Calendars!!

i've discovered a few really awesome calendar things lately. it's getting to be that time of year, as scary as that is! as proof - i bought my 2011 slingshot the other day, and folks are out and about selling PIVOT's annual Hope and Shadows photography calendar, though i haven't picked mine up yet.

if you're familiar with spoonflower (a website that digitally prints custom fabric, very cool!), you're probably familiar with their ongoing themed contests. their current contest is tea towel calendars, like the vintage tea towels that you find stashed away in your grandma's drawer, but in much better colours than that 70s harvest gold!

Cynthia, who is one of the founding members of the new Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild, and whose art i've been a huge fan of for almost 10 years now, has a super cute design in the contest, and i'm crossing my fingers that she wins, and it'll be available for purchase!



super cute, right? i'm so impatient, i want to know which shades of kona the colours match so that i can start piecing a border for it - i'm that determined to buy it!

there were a few others that i really liked. i tried to only vote for ones that i could see myself actually buying - it can be overwhelming, with 10 pages of designs to vote for, and so many of them are so darn cute! but i resisted, and only voted for three over all.

the other two were this awesome beards and whiskers calendar, which i think would make the perfect gift for some folks i know,



and this gorgeous 2011-1938 calendar. the image of a double wedding ring quilt made up of 30s inspired reproduction prints is amazing - brilliant idea, and a very modern looking quilt (yet more proof that the modern quilt movement is a throwback!)



go vote for your favourites! (one of which will hopefully be cynthia's... no pressure!)



i've also fallen in love with Nikki McClure's 2011 calendar. her papercuts are so incredibly gorgeous, it would make me so happy to look at them every day.



all of the months are amazing, but you know i love spider webs, so i'm particularly enthralled with october.





and then i came across this free calendar that you print yourself, with over 30 super cute owl pictures to choose from. i can't pick just 12, it's just not possible. i'll have to make 2 calendars, obviously!

i really like how there's such a variety of art styles. these are a few of my favourites -







go make your own!




so all of this begs the question - how many calendars does one person really need? i think 3 would be okay - one by the computer, one in the kitchen, and one by the sewing machine. right? anything more than that might getting excessive....

Embroidered Halloween Headbands

ohmygoodness, halloween is SOON!

i was originally thinking that i was going to try to post a halloween idea every day, or at least every second day, up until halloween, but that has sadly fallen to the wayside. i'm working on projects, but getting them photographed and posted is a whole other story!

this week in particular is really overwhelming - thursday night is the next meeting of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild, and then this weekend i'm taking a 3 day encaustics class with Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch, which i am hella excited about!

but! i took some pics last night, so i have a few projects to share. the first is a really simple and easy halloween project that doesn't have to be for halloween at all - i just love halloween!

Embroidered Headbands!

it's been no secret that i really love embroidering on non-fabric surfaces (paper, speculums, safety glasses), and this idea has been rolling around in my head for close to a year, waiting patiently for me to find the time to get started on it.

the first thing you'll want to do is find some plain, solid, fairly wide, plastic headbands. these were trickier to find than i'd expected, there are so many fancy headbands out there! however, dollar stores prevailed, and i managed to find a variety of them.


take your headband and trace it out onto a piece of scrap paper. you might need to tape two pieces together, headbands are usually longer than 11".



cut out the strip, and make sure it fits your headband



now play! think up some designs, and sketch them out, using your cutout piece as a pattern. these headbands have a fun outline that felt kind of gothy to me, and seemed to lend itself perfectly to a spiderweb design. after you've drawn your designs and you're happy with them, go back with a marker and draw dots where you want to drill holes. make sure they aren't too close together, and that you have holes at corners and places where the embroidery floss will join. once you've finished your pattern, tape it onto your headband with invisible tape.



now, i cut a styrofoam head in half for this. you don't have to, but it makes it a lot easier, because you have something to put the headband on while drilling it that will keep it from bending oddly or possibly breaking. i had to cut the head shorter, because it was too tall to fit in my drill press! if you're using a hand drill, that won't be an issue at all. the styrofoam head i used had been rolling around in the trunk of my car forever, and was pretty beat up anyway!

put the headband on the head, and get ready to start drilling. i used a 1.5mm drill bit, which i bought on amazon.com.



drill! slow and steady wins the race.



you can see how the pattern was taped on, and the bits of styrofoam that stick to the inside of the headband. they'll blow away, it's all good.




when you remove the pattern, remove it carefully, because depending on how fancy your pattern was, you might need to refer to it when stitching. this is kind of like connect the dots embroidery, but without the numbers!



now start stitching! i LOVE these dental floss threaders for stuff like this (they also work fabulously for mending holes in sweaters, and for stringing beads onto yarn), but if you don't have any, or can't remember where the hell you put the pack of them, you can also use a piece of wire folded over.



rather than knotting your embroidery floss, when you begin and end a piece, use a little bit of the invisible tape to secure the ends. once you've embroidered the entire thing, go back in with a clear glue (i use glossy accents, because it doesn't seem to affect the plastic the same way crazy glue does) and glue the floss to the headband. once the glue is dry, you can go in and remove the tape, and trim the floss right down to the glue.




and here are the finished headbands!

(i've been waiting for a good hair day to take action shots, but i've accepted the fact that i'm not going to have a good hair day until i get around to dying my roots, so you'll just have to settle for pics taken over my awesome pink formica table instead.)

the spiderweb headband, which i stitched in grey floss with a silver metallic thread.




(see how neat and tidy the back looks?)

the bat headband, stitched with embroidery floss and two strands of guttermann metallic machine embroidery thread.









and the star band, with just embroidery floss, no metallic. i don't like how the tortoise shell is slightly see through, and you can see where i carried the floss from star to star. i'd go in and fix that, but i'm never gonna wear it anyway - i don't really like tortoiseshell anyway!






so! what do you think?