machine embroidered xmas decorations and a yarny wreath

first, free standing lace icicles.

i made about six million of these, it felt like! there was another design that i was doing as well, so 4 in total, but after the first few batches, i stuck with the two on the left because they were my favourite. i put one in each of the xmas cards i sent.


all of the icicles i stitched were white, but i decided to toss these ones into the dyepot while i was dying bottle brush trees, and they turned out great! i wanted to make pink icicles for a friend, but i didn't really want to have to switch out threads and wind a pink bobbin and all.

for the same friend, i wanted to make a cupcake ornament. emblibrary.com had a set of xmas themed cupcakes, and i knew one of them would be perfect. i switched out the colours a bit, and stitched it onto bright pink felt.


i also made a few baby's first christmas ornaments for friends that had babies in 2009, though i totally didn't have the energy for the ridiculous sets i made last year!


if you're looking closely, you'll see that i removed the word "baby" from this year's set. i stitched out a few test ones, and really disliked how the words looked, the font was too small, and the letters weren't very clear. i decided to use a larger font, which meant that i didn't have as much space. as a bonus though, that means the ornaments can be used for things like a first christmas together, or first christmas in a new house, all depending on what picture you put in them!


i also changed the stitch density a bit, especially for the satin stitched ornament "hanger", and i think it looks a lot better. and i slipped the ends of the ribbon hanger in when i sewed the back on, so i didn't have to worry about the grommet and ribbon like on last years,

stitching them out, i started thinking about in the hoop projects, and i think i'm going to try redesigning them again next year.


and then more freestanding lace!
i made this set of snowflakes for someone who's helped me out a lot in the past few years. we have totally different styles, but i knew she'd like these.




while my machine was stitching away independently, i made this wreath for the awesome batgirl (aka lori).

i knew she really liked wreaths with yarn, because i've seen her admire them in the past!

i wanted to make a wreath that was less "christmas" and more just "winter". i had a bunch of yarn scraps in shades of blue, so i pulled out all of the ones that were kind of icy in tone. i started wrapping yarn around styrofoam balls, so that they'd look like yarn balls but use less yarn to make (and be lighter), and then wrapped some natural coloured white/cream wool around a styrofoam wreath.

it needed some flash, so i found a silver pear pick at micheals that was kind of a pewter tone, less cheap silver. i wanted to pull that into the wreath itself a bit more, so i added some silver thread that has sequins wound into it every foot or so, and then i spraypainted the entire thing with a "metallic finish" spray, just adding a bit of a glint from certain angles.

this is it with a flash, still in my spraypainting box.


and the more accurate colours, hanging on my door.



i like it. i wound a bunch of styrofoam balls, and bought a pick, all in shades of blue and teal for a wreath for myself, but unsurprisingly, i didn't get it finished. maybe next year, now that it's half done!

Beth Ditto porn TOTALLY NOT SAFE FOR WORK embroidery!!

i'm warning ya, okay?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

alrighty then! if there's a way to do an lj-cut type thing on blogger, i don't know how to do it, so excessive periods will have to suffice.

i'm still planning on posting an xmas tutorial and the handmade gifts i made (since i finally finished posting the decor!), but i'm way way too impatient to wait, i want to post these embroidery pieces NOW!


i started thinking about embroidering these specific images back in september or october, when i was brainstorming for the NSFW swap on Phat Quarter. i decided the needlework vulva fit my partner better, but i was still determined to do this set at some point.

but really, i started thinking about embroidering them about a year ago, when i started seeing some NSFW porn embroideries that while well done, weren't exactly all that realistic. in particular, ruby42's embroidery "Lick Me" was so awesome (especially considering she'd just started embroidery within the past WEEK! impressive!), but it was more "what straight men imagine lesbian sex to be" than actually being queer sex, ya know? i admired the stitching, then cringed slightly at the fingernail length.... ;) so i started thinking about hauling out my old stash on On Our Backs and searching for some imagery that was a tad more realistic.

these images are from a photo shoot with Beth Ditto, before everybody figured out who she was and the celebrity/fashion blogs started obsessing over her and her friendship with kate moss, back when the only communities that really knew much about the gossip were the queers and the ex riot grrls. she was a bit smaller then, but even so, she was definitely fatter than mainstream straight porn will show. (and way fucking hotter than mainstrean porn stars too) It was the June/July 2003 issue of On Our Backs, and the photography was done by Rebecca McBride.

