Free Pattern Fridays: Get your stitch on

After weeks without free patterns, I'm offering up a few sites with some nifty embroidery transfers and tutorials:

The transfers

Floresita has a blog devoted to her vintage transfers. I'm of two minds when it comes to vintage transfers - some are the kind of kitsch I love, but many take that step beyond kitsch and into the land of hokey. But to each their own. What I do like about these transfers is that Floresita occasionally photoshops them up to make them awesome, like the Saucepan Sabotage transfer:

Saucepan Sabotage from floresita

Awesome, non? (you can get the full size transfer here)

Some of the finer embroidery bloggers have pooled together their vintage transfers in the flickr pool, Hoop Love. With 645 pictures in the pool, I'm sure one of them will fit your embroidery needs.

Needlecrafter.com also has a great selection of transfers, many of them vintage and a lot of those seem to be from old Vogart collections. I haven't looked closely enough to know for sure, but you may find some overlap in Vogart transfers within the various vintage transfer sites. Needlecrafter also offers an insane glossary of stitches, as well as articles, links, and more. Even if the vintage stuff isn't your style, there is probably something useful at Needlecrafter.


the tutorials

Found this tutorial for Japanese Sashiko embroidery via a post on Feeling Stitchy. The Purl Bee claims that Sashiko only looks difficult. I'll have to wait and see about that - it does seem to require some special materials.

the not so free

These patterns by Peapies aren't free, but they're so darn cute that I have to share them:

Embroidery design by Peapies designs inc

There's a good chance I'll be purchasing at least one of those designs in the near future.

the inspiration

In need of some embroidered inspiration? Then check out Feeling Stitchy's flickr pool. There is some amazing work to behold in that pool.

and finally...
the just plain old awesome

Have I mentioned Feeling Stitchy before now? It's a recent find for me and I might be in blog love. They have a number of fantastic tutorials, including one on needles - something I could use since I (a) haven't a clue about which needle to use when; and (b) I broke a needle while working on my quilt the other evening (snapped in half!). And if that weren't awesome enough, they also have the Crafty Blog School tutorials. That's one I'm intrigued by since I'm still new to the world of blogging (unless you count my time on LiveJournal a few years ago...but that didn't have much of a focus).

Purl Bee, the blog of Purl Soho, is another great stitchy crafty resource. I was excited to see that the most recent post is on thimbles. It's a bit of serendipity for me, seeing as it was only yesterday that I was complaining to le husband about needing either a callous or a thimble for my thumb (a thimble would be preferable). That pain in the thumb is from holding onto the needle and trying to pull it through the fabric; I also need one for pushing the needle through or for general poke protection.

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So that's it for today. Happy Weekend and happy crafting! I picked up my tofutsies yarn from The Loop (one of my LYS) today. Why the tofutsies? For Sock Wars III! My dossier arrived via e-mail at noon and I've got to get my knit on tout de suite. The only trouble is: I detest working with eensy needles. Even 4mm needles are small by my standards and this stuff (like a lot of sock yarn) calls for 2.75mm needles. Teeny needles and dainty yarn will be my undoing in this war. Regardless, I will be giving it the old college try.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Saturday, May 10, 2008  

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