Tag: craft

craftmas, General Sewing

On the third day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me, a stocking just for my kitty!

When my Baking Buddy became a cat dad earlier this year, I knew I wanted to do something special for kitty’s first Christmas. (Yes, he already has an ornament like that.) He’s always made sure that my furkids have something for the humans and their opposable thumbs to unwrap on their behalf at Christmas, and I wanted his new addition to have the same.

I found a fun paw-shaped stocking pattern (in three different sizes!), and also some fabric on Spoonflower that looks a lot like the cat in question.

Funny story…you’d think that having three stocking sizes to choose from would be enough, but you would be wrong. The regular-sized one sounded human-sized, and the mini felt too small. And don’t get me started on the jumbo! Now I understand Goldilocks’ struggle. In the end I used the pattern for the regular-sized stocking but resized the PDF to 3/4 its original size to strike a balance.

I also left off the foot pads and toe beans. I know! Toe beans! If I had been using a solid colour for the body of the stocking I would 100% have included them (because…toe beans!), but I didn’t want to cover up the fun pattern with them. Besides, human stockings don’t include toenails…right? Help me out here.

My favourite part – or maybe second-favourite, after the orange cat fabric – is the lining. I found a couple of scrap pieces of green cuddle satin in my stash, left over from a pair of pajama pants, that were just the right size and matched the darker green on the outer fabric admirably. It gives the stocking such a luxe feeling!

I filled it up with all kinds of toys and goodies, including a gift card to the pet store for future treat purchases…and am starting to think there might have been something to the regular size after all. Right now it’s hanging at kitty’s new abode, where she’s patiently waiting until Christmas morning.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

On the second day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: two doves of indeterminate species.

If swapping (see my previous post) lets me make things I would never normally make and didn’t even know I wanted to make, then this is pretty much the polar opposite. As soon as I saw Satsuma Street’s “Holiday Glow” design on their social media, I knew I had to stitch it. At the time, it was an exclusive to the Jingle Ball, which meant I was out of luck. But patience is a virtue, and about a year later it appeared on their website, and with a discount code to boot.

There are a few things that stitchers love to complain about. Backstitch and French knots come to mind (the tedium!…although secretly, I kind of like French knots, and there’s no denying the definition provided by backstitch), but black or navy Aida cloth is a strong contender. No problem, I thought, this uses red Aida.

It turns out that even a relatively bright red Aida cloth can be a bit of a nightmare to stitch on and see the holes properly. Once I had a few stitches in place it was a little bit easier, but there was a lot of stitching by feel involved. And the metallics! I originally started out using DMC diamant for the gold and silver but switched to Petite Treasure Braid by Rainbow Gallery, and this may have been the single best decision I made all year.

(Note: I’m not sponsored by Rainbow Gallery; I just really, really love their Petite Treasure Braid. They’ll completely change your view of metallic threads.)

For all my moaning and apparent sudden-onset red blindness, the finished product was 100% worth it.

I found a 9″ x 7″ flexible hoop in a pale red at my local needlework shop and bought it on a whim. It’s not a perfect match to the fabric, but the colour works well with the thread shades and it doesn’t overwhelm the design.

My favourite part to stitch was the rays around the candle flames. Who knew a few straight stitches in gold and silver would add the perfect finishing touch?

Thanks for looking! 🙂

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery, Other Crafts

On the first day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: a peacock but no pear tree!

While I don’t swap as much as I used to, it was impossible to resist the siren call of the Santa Sack Swap on Lettuce Craft this year. One of the things I love about swapping – besides the whole sending and receiving mail factor, because of course – is that it often lets me make something I might not ordinarily make for myself or my immediate circle.

Case in point: a felt peacock.

While browsing my partner’s Pinterest, I saw something similar to this and forgot I had clicked on it until Etsy innocently suggested this pattern from Elliott’s Playground. Clearly the digital takeover is well on its way. It checked all the boxes for me, so I downloaded and printed, and started combing through my far-too-large collection of felt.

