I’ve had to hold off on this post until my Father-in-law’s birthday present was delivered!

Richard is both a big Schubert fan and difficult to buy for so this year we decided that an embroidery of Schubert was a good option.

I took this image:

Traced the outline and simplified the detail a little. I used split stitch for most of the design and fly stitch to shape the curly stitches on the hair. I’ve run the picture by a few of my musical friends and they assure me that it is a recognisable likeness! What do you think??

When Duncan visited Seattle recently, he stayed with a Search Marketing associate of his, CEO of SEOmoz – Rand Fishkin and his wife Geraldine.

While he was there they visited Archie McPhee a store who’s tag line is ’slightly less disappointing than other companies!’ The store sells Yodelling Pickles – I can’t wait to go visit myself at some point! Geraldine bought a jar of fake eyeballs.. which I wish Duncan had photographed! Not least because we decided that it would make the perfect thank you card!

The photo’s not great, but the iris is done using buttonhole stitch, the pupil a french knot and the red blood-shotness is fly stitch.

Since making my own eyeballs I found some kits over at Creative Kismet who would have thought there’d be so much call for embroidered eyeballs!

One of my favourite stories as a child was the Princess and the Pea, so I’ve been really excited by some of the projects I’ve seen around recently.

This embroidery is just so lovely, it looks so simple, which I find are often the hardest projects to do!

Over at Soulemama this amazing project really captured my imagination and I’ll be saving this one up for the future

Just realised how ambiguous this is and that I didn’t properly reference the embroidery – just to clarify it’s not my work! It’s by the very talented Georgia McDonald! Also after a bit of digging I’ve found the pattern for it over at etsy – very reasonable at $5!

I can finally blog about the project I worked on through the summer.

Very good friends of ours got married in September, Duncan was best man and as they have both always been supportive of my embroidery I wanted to give them something special.

It’s from an Anchor kit called Cheng Yang. Which by-the-by was bought from sewandso a site I’ve bought from a few times now and have had great service..

I know it has the size on the description, but it didn’t really compute until I opened the pack It was certainly the biggest piece I’ve ever done and it was pretty intense sewing between our wedding in June and Will and Heather’s in September.. but it was great fun to do, with the outline drawn it felt a bit like colouring in – it’s mainly long and short or satin stitch with a bit of stem stitch.

There are other kits available in a similar style, which are quite tempting..

Tomorrow I’ll be starting on a new project. A few months ago I offered to make a batch of cards as an offering in an auction of promises to raise money for the Light Opera group I’m a member of. I took along a few photos of cards already featured on the blog and my lot sold 3 times over.. Two girls wanted cards but the guy I’m meeting tomorrow wanted a piece of artwork, so tomorrow evening we’re meeting to decide what he would like! I’m very nervous as my designs have tended to be quite small but I’ll take a bunch of books along and see what style he likes..

It looks as though summer is finally arriving! and what better way to celebrate than to spend a lazy morning reading about two quite different but equally inspiring women!

Firstly, a fantastic piece over on Needle’nThread by Trish Burr, split in to parts 1 and two

Trish is author of one of my very favourite embroidery books Redoute’s finest flowers in embroidery. My mum bought it for me a few Christmases ago and I had to buy her a copy of her own for mother’s day in order to get my copy back!

The article is full of …..

Sorry bit of an interruption there – a big cry from the kitchen, Duncan sliced his finger rather than the cucumber.. I did everything right – wrapped the finger tightly in a clean tea towel – got him to apply pressure and hold it above his heart and then I panicked!! I remember now I’m rubbish in an emergency! However, a couple of plasters and control of the remote for the afternoon and I think he’ll live!

Anyway, sorry for the break – check out the piece on Trish’s book – there are some amazing photos – definitely worth taking a peak! – and she talks about how she became interested in embroidery and how she came to write these amazing books.. I’ll almost certainly be ordering her new book! In fact I’ll probably have to get 2 copies!

The second piece is an interview by the lovely Lisa Lam with the inspiring Amy Butler

Amy talks about how she got started and built up the business and has some great advice for people starting out.. I’ll be rereading and taking notes!! But the essence I think was to start simple and focussed with an etsy or ebay store to feel the market out.. which I guess I know, but I’m still experimenting to find my focus and building up the courage to try! – my wedding in 6 weeks time is a good excuse to procrastinate for now!

By the way if you like the look of Amy’s new crockery line at Mikasa (I know I do!) there are some closer photos here.

A couple of happy birthdays this week!

