It's been a while....

It's been a while since I last posted anything... well I have been busy doing some sewing... but mainly been busy doing my cross-stitch designing.

But here are some of my new stitching things that I've been making recently...when I find the time..!

The main body of this owl is from a vintage dress, which looks like it's from the 60's or 70's. It inspired me to make a very colourful owl in yellow, orange, purple and green.

























I also bought this old tea towel whilst on holiday in Wales a while back - it's made of lovely linen fabric and reminds me of some of the places I visited on my holiday. I love the style of the illustration and the colour palette is really nice :-)

 

Well eventually I got around to my plan of making it into a cushion cover! I made an 'envelope' style cover - you just fold it over to the size you want it to be and stitch up the sides - really easy :-)

Here's the 2 cushions together:

 

















I also started a patchwork bed cover, which just grew and grew.. now its large enough to cover a double bed :-) Again the colours were inspired by some vintage fabric that I bought which was had a turquoise background and yellow roses, (a bit 50's style, I thought..) The bright turquoise inspired me to make it in really strong colours, e.g. blues, purples and pinks etc...

 
Now I've just got to quilt it on the sewing machine and add a border, then it's finished, hooray!

It's the first 'proper' quilt I've made, so it's all a bit 'trial and error' - but hopefully I'll like it when its finished!

Pacman cuteness!

 I found this chart on the internet for a Pacman design, helpfully already charted up! So I decided to stitch it up as a cross stitch design and make it into a little purse or maybe a make-up bag..

 It's stitched using 2 strands of stranded cotton on 14 count aida fabric.

This is how it looked stitched up and made into a little purse, cute! :-)

After I made this purse I made up my own design using the same motifs but adding in the 'game over' lettering and some scores. Below is the design stitched up. It's a tapestry made using wool, (Anchor wool I think), and stitched on 10 count tapestry canvas.

It looks wonky as that's what happens when you stitch it up. I'll block it to make it go back to it's proper rectangular shape. Then I'm going to make it into a pencil case, as it's larger than the previous purse.

I might get around to making a cushion design too eventually....something like this!

'Folksy' cross-stitch cushion

 My 'folk art' inspired cushion...

After having designed and embroidered this cross-stitch design a while ago I've finally gotten around to doing something with it...! I bought a sweet red fabric with white hearts on it, so I decided to sew my embroidery onto this to make a cushion out of it, so that the red fabric borders the cross-stitch design and frames it. I added the red bobbly border to finish it off and add a bit more 'kitsch' to it!

The finished cushion, alongside other cushions I've made.

Close up of embroidery tacked onto red and white hearts fabric.

The embroidery before I made it into a cushion

Kiss kiss..!

I've been trying out a new style of drawing and painting that's different to my usual style. I usually paint using gouache, or I use a digital pen and Photoshop on the computer. I usually work in a very painterly style with lots of shading. I wanted to try and break away from this and try to work in in a much simpler, direct style.

I decided to try and draw a sort of 'fashion' style illustration, so I used a photograph of a models face from a magazine as my source material. I drew in the main features, leaving out any shading.

This is what I came up with... Not sure if she looks slightly cross-eyed! 

My final artwork.

 I began by drawing a pencil sketch, then I re-worked this in Photoshop, here's my original pencil sketch, so that you can see how I've changed it. (I made the eyes bigger, rotated the face a bit and changed some of the dimensions of the face slightly).

Birthday owl cushion

Red and green owl cushion

My latest owl cushion - made for my niece Chloe's birthday. The red and green colour scheme of the cushion is intended to tone in with the colour scheme in Chloe's room of pale lime green, red and white.

 The eyes are made from old buttons bought from a market stall in Brighton.

 I've done blanket-stitch around the eyes, the same as the previous cushions, to make the eyes stand out.

The 'wings' are made from red corduroy, which adds a nice velvety texture to the cushion.

Close up of owl's face

This photo shows the detail of the face. (Hand stitching and machine stitching for detail).

Owl on the bed

These are some little paintings I did for Chloe's room a few years ago, of a pink rose and a white arum lily.
They're acrylics painted onto canvas and are very small. The new owl cushion compliments the pink and red paintings and the rest of the room... :-)

Paintings hung next to each other.

More owls....

I've been busy making more owl cushions and taken some better photos of the ones I've already made!

Close up of eyes showing blanket stitched edging and buttons for eyes

Close up of large and small cushions

Medium and large cushions

I started a different colour scheme of red, white and blue. So far I've only made 2 tiny ones in this colourway....

The cushions are made using a mixture of machine stitching and hand stitching techniques.

What a hoot!

Owls wrapping paper

Owl tea cosy and other animal shaped egg cosies

Owl cushion I saw in a magazine

My owl cushions, medium and large size

I've been seeing lots of little owl designs - owls seem to be everywhere at the moment, from wrapping paper, to cushions, to tea cosies! So I thought I'd have a go at designing my own owl shaped cushions, using leftover fabrics, felt and old buttons.

My owl - small size