result so threw the rest of the packet away.)

However my baking wasn't done for the day as I also wanted to send the kids to school with cupcakes for their classmates and also some for the teachers lounge as I do every year. I needed 30 for youngest's class and 27 for oldest's class and at least 50 for the teachers lounge to make sure there was enough for all the teachers AND the admin team. In the end I baked 114 large cupcakes in 5 flavours: Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, caramel and apple/cinnamon. I had some batter leftover from baking 2 full trays of each flavour (except chocolate which I only had enough better to make 1 1/2 trays)so I put the leftovers into the mini cupcake tins and ended up with an additional 36 mini cupcakes. I iced each flavour with the same flavour icing, except the apple/cinnamon ones which I iced with lemon butter cream (which as you may notice I didn't have enough of to completely ice everything).  Taking them to the school was a bit of a challenge till I thought of using the (cleaned out) bauble boxes to carry them in.

In the morning I helped the kids get to their classes with their boxes and then went home for some much needed coffee before taking the box you see above in a sneak ninja delivery attack to the school. Since they have an open door policy at the kids school I was able to sneak in, sneak into the teachers lounge, grab some serving dishes and put the cupcakes out and sneak off again without begin seen - the cupcake fairy strikes again! Of course they did know "who dunnit" due to the kids taking the same to their classes but it's still fun to do the cupcake fairy bit.

On Saturday I had the house full of kids so I baked another batch of cupcakes and surprised the kids with them - I made half vanilla and the other half strawberry. The kids and their friends were overjoyed and the cupcakes did their usual disappearing trick.

Somehow or another I was all ready on Christmas Eve despite starting the preparations a week late due to the illness I had the week before, so I decided to try my hand at baking an 8 strand braided bread. As you can see it didn't exactly look "right" as I'd misunderstood the braiding instructions, thought it looked weird (which it did) and then made some adjustments, which didn't need to be done at all. However it tasted good and went well with our Christmas Eve table grill meal (we usually do this on boxing day but due to the kids going to ex on boxing day we moved it to Christmas eve)

Overall it was a  busy week baking and doing stuff but the effort was certainly worth the end results!

IHSW and TUSAL

This months TUSAL jar is pretty full again. At the bottom the threads from the Christmas cards, then the Movember beer ghost and the biscornu as well as some threads from UFO #8 which is again hiding in the attic where I find it's easier to work on due to the angle of the light which makes working blue on blue so much easier on my eyes. Lots of metallics, glow in the dark and normal threads this month. Next year I'll be back with another jar as I really enjoy seeing how the jars fill up and what they look like month to month.

This weekend is IHSW again - last time for this year but with this I also hope to continue next year!
I hope to start on another biscornu similar to the one I recently finished.

Not much else to report this time - I've been pretty ill this week and haven't done more more than be ill and try to get better again.

Mini biscornu complete!

This is the completed biscornu I made the latest fun #stitchingpirates challenge over on deviantArt.

As you have seen over the last 2 weeks I have dyed the fabric and embroidered both sides with different threads. To finish it all I used DMC 154 (purple) to join the two sides and stuffed it with shredded cotton batting/ I used two identical heart shaped buttons to finish it off :)

I hope that whoever gets this will like this as much as I do :D

Mini biscornu side B and a bit more...

Here is the second side of the biscornu I'm making for another #stitchingpirates challenge over on deviant Art. Fortunately the challenge deadline was extended so I will be able to finish it on time. This was the first time I stitched with DMC silk threads and it was a bit of a learning curve as it behaves differently from normal DMC. As a result making this took a lot longer than usual as the necessity of pulling each stitch *tight*  as I went along was a strain on my right shoulder.

I am happy with the resulting embroidery and am going to start putting it together - I've decided to use purple DMC for the job as the join links red and blue.

Size  2 1/4" / 5,75 cm square
Fabric: 18 ct Aida
Colours used: 712 (cream), 800 (light blue), 798 (medium blue) and 820 (darkest blue)
Total number of cross stitches: 620
Total number of backstitches: 308 

One thing that happened when I was making coffee with my Senseo coffee machine for my bf a few days ago was this:

This is one of the happiest cups of coffee I have ever seen - and I didn't do anything to make it happen!