On Thursday we went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday – we had fancy cocktails at Pigalle in Picadilly where we saw the fabulous a cappella group The Magnets, so this card seemed fitting

and tomorrow we’re heading over to my sister’s for my niece’s Second birthday – I can’t believe she’s growing up – so much so that I went a bit mad with the number two.. babel fish was very useful for this!

I’ve also had a couple of large additions to my stash recently, we have a raffle each month at my Guild meetings. I was lucky enough to win this large bag of tapestry wools – so expect to see a change in my choice of thread..

I was also lucky enough to spot a notice on the intra-net at work offering this stack of Indian silks. The woman giving them away has had them in her loft for 10 years and couldn’t think what to do with them..

I’m not sure what I’ll use this beautiful material for either yet, so if you have any ideas they’ll be very welcome! There are 4 pieces of 2.5 m and the cream silk is 2 m – not sure of the widths..

I am so behind on this and we’re only 3 months into the challenge! With a wedding in 3 months time, it’s only going to get worse.. but here it is:

February’s Challenge was ‘What are old enough to remember?’

My initial thoughts for this were based on childhood memories of summers by the seaside.. and then something happened, something unexpected.. First of all Barnsley beat Liverpool in the FA Cup – which you may have noticed excited me

Now what I remember is standing in the cold, watching Barnsley and generally going home to defrost and cheer ourselves up! and then we drew Chelsea in the Quarter final.. and beat them as well! In the build up to the Chelsea match I saw this article in the Guardian and it brought back so many memories of past glories and randomly my next thought was that’s what I remember, I should do some thing that’s Barnsley..

and you don’t get more Barnsley than Toby Tyke!

Obviously this isn’t something I’ve drawn myself, but converting a picture to embroidery is challenging in itself! Onwards now onto March.. noticing the small things in life, I have an idea for this – I might go microscopic and use some of the very large bag of tapestry wool which I was lucky enough to win at the Embroiderer’s guild last month!

Don’t forget it’s Mother’s Day here in the UK this Sunday!

My Mum and future Mother-in-law will be getting lovely Paperchase cards this year.. I have 75 more wedding invites to make and a scarf to knit, so am afraid for me it fell by the wayside. My colleague’s Mum and Mum-in-law will be getting Suzical cards, however – Sarah liked the Mole card so much she asked me to make some more..

A hyacinth for her mother-in-law (as her name means Hyacinth in french!)

and a daffodil for Sarah’s mum:

Which I particularly proud of as my drawing is not the best!

We have D’s Mum visiting for the weekend and are all going up to my sister’s for dinner on Sunday – to see my parents and Judith’s in-laws as well. Happy Mother’s Day to all you great Mum’s – hope you’re spoilt this weekend!

Sharon Boggon has started a new challenge for the new year – Take It Further.

January’s challenge was to either use the colour scheme suggested or the concept – for January this was someone you look up to. The colour scheme and the wording immediately sparked circus thoughts – looking up to the trapeze artist (!) – there was a nice deep purpley colour that would work well, but I needed more reds..

So then I moved on to people, I actually look up to – my parents were pretty high up the list. My mum is always telling me to aim high, so when I came across the English bird of prey centre when looking for D’s birthday present – I put the 3 ideas together.. Something you look up to, something inspiring..

You’ll need to click on the image to see it properly

The other part of the challenge I really wanted to explore is the concept of taking it further – while this is only a small piece, it’s my first design using silk shading. I used single strands of DMC cottons to ‘colour in’ the hawk.

The February challenge is of course up and running already and it is ‘what are you old enough to remember?’ At the moment I’m leaning towards something sea related/inspired – if you look at the colour pallette there are blues and sandy colours. As a child we used to take the caravan to the seaside for the full 6 week school holiday – it seemed like forever.. I’ll let you know how it works out!

I went to the opus school of textile art’s 10th anniversary exhibition of textile art today. I was one of those bright early spring days, crisp but sunny that suits London so well. The exhibition was at the Mall Galleries just south of Trafalgar Square – lovely looking cafe if you’re passing, but too busy today for me to find a table for a coffee.

Unfortunately I hadn’t thought to take a camera, but there was some amazing stuff – a real mixture, from felting to little people in boots The only photos I can find online are the flier picture, which has a 3-d mix media piece by Gavin Fry and this blog post from altering thoughts, which shows some experimentation inspired by one of the pieces in the exhbition.

One of the things I noticed was that it was the landscapes that caught my eye the most – I guess that’s one step closer to discovering my own style!??