hello pineapples

A work in progress: half way there!

I had posted before about a quilt I was working on for a friend's baby. The quilt is made up of squares that were signed by friends and family who were at the baby shower. The baby in question is now three months old and no longer lives in my building, but from what I've seen in photos, she's damn cute. Anyway, a very exciting thing happened tonight:



I finished embroidering the squares! Now the back needs to go on and there is quilting to be done, but I'm very pleased with how it's turning out. I will post better pictures once I have better light to take photos, but I was too excited to just fold it up and wait to take the picture.

Even one of the cats was psyched about it and checked out my handiwork:



Although, it could be that she just likes to climb under things, especially blankets.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Friday, July 25, 2008 1 comments  

filed under: embroidery, quilt, show and tell, wip

In Stitches...again...

My thesis has me a wee bit stressed this week, and by wee bit, I mean that I'm really freaking out totally stressed. Getting me through it has been embroidery and m&m's. Although, I think I need to add some kind of exercise to the mix - or else those m&m's are going to add up.

Anyway, my thought to write a post about embroidery was totally in sync with most of the blogs I was reading/stumbling across this week. So much fun embroidery stuff out there!!

First things first, my project:



each of the squares were signed by guests at a baby shower. Instead of a guest book, I'm embroidering the names onto the squares and it's being made into a quilt. It makes it a permanent, useable guestbook and a nice reminder of their friends and family here on the east coast, seeing as they are moving later this month. It was totally a Martha Stewart idea (I'm a Martha Stewart junkie) and it's starting to look awesome.



My mom and I sewed together the top while I was visiting (okay, my mom sewed it together - I'm still sewing machine challenged). A few squares had to be traced over - the names came a little close to the edge and would have been lost when sewing the squares together. I'm trying to keep things looking as close to the original signatures as possible.

Now, since my mind has been split between Veronica Mars' negotiation of identity and embroidery, I'm going to share with you some of the coolest embroidery stuff I've found online this week:

Average Jane Crafter points out an interview with Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching on Craft Sanity AND there is a free sublime stitching template available. Sweet! (the template isn't exactly my style and I already have the mod templates, but free is free).

Speaking of the awesome Jenny Hart, I came across her blog Embroidery as Art via Feeling Stitchy. Both blogs are worth reading and were both added to my Google Reader this week. Jenny Hart's blog led me to some of the most outstanding embroidery I've seen in ages by Takashi Iwasaki. Seriously, check it out:



I was completely blown away/inspired by his work.

I've got more, but I think I'll save those for later...I'm going to attempt a post dedicated to embroidery as art.

Totally off topic: Sock Wars III starts tomorrow!! I'm a bit nervous to tell the truth. I'll have to go pick up some yarn tomorrow morning, before I get my assignment.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Thursday, May 08, 2008 3 comments  

filed under: arts and crafts, embroidery, quilt