I’m quite happy with how he came out! I weighed him down at the front so my partner can set him just about anywhere and have him balance, and he seems to do that just fine. Instead of wrestling with cutting out and then affixing teeny tiny black felt circles for his pupils, I used the pupil piece as a template and satin-stitched his eyes. But I think my favourite part was his crown (fan? The feathers sticking out of his head, in any case). It’s small and sweet, and really finishes him off.

The instructions also included variations for a white version and a Christmas version, so I may have to revisit this pattern for ornaments next year.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

So mush fun!

wittychild

When I was gifted a set of four Satsuma Street Halloween ornament kits a few years back, I jumped (ha!) on Hoppy Halloween, and followed it up with Eye Scream and Haunted Hearse. (The latter’s wordplay messes with my brain, and I can’t hear it without thinking, “Ermagerd, hernted [haunted] hearse!”) That left Fun Guy, whose only crime was being a skull. I like my Halloween cutesy, and anything that reminds me of dead bodies – blood and gore, skeletons, zombies – doesn’t do it for me. That old Disney cartoon with the skeletons scared the bejesus out of me as a kid.

And then, out of nowhere*, a Halloween tree appeared in the front room. A Halloween miracle! This was on par with the Great Pumpkin showing up, and I decided that Fun Guy should join his friends on it.

Despite my usual mumblings and grousings about working on black perforated paper, he came along nicely and before long was identifiable as a skull. Then, the mushrooms started filling in, and suddenly he was alive with colour.

If he looked fun (of course) once the stitching was done, the beads and sequins took him right over the edge.

I trimmed him to size, backed him with some black glittery felt, and added a shiny hanging loop.

Isn’t he a great addition?

This is not the first of these ornament kits where I’ve run out of a given colour of floss (white, in this case) and had to raid my stash to finish off the design, but since this was the last of the kits I currently had, I’m not going to get upset about it.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

*She bought it at Michaels. – Ed.

Other Crafts

Extreme Makeover, T-shirt Edition

wittychild

I’ve been tie-dyeing since I was knee-high to a grasshopper an idealistic teenager who really wanted to be a hippie. I’ve gotten over the hippie stuff, mostly, but still enjoy the tie-dye. And although I’ve added vinyl transfers to a shirt I’ve already dyed (like my Canada Day shirts from a few years back), it didn’t occur to me to try dyeing a shirt that already had a graphic on it, until I saw someone do it on Lettuce Craft.

Back in the spring, I found this lonely guy in the clearance section:

I’m not a fan of white, and would normally never have looked twice, 40% savings be darned. But ah, as a blank canvas…that’s a different story.

After dampening the shirt and wringing it out (this is after prewashing, of course), I decided to go for a classic spiral pattern. My hands were covered in gloves which were in turn covered in dye, so I didn’t get an in-progress picture. If you’ve never tried this and want to see how, Tulip offers a really cool step-by-step.

After waiting the requisite 24 hours or so, the shirt was rinsed until the water ran clear, and it looked like this:

It still had to be run through the washing machine, though. It’s a little crazy how much dye there still is to be removed! Here’s the final product:

It might not be as brilliantly bright as it was post-rinse, but the colours are still vibrant and transform it into something summery and fun.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

When the veil of dreams has lifted and the fairy tales have all been told

wittychild

So here’s something you may or may not have known about me…

I love colour.

Colour, all of it, all the time. Seriously. I’ve never been able to pick just one favourite. I can admit that I’m not a fan of earth tones and that super-washed out pastels don’t do much for me, but everything else is fair game. The only thing better than bright colours is bright colours in a rainbow order, because I appreciate order and routine.

(Order and routine slightly outweigh colour, however. Don’t get me started on bookshelves arranged by colour rather than alphabetically/by author/by subject area.)

Since no books were misfiled, is it any surprise that when I saw this pattern on Etsy it called to me like a siren song? How could I not stitch something with twenty perfectly gradient shades?

One of my favourite things about cross-stitching is watching the design come alive (like Peter Frampton, but…not), stitch by stitch. Normally it happens so gradually that you don’t even notice it happening until you look at the design with fresh eyes and marvel that you can see the outlines developing, but it happens just the same.

It definitely harshes the stitching vibes to stop and take a picture after even the littlest bit of progress, but watching the heart form colour-by-colour is vaguely hypnotic.