i sized them down a bit from the actual photo spread, so that they'd fit into my vintage frames.

together


bj

the cock, tattoo, and her bra are all satin stitch, but i went back to this one and filled in her hair with backstitch. whew!

straps

i love her shoes, and her painted toe nails, but most of all, i love how the straps look framing her partner's but in tighty whiteies.


i'm so glad they're finished! i love them. they're going right up on my bedroom wall.

christmas part 3 - the little trees!

i actually intended on 3 extra trees, two in the living room/studio, and one in the kitchen. i ran out of time for the kitchen one, but i loved the two i did manage to put up!

the first one is actually a vintage tinsel tree, the came in the coolest box, and the base almost looks handmade.



this tree sits above my sewing machine table, right on top of the drawers that hold all of my embroidery threads.


it had all my favourite smaller ornaments on it, including a set of 12, and several acorn shaped ones.


the ornament at the very top is one of my favourites - it has a stylized poppy painted on it.


so pretty!


the second little tree that i put up was a white tree, again from daiso, though it was $8 because it's bigger than the pink tree in the bathroom.


i used all of my bright pink vintage ornaments on it, and they looked fabulous. i hung crocheted pink snowflakes on the lamp shade,


and strung beaded garland around my pictures.

i also dyed some bottle brush trees with dylon hot pink, and they turned out FABULOUS! the colour is super rich and vibrant.


i was really tempted to leave the pink display up for longer, but decided that they should all come down at the same time so that everything could be stored together. i'm at least 2/3s of the way done undoing everything. i know it's the 22nd of january! i'm trying to organize it all, okay?!

anyway, that's the last of the christmas decorating. i didn't do handmade cards this year, which was so sad, but i did do some handmade gifts, so i'll be posting those soon.

and then we can move onto another holiday that i love - valentine's day!

christmas part 2 - the big tree!

i've been collecting vintage glass ornaments for years and years now. even the years that i didn't put my tree up, i still collected the ornaments. i went through them about 5 years ago, weeding out the generic plain ones, because i was approaching multiple rubbermaid bins full of them!

this year was the first year that i've been able to do a tree with JUST the vintage ornaments, and i love how it worked out! (the garland wasn't vintage, but it WAS thrifted - the boxes it came in shows that it was from costco. i paid $1.50 each for two boxes)



this is actually a new tree, because mine was somehow lost after i moved back in with my parents. dad borrowed it for work, and nobody knows where it went after that!

i decided to get one with the lights on it, just cause it would be less work, but i didn't realize that they weren't LED until later. i should've known, it was too cheap for LED, but it was still very pretty all lit up.






i have that tree one in multiple colours. they must have been really common, because i didn't buy them all together.


i love the blue star one, i have 4 of those.


the one on the bottom left is definitely the biggest on the tree!


i love the pear shaped one on the top left.




this tree topper is actually plastic. i was so sure that i used to have several glass toppers, but maybe i gave them away when i pared down the collection.


the long blue one was a splurge at a vintage store in november. i had a crappy day, and saw it in the window. i have plenty of long ones, but this is the first i've seen shaped like this, with ridges.


the pear shaped one again, though slightly washed out.

i managed to score a white tree on boxing day this year, so i'm thinking that next year the vintage ornaments will all go on a white tree with white led lights. won't they pop wonderfully?

christmas, part 1 - the bathroom!

i loooove christmas. i hate the crowds, the shopping malls, the stress, the rampant christianity, etc, but i love the glitter and glam, the memories and traditions, and spending time with loved ones. and turkey and stuffing, of course!

i haven't been able to decorate much the last few years because i didn't have the space, so i decorated A LOT this year.

since i went just a teensy bit overboard with xmas decorating, i'm going to split the pics up into a few posts.

the first place i decorated was my bedroom, and i posted pics of that tree back in december.

next up was my bathroom, all in shades of purple

i found some ribbon at the $ store and used it as garlands over my jewelery storage.


i used tinsel garland on the mirror, the only place where it wouldn't touch the painted walls - i learned the hard way years ago that garlands sometimes bleed when exposed to the steamy heat of a bathroom!


i used the same ribbon again over the toilet, with a glittery lavender bow in the centre.


the frame is a vintage one that i painted with krylon (the purple frames were what inspired the bathroom colour scheme in the first place), and the mirrored purple candleholders are from the $store.


