Urban Threads Love - the one where amy can't follow instructions

i'm really bad about blogging machine embroidery projects, mostly because i usually do pretty simple ones. take a towel and embroider a design on it? boring! usually i only bother to blog if it's a design i digitized myself, or if it's part of a larger project. and let's be honest - there are so many projects that i haven't gotten around to blogging, embroidery or not!


so you may not have heard me rave about an embroidery design company that i'm a big fan of, Urban Threads. they just had their 4th anniversary, and i'm pretty proud to say that i've been a big fan for almost that long. they make high quality machine embroidery, hand embroidery and digital stock art designs that cover a huge spectrum, but generally tend to be things that you won't find from most machine embroidery companies. skulls, roller derby, geeky, trendy, steampunk, etc, etc.


a little while ago, UT announced a new contest, using a free design that they're offering on their site. they always have at least one free design, and they have contests all the time, but i especially liked the thought behind this one. people tend to think that their customers are all young people, because they make really funky designs, but their customers actually range in age quite dramatically. they have a huge following among funky grandmas! so this design states "It's not about Age, it's about Attitude", and they've asked people to embroider it, take a picture of themselves holding it, and submit it, along with their age.



i've been thinking about modern quilting a lot lately, and about how awesome my guilds are, so i naturally started thinking about how the design was perfect for modern quilters. i think one thing modern quilters have in common is that they don't always feel welcome in more traditional guilds, and that really boils down to different perspective, or attitudes. i really love how both of my guilds have such a great variety of ages and experience levels!


i decided to take the design and make a totebag out of it. i was originally thinking that it would be a fabulous door prize, but my mom has already claimed the bag - sorry guys!


for one side, i stitched out the design onto grey twill in three shades of grey thread. then i added a slightly wonky log cabin around it, in different grey solids (all kona, fyi).



for the other side, i wanted to make a modern block, so i improv pieced a rectangle.



i pieced both sides until they were 13.5" wide, then joined them together into a long strip about 31" long. i folded that strip in half, sewed up the sides and boxed the corners. the bag ended up being about 13" tall, 9.5" wide and 3" deep.



i decided to add a pocket, because apparently all tote bags need pockets. i had this strip of pieced scraps that i'd trimmed from the outside, so i incorporated it into the pocket as well.



the straps are quite long, because i thought the straps were too short on the last tote that i made. i generally carry totes in addition to my purse, so i prefer it if they hang a bit lower. you can see here the difference in length between the two totes.




i had the bag finished in plenty of time for the contest. i even had my mom take a picture of me with the bag, in plenty of time.



but then i realized that i was supposed to be doing the rocker hand or a thumbs up in picture. so i asked the fabulous Carol to take a picture of me and the bag at the last FVMQG meeting. except that i somehow thought that i was supposed to make a peace sign in the photo.

urgh! and the ridiculous thing is that as she was taking the picture, i was thinking "god, i feel like a tourist. i wish i could just do a thumbs up or something" gah!



now i have this awesome picture that Carol took, but i still didn't have a picture for the contest.



so here's a less exciting picture that i took this afternoon, complete with the dirty railing of my patio. i probably should've washed that......




in other news, the goal for tonight was to get caught up on e-mails, blog comments, etc, but i've just been informed that someone is coming first thing in the morning to tear up my kitchen floor (remember how it flooded back in november? i hate my strata), so i'll be clearing out the kitchen tonight instead.

so that goal has been moved to tomorrow, since i'm assuming i'll be stuck at home supervising anyway. if i owe you a reply, and you haven't gotten one by tomorrow evening, please nag me about it! i'm not ignoring you, i promise, i just get distracted and/or overwhelmed and then it get buried in my inbox.

Craft or Die Pillow

back in may i decided i wanted to make something for no reason at all, just for me. no clothes, curtains, nothing that i NEEDED, just something fun. i saw this awesome tattoo on flickr, and remembered this embroidery piece that i posted back in september, it was one of the pieces i worked on last summer.

i decided it was high time to do something with it, so after much searching (where the hell did i put it?), and a quick rinse to get the water mark from my old iron out of it, i set to work.

i rummaged through my cotton stash and pulled out brightly coloured fabrics that matched or complimented the floss shades, and then did the same with my trim. i adore rickrack, but never seem to find the right reason to use it, so this was a perfect excuse. and pom-pom trim - who can resist pompom trim, really!?



it's just a very basic log cabin, with a much larger than usual centre! i included rick rack in the seams between each strip, and the pom pom trim in the seam sewing the front and back together. i make most of my pillows 12"x12", because i have an affinity for the cheapo 12" pillows from ikea (so much cheaper than the fabric store, and they're not overly filled like some pillow forms are). this ended up being a teensy bit too big, so i just topstitched around the outer edges, adding a little bit of a flare edge and making it smaller at the same time.



the back is the same pink as the outer round on the front, with a vintage zipper so that it can be removed for cleaning. i made the zipper very obvious, because it's totally a contrast zipper, and besides, i <3 vintage zippers, so i like to show them off!


it's a happy pillow, perched on top of my couch between the breast cancer pillow and the democracy pillow.

now for some non-political needlework....

i still have one more political embroidery piece left to post, and truly, it's my masterpiece - the one that started them all, AND the one that took the longest to do.

however, lets have a break from the ranting for a day, shall we?

i did this piece while i was in manitoba, and i haven't quite decided what to do with it yet. i originally thought i'd frame it, but then i discovered that it didn't fit in the frames i painted, so now i'm contemplating a pillow instead. we'll see.

i stitched it on this fabulous white cotton moire that i found at a thrift store. you can't see it very well in the photo, but it is pretty awesome. the problem with it was that it's so thin, even with stabilizer, my stitches really pulled and now it's all wrinkly, unfortunately. i need to learn to relax my stitching a bit.

the design came from Urban Threads. i fell in love with the machine embroidery design right off the bat, but the file is too big to fit in my 4"x4" hoop. so sad! during their big sale a few months ago i decided to buy the hand embroidery version at least.


the banner and words are backstitch, as are the outlines of the birds. i used chain stitch for the detail of the birds, and french knots for their eyes. the spool of thread is chain stitch, the thread itself is stem stitch, and the needles are satin stitch.


the upper bird is dmc 825 and j&p coats 7162 and the needles are dmc 318.


the thread is dmc 600 and the spool is an unknown purple. the banner is another unknown colour, and the text is dmc 946.


the lower bird is dmc 995 and dmc 312.


(excuse the stain on the left side - my iron did that! i forgot that it has started staining whenever you use the steam. anyone know how to fix it?)