Halloween Coasters!

Today I spent the morning embroidering these fun little coasters for my etsy shop.



They're orange thread on a dark gray felt and were a lot of fun to make, though now I wish I had a thimble. My needle-pushing finger is sore! Still, I enjoy the tactileness of hand embroidery and really enjoyed whipping these up. Since it's a little late to sell many more of these this October, I'll probably pack away the patterns and start working on some winter themes. Maybe snowflakes, an advent series, and some Christmas ones? Hm.

I nearly finished another robe but it's waiting until I get the last few threads clipped for it's photo shoot. Two other robes are just a few little details away from being ready as well so expect my inventory to increase this weekend!

Until then, more pictures of my halloween coasters -





And yes, I plan on taking better pictures tomorrow, after a trip to the store for AA batteries. This camera is such a glutton!

And, just in case: Click here to buy!

Vacation and sewing fun

I'll be vacationing far away from the internet (and cable, and, just possibly, cell phone towers) for the next week so this blog will go into silence mode for that time.

To tide you over, here's some pics of what's I've been up to!


Some bags I've made. The far left one, the yellow and red one, is a padded laptop bag. The rest are green grocery bags. Lots of fun and very easy to make!


The two most green grocery bags ready for transport. The green flower one folds up into it's handy pouch while the solid green one rolls and gets tied up. I prefer the pouch personally but I wanted to experiment a bit.



More coasters, this time in fuzzy mode! The lighting's bad right now so I'll have to make it up with better pictures later. The blue one is showing that the blue felt isn't inheritantly tacky, it's just tacky when I try to pair it with red and white, like the previous coasters. I wound up googling wedding colors and got a truck load of ideas of what colors actually look good with others. This blue with lime green coaster was a result. And the green lime thread is serious stash - it's on a wooden spool and cost 30c when new. I assume that was whenever this color was last in vogue. But it's still strong and it's not like any important seams are depending on it! The brown coasters were me FINALLY trying to sew on a beginner's level (I never was any good at that, even as a beginner. Which is why I have so many ... interesting ... things ... as relics of that time) and just doing straight lines across the felt. I really like how they look. They're best when the straight lines are done with a slight zig-zag stitch for definition but even at their most basic they're nice. Good to know!

And, in other news, I finally have a sewing class ready to start up! It'll begin a week after we get back. So much to do!

More felt coaster fun

I had fun today.  :)

The brown coasters with blue curves are based on these coasters. I drew the lines on tissue paper, using various round things in my kitchen as the templates and then stitched the design on a sandwich of tissue paper-felt-felt. Thread width set to 2, length at 1. The double layer of felt gives it a great quilted, puffy effect and the tissue paper kept the felt from getting stretched out - a problem I had with prior coasters.

Anyway, fun evening. Also started to teach DH how to sew ... but that's a story for another time. :)

Playing with my machine

After years of avoiding any sort of embroidery on my machine, I decided to give it a go. I've been making up samples of projects for the sewing class I'm teaching (staring in just a few weeks!) and our first project will be simple little drink coasters made from felt. Theirs won't look like these - at least I don't expect them to.  We'll start with straight lines.  I made up a handful of samples with just the straight lines and I like them - but these are the ones that caught my camera's attention.  :)

These were made with two pieces of felt, one red, one brown.  I put brown thread in the bobbin, red in the needle, and then followed the pictures I'd sketched in the felt.  More or less - the marking pen didn't show up very well so a good amount of it was freehand.  The tapering lines you can see in each coaster were formed by sewing along as I narrowed the stitch width.  Somehow the combination of guiding the fabric with the left hand while turning a dial with my right made me feel so very coordinated.  It's a rare feeling for me so I enjoyed it!

I did the border last, though maybe I should have done it first.  Will try next time.  Anyway, the cheap felt tended to stretch and skew due to all the dense stitches so I finished off by sewing the borders then trimming off a good 1/4" from the edges.  Anyway, this was a fun little project that whipped up quickly.  Hm.  Wonder if I could make coasters for my aunt's birthday present?  Wonder what she'd like ...