across from the toilet wall, i hung a lavender glittered snowflake, and a small lavender crocheted snowflake, on the medicine cabinet. i dyed bottlebrush trees to sit beside a small purple chest that holds q-tips.


close up of the trees


and below the medicine cabinet, there was the tree


the pink tree came from daiso, it was $5.50 (i <3 daiso!) i searched for a purple tree for a while before finding this pink one. i did find a purple tinsel tree later for $15.00, but it was too bright anyway....



i used some of the same ribbon as garland again, and added a few glittery purple balls that my ex left behind, a few regular sized purple glass balls, and then a package of matte and shiny little lavender balls that i bought at zellers (kinda like a cross between target and kmart). they're "alfred sung", ohh la la!


and of course, a tree topper. a fabulous glittery be-feathered bird clip.


i added a bit of glittery goodness to the closet as well -


the glittery picks came from micheals, and matched perfectly!

and the finishing touch was the doily wreath i made. i dyed the doilies using the same dye as the bottle brush trees, and then molded them into a wreath shape.


i took pictures as i went along, so i'll post them soon!


and that was the bathroom!

halloween, homos and authority. and a red hat.

i was going to post a bunch of xmas pictures, even a few tutorials, when it occurred to me that i still have halloween stuff that hasn't been posted!

obviously, i should catch up on them first. hence, some of the stitching i was doing in october and november. (i posted the needlework vulva a while ago)

these two halloween pieces were just for fun, and were done right after a bunch of pieces that were my own designs. sometimes it's just nice to chill out and follow instructions, you know?

plus, i LOVE the patterns! they're designed by Prairie Schooler (book no 156) and have a vintage halloween vibe going on. i'd love to stitch up the moon and the cat too.

the skeleton


and the owl


they were both stitched with glow in the dark thread, which is annoying to work with, but oh so fun anyways. the skeleton bones are all glowing, and the owl's eyes.


once i'd stitched them up, i moved on to this for a friend's housewarming.


in typical craftydame fashion, i didn't count out from the centre (i hate doing that!) and my piece ended up being an odd shape that wasn't very frame-able.

to solve that, i sewed a piece of kona cotton onto both sides of the aida cloth. then i slipped it into an ikea frame that i'd painted previously, and ta-da!


the homo sweet homo idea has been around for ages, and i don't think it's possible to say who really started it. i'm not as fond of the more traditional sampler style cross stitch (with flowers and borders and bunnies, etc), so i chose to do a more graphic design. i used the same lettering as i did for the queer piece, ages ago now.

after i did the purple one for tara, i played with it a bit more, trying varying aidas. see how tiny the bottom one is? i didn't actually cross most of the stitches!



and somewhere in between all these pieces, i stitched up a radical cross stitch design to hang in my kitchen. (cause the colours match) their patterns are fabulous, and are available from their etsy store (along with issues of hoopla, which i also recommend highly!)


after saying that i'm not into the traditional cross stitch style (even with ironic words in it!), this may seem like a bit of a contradiction - however, there are NO bunnies. ;)


if you looked at the listing for the pattern on etsy, you might have noticed that the colours are a bit different. that's for two reasons. one, because i have six million skeins of thread, but never the right ones. i'm trying to use what i have instead of buying more, cause every time i walk into the stitching store to buy one skein, i walk out at least $20 poorer! and two, because i wanted the colours to be a bit brighter, to match the blue and the green towels i have in my kitchen.


i've worked on a few more needlework pieces since the xmas hoopla settled down, but one is a set of two, so i'll wait until they're both done, another needs to have the edges finished, and yet another is soooo sooo close to being done that it's ridiculous, but since it's my "PG" project that i work on in dr's offices and such, it probably won't get the finishing touches for a while yet.


however, one thing i did do, that i haven't done over a year, was pick up my crochet hook again! several friends were talking about crocheting, and i'd bought bulky yarn in a lovely shade of red at micheals on boxing day, so i got inspired.

i actually started out with a pattern, but quickly changed it drastically. i think i frogged and re-crocheted the majority of the hat about 4 times. it was getting ridiculous, truthfully.





i'm still not entirely in love with it. i kinda feel like it makes my head look like a mushroom, but no one else seems to agree. but i do love the colour!

i am a genius! or, an easy and cheap way to prevent shirts from falling off the hangers

i hope everyone had a good holiday season, and i'm definitely looking forward to posting many pictures of my decorations and crafty xmas projects, but i had a brainstorm this evening,and i just have to post it first!

as a fat person, and as a person with a somewhat irrational hatred of crew necks, i'm constantly fighting with hangers to keep my shirts held up.