As I stitched, I realized the rainbow heart reminded me of something. This song lived in my head rent-free while I worked:

If you haven’t seen A Mighty Wind, stop reading this right now and go watch it. Now.

I wanted something suitably punchy to display the finished piece in, so I painted a simple bamboo hoop from Michaels using acrylic paint pens in matchy-matchy colours.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Four out of five dentists agree

wittychild

Can I make a quick confession? I’m that weirdo who flosses every day, and not just when I’ve got a dental appointment a week from now. It’s nice to see all that BeMod training be good for something. (Also, Johnson&Johnson has apparently discontinued Listerine Fresh Burst dental floss; if anyone has a secret source somewhere, let me know!)

Longer ago than I care to admit, I found the cutest little pattern on Wee Little Stitches‘ Etsy shop (the shop has closed, but their old website still exists!) espousing this very sentiment, but with a crafty twist. Not only do I floss daily, I also floss (almost) daily, and I knew I had to stitch it.

I stitched it on 14-count “Sterling” aida from 123stitch, and (with some help) mounted the finished piece on a 5″ x 7″ canvas for a less-fussy look than framing.

It’s currently hanging in my little stitchy nook, to remind me to keep on flossin’.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

Other Crafts

The Boy Scouts were right!

wittychild

I first heard about Altoid wallets a year ago or so – or rather, heard the term and then conducted my own online research and learned that yes, they’re pretty much exactly what they sound like. There’s something almost freeing about leaving the house with just a tin somewhat smaller than 2.5″ x 4″ containing all the essentials: a debit card, lip balm, hair tie, a few dollars in cash, and maybe even wireless earbuds if that’s how you roll…but I knew that would never work for me. I want an actual bag to hold my actual wallet, not to mention the sunglasses case, phone, reusable bag or two, and emergency rations in the form of leftover fun-size Halloween chocolate. (And occasionally, incoming/outgoing mail or a library book.) I dismissed the idea as “cute” and promptly forgot about it.

A month or two ago, Pinterest started showing me images of little mini beauty kits in an Altoids tin. Their creators managed to cram all this soft-girl aesthetic into a very small space, with strands of tiny faux pearls outlining teeny-tiny mirrors and little pink bows in the same shade as the lip stain tucked into the bottom. And thanks to the site algorithms, I also started seeing more pragmatic versions, like little tiny emergency kits.

I should make one for my mom, I thought, clearly a victim of social media saturation. Only…a beauty kit to go isn’t quite her speed (did you even know you can buy Altoid-sized mascara?), and a full-out “In Case of Emergency, Open Tin” scenario didn’t feel very gift-y somehow. I decided to hit somewhere between those two extremes, and decided on a cute tin with some purse essentials in it.

The theme came together in about five minutes for me when, in a fit of boredom, I googled “cat in boy scout uniform”. Google happily obliged with several images that I’m sure were AI-generated; one of them was captioned “Be Purr-pared”.

Yes! Be purr-pared, indeed! With the help of some musical inspiration, I was on my way.

I found some images from a vintage Girl Scouts manual on Etsy, and had my aesthetic.

And filled with lip balm, hand cream, Band-Aids, and gum for those post-coffee emergencies.

There was a good amount of Mod Podge involved, and it was impossible to perfectly line up the plaid on the short edges, but overall I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

On the third day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: some hoops to spread a message jolly!

Because it wouldn’t be Christmas if I weren’t finishing up a project last-minute, right? (Don’t worry, it’s been nearly a week; I was stuck waiting on a sunny day to get photos.) I love Stitchrovia‘s designs, and the idea of the different fonts really grabbed me. There’s something weirdly freeing about not making everything perfectly symmetrical.

I had stitched one of her patterns for Mother’s Day and by happy chance these used a lot of the same colours so finding my shades was a snap

Close-ups:

I probably use 14-count opalescent aida cloth more than any other needlework fabric. Sparkles make everything better!

I think the green H was my favourite…

They’re a perfect fit in 4″ hoops, and have joined the collection of holiday hoops adorning the walls.

Thanks for looking – Merry Christmas! 🙂