Tag: winter

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery, General Sewing

On the fourth day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: a shirt with a duck who’s daffy!

I am so!  Freaking!  Excited!  about this one.  This was a labour of love which, despite all odds, was finished around 10:00 on December 23…with a day and change left to go.  No early-Christmas-morning stitching for this honey badger!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I have a tendency to stitch up railway logos onto the pockets of shirts for my dad.  (Last year’s offering, for example.)  After scooping up an out-of-print book of Looney Tunes cross-stitch designs online, I thought I’d try something different.

“Daffy Drops the Ball” is done in three pieces, which makes it three times as annoying to stitch all centred-and-straight and whatnot.

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I love the colour of the shirt, and how the black pops on it!  I am less fond of the fact that unlike simply stitching on the pocket (which I take off and then reattach), working on the shirt itself meant I couldn’t access it from the left, which is a real problem for this southpaw.  To stitch Daffy and the bowling ball, I actually worked holding the shirt upside-down, and somehow it’s all reasonably lined up.

Close-up of the design:

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I can’t wait for him to unwrap it!

Merry Christmas, everybody! 😀

craftmas, General Sewing, Other Crafts

On the third day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: a hedgehog to hang on the tree!

I’ve probably mentioned on here before that my mother collects all things hedgehog.  As such, I try to accommodate her on special occasions: there have been hedgehog birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, cakes, t-shirts…

Fast-forward to the Christmas crafting season, when I realized the project I had originally picked out was simply not going to be finished by December 25.  (That’s okay, folks, her birthday is coming up shortly, so I like to think of it as having a head start on that.)  While entering random keywords on Etsy at work one day, I stumbled across trellis & thyme, who, wonder of wonders, boasted a PDF hedgehog ornament pattern in their shop.

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It’s difficult to tell in the photo, but he has little prickles embroidered all around his front side.  The pattern instructions indicated these should be placed randomly, but…I can’t handle random.  So instead, they run in two staggered-but-kinda-concentric circles around his underside.

As always, thanks for looking – and may your holiday crafting be running on-schedule.  🙂

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

On the second day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: a Minion from Despicable Me!

Oooh, this was a fun project!  I love those projects that give me a chance to create something I would normally never make otherwise.  (But which I still want to make, obviously.)  One of my nearest and dearest is a Minions fan despite having several decades on their target age group.  I used to roll my eyes at him, but have gradually come around and warmed up to them – when I found the Minions patterns by Let’s Make Crafts on Etsy, I knew I had found his Christmas present!

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I’m so happy with how this turned out!  It was a “larger” small project (if that makes sense), but uses only whole stitches, a handful of colours, and just the tiniest bit of backstitch to really bring out the details.

***A NOTE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKSTITCH***

I know a lot of stitchers moan about backstitch.  “It’s boring.”  “It takes too long.”  And while I know how it feels to put in that very…last…stitch, only to realize you now have to go over the entire piece again to add the backstitch, it really does make all the difference.  Stuart, up there, only has a bit of backstitch, for his hair and for the strings on his guitar.  No big deal, right?

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Without it, he looks like Telly freakin’ Savalas.  Who loves ya, baby, indeed!  Seriously, kids, take the time to add your backstitching.

***THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT***

Now that he’s got…hair…and guitar strings, I’m really excited for the big unveiling at Christmas.  Good thing I found Minions wrapping paper at Dollarama.  Only one more week to go…

Thanks for looking!   🙂

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

On the first day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me: a hoop that says, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”

Can you believe it’s that time of year again?  And that I was insane enough to attempt Craftmas yet again?  Okay, it’s not as bad as all that: I did do a bit of planning this year and started my stitching early, but there are still a few projects that are freaking me the heck out right about now.  Why aren’t they finished yet?  Stay tuned, kids; this is going to be a wild, crafty ride.

One thing I have going for me, however, is that I had the presence of mind to start early on the one project that has to cross international borders via a wholly reliable and never delayed or overpriced postal system.  What does one make for the writer who’s a Stephen King fan and who collects typewriter paraphernalia?  I did what I do best, and perused Etsy for inspiration.  Good thing, too, because that’s where I found these tiny typewriter charts.

I wasn’t crazy about the phrases on the typewriters’ paper, though.  They were cute, sure, but not quite what I was looking for.  Some divine inspiration struck, and I was reminded of The Shining, where no TV and no beer make Homer…something, something, uh, where Jack Nicholson goes stir-crazy.

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It looks big there, I know, but that’s actually a four-inch hoop it’s framed in.

Also, I didn’t much care for the fact that the carriage return and paper-guide-bar-thingie (note the pains I take to use the technical terms) were originally supposed to be stitched in plain cotton embroidery floss, and substituted in DMC E415.

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Et voila, a hip, pop-culture-y hoop, with minimal stress or fuss.  It was put in the mail Sunday; I hope she likes it!

Thanks for looking! 🙂

General Sewing

And you thought Rudolph Valentino was the Sheik….

wittychild

Qu’est-ce que c’est bleu-blanc-rouge, et très chaud? – Un foulard Habs super!

Shortly before Christmas, I was browsing Craftster and I saw this cool project.  (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve started a conversation with, “Ohmygosh, someone on Craftster just…”, I could retire.)  These Harry Potter scarves were the perfect, inexpensive, last-minute Christmas gift, and my reaction was both swift and dual: “Those are so great!…But I don’t know any Harry Potter fans.”  I think my cousin had read the books, but I have no idea if she’s still into that stuff, and certainly wouldn’t know what her favourite Quiddich team was.  Is one house inherently better than the others?  (My senior accountant later told me no, that one would simply identify with a house whose values/characteristics/etc. reflected one’s own, but I was done my Christmas shopping by then anyway, so it became a moot point.)

I couldn’t get those scarves out of my head, though.  “I bet you could do that with CFL team colours,” I mused, “or any team, really.”  And so it was decided that my dad, who normally eschews those crazy pieces of winter gear designed to keep one warm, needed a scarf in Montreal Canadiens colours.  (Er, couleurs.)

Habs Scarf 1

It’s long enough to be wrapped around and cover nose/mouth/neck/entire head (probably)….

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….but has groovy fringed ends for a jaunty look.

Habs Socks

(As you can see, he took his modelling job very seriously, with his Béliveau jersey and matching socks.)

A rotary cutter made cutting the oodles and oodles of fleece rectangles a fairly quick job.  Sewing them all together and tying off about a million thread ends (whyyyy does he like a team with more than two colours?) was…not as quick, but the end result is absolutely worth it.  This thing is warm, and darned eye-catching, if I say so myself.

His jersey might have a 4 on it, but when I first set about making this, I had nicknamed it the Subban scarf: the original instructions, before taking seam allowances into account, used 76 inches of fleece.  🙂