(i don't understand why clothes come in different sizes, but hangers don't. wouldn't it make sense that fat person = bigger garment = bigger neckline?)

i know that you can buy those pretty velvety hangers or fancy wood ones with indents for the shoulder seam, but dude, they're pricey, especially if you're like me and hang up every single garment that you own. (drawers are magic for me - once i put something in a drawer, i immediately forget i own it, hence hanging everything up)

and you know, i actually LIKE wire hangers. despite stereotypical gay men on make-over shows ranting about how terrible they are, i think they're much more logical than wood hangers. wood hangers take up too much space! my closet is full enough, if i was using wooden hangers for every top i owned, i'd need two more closets! and they're cheap! and easily accessed! and they all look the same! you won't buy a bunch of them, then buy more clothes and try to get more matching hangers, only to find that they've been discontinued.

i've thought of a few options before: clothespins, which then leave an indent on the garment, velcro, which would rub on the garment and might snag it, very gently sliding the hanger with the shirt into the closet, then hoping that the sheer mass of items in the closet will keep it on the hanger.

or there are always those yarn covered hangers, the type sold at craft fairs continent wide. i contemplated making some, but decided it would take way too long to crochet or knot yarn around every hanger in my closet. then i thought about using a wide zigzag stitch and sewing yarn around the hanger, but decided that it might leave fluff on the shirt. since i'm completely lazy and don't bother to turn shirts right side out before hanging them up, that would be a pain in the butt.

so i've pretty much resigned myself to this -

a closet full of severely bent and mangled hangers, just to keep my shirts off the floor.

but no more!

today i was driving along and this popped into my head -

shelf liner! you know, that non-skid stuff that you use in the bottom of a drawer, or on the counter of an RV, or under your sewing machine when you're sewing super fast. (what? that doesn't happen to you?)

so i detoured to the dollar store, and picked up a roll of it for $1.12 with tax.

i came home and started experimenting.


i cut strips of various widths and tested them. 1" is just a bit too narrow, and 1 1/4" is still a bit fiddly, but 1 1/2" was perfect. the width needed will depend on the size of your sewing machine foot, but i honestly wouldn't try to machine sew this without a teflon foot.

i freaking LOVE my teflon foot, it's actually starting to wear out a bit because i use it so much. it's definitely a sewing necessity in my book. you can buy them from sewing machine stores, or you can buy them online. i got mine here, and it was about $10. you can also buy teflon tape for about $1 in hardware stores, it's used in plumbing, and attach it to the bottom of a foot you already have, though that probably won't last as long.

this project would also be SUPER easy to hand sew, and honestly, still pretty quick. you don't need tiny stitches, i used a 5.0 stitch length on the machine (basting length), and larger hand stitches would be fine. you won't even need to pierce the liner, because it has holes built right in - you could even use a cross stitch needle and some embroidery floss!


after you've cut your strips, cut the strip in half lengthwise.

the liner i bought was about 12" wide, so i ended up with 6" strips once they were cut in half. you could cut these in half again, and it would probably work just as well.

wrap the strip around the shorter upper edge on one side of the hanger. pins really aren't needed, because this stuff sticks to itself a bit.


move your needle as far to the side as it will go, and slide the top of the strip under your presser foot. like with any difficult fabric, it works better to start about 1/2" in, then backstitch. it doesn't "eat up" the fabric as much that way.


stitch all the way along the strip. you can see that there's quite a bit of seam allowance here, i found that the liner fed through more evenly when the strip was wide enough to sit over both feed dogs, so i purposely cut it wider than technically needed. you can always trim the seam allowance if that bothers you.


do the same on the other side, and you're done! super speedy!


doesn't that look better than the mangled hanger at the top of the page?


i managed to get 40 hangers out of my single roll, enough for all of my long and short sleeved tees. (that's kind of excessive, huh? i should clean out my closet! and yes, they're almost all black!)

if you cut your strips into 3", you'll obviously get more. i wouldn't get 40 out of another spool, because a few of the hangers were using the too narrow 1" strips, but you still get a lot of value out of the $1.12!


so, what do you think?


(also, i've used smaller pics than usual - don't forget that you can click on them to see them bigger!)