Into the Winter Woods

 It's a new year and I've got a new embroidery pattern for you! This one is called "Into the Winter Woods" and I hope you enjoy stitching it as much as I enjoyed creating it. Click here to purchase in my etsy shop where you will find more photos and details.

It seems a fitting time to release this one, what with the frigid temps and heavy snowfall across the country right now. We just shoveled ourselves out from a blizzard a few days ago after coming home from visiting my family in the midwest for the holidays and are now bracing ourselves to see if our mercury is going to drop that drastically as well. Sometimes winter can be downright rough, but it also brings with it lots of great sports, vistas, and opportunities for indulging in cozy cabin getaways and festive comfort food....definitely some of my favorite things that I could not easily get away with in warmer months.



One of the things I'm trying to focus on in my patterns now is the ability for any novice stitcher to do them up very simply with basic outline stitches or for more intermediate to advanced stitchers to have a modern pattern they can really sink their teeth into. It can be hard to do that with a lot of the modern patterns out there, as adorable as they may be of course!, and so I had a lot of fun especially devising these show shoes for you as well as the little poof on the hat. It can be done with a simple french knot but if you are up to it and want to recreate the look I have here, you can try your hand at this "turkey stitch." Check back soon as I will be supplying a live link to my own tutorial for this stitch complete with lots of detailed photos for you.

In the meantime, happy stitching and happy 2014!

The Best Part of Waking Up

(A side rant: I seriously wish there was another name for such things that keep other things warm...I hate cutesy sounding words like "coffee cozy," "hubby," "veggies," or "tutes." Foreals, we are big kids now ladies and can pronounce whole words.)

I made this french press cozy for my sister after we got them addicted to french press coffee at our place a while back. It makes such a rich cup, there's really no going back after you've become an addict of the stuff. She moved into a new place recently as well so it seemed like a good time to go with new colors—enter the grey and seafoam duo.

We went with Lizzie House's Pearl Bracelets and some tiny herringbone's from Riley Blake which paired up nice together I think. I designed the pattern for this myself and am thinking about getting it up on the blog as a tutorial with lots of good photos, if folks are interested. Tutorials can be quite labor intensive and require several good hours of daylight though so go easy on me.

It made sense to make it double-sided and quilted with cotton batting for insulation—practical and pretty, my favorite combination! Once that was settled, I promptly dug around in my button box and found some matching buttons, some vintage and some new.  The elastic ties can secure to either side in a non-obtrusive way and were a good way to fudge the fit a bit without having the real thing to take measurements off of.

 I love love love the way the quilted circiles came out, especially on they grey side.

The quilting was done by hand. I briefly thought about doing free-motion machine quilting but the unconnected circles would have required a lot of stopping and starting so doing it by hand was actually a lot quicker in this case. 

And last but not least (especially since it was actually the first step before the pieces could be assembled), in order to add a little something extra and personalize it, I did some embroidery to contrast on each side, riffing off the print and a reference to the Folger's theme song...as sung by the group Rockapella in the 90's (of Carmen San Diego fame) of course! Um, you're welcome for that.

A Little WIP

pattern from isewcute on etsy

A peek at some embroidery I've been working on here and there while taking the train into Cambridge for class. Like most commuters, I'm in the habit of keeping to myself with my Ipod or book but since I've been working on this, I've had all kinds of people just start talking to me about their grandmothers—a little strange at times, but there was one older gentleman with pink hair who was especially kind and I think it's those kinds of encounters that make me love being in a city the most. Who knew the power of handwork extended to getting steely city subway commuters to open up about such personal subjects?!

As for the embroidery itself, I've really enjoyed all the different stitches and the variation in floss thickness to show some depth, but I'm still not sure how I feel about the color scheme. For my first embroidered face ever though, I'm just going to be satisfied with it on the whole though since I now realize just how hard it is to get an expression to be rendered in a pleasing way with floss!

Stitch by stitch

I'm using a full thickness of floss to outline the leaves in a split stitch and the berries in a backstitch. The tree limbs are done in a blended stem stitch using two full thicknesses of two different colored brown flosses.

Just popping in to post a sneak peek at one of the completed sections of the chuppah over this busy little three day weekend (my hope for you is that you are out reading this on a mobile device while communing with the last days of summer sunshine!). I'd say I'm about halfway done embroidering the whole thing and can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel which is kind of totally rad since we started planning the project about this time last year. It is a joy to work on though, such a good project to completely zone out on, getting hooked into the rhythm of the stitches and wishing that each stitch will count for a day happiness for the bride and groom that will be married under it (I do believe the number of stitches is stretching into infinity at this point...).

One down, one up.
One down, one up.
Repeat until the movie is over.
Put in another movie and move on to the next branch.

I'll spare you anymore posts of very similar looking branches, leaves, and berries as I finish though so the next time you see this chuppah will be when it's completely finished and in use a couple weeks from now!

A Bit of Stitching and a Bit of Home

state flower pattern by Aunt Martha

It's usually this time of year when I am missing home the most. I used to love lying in the backyard hammock as our dog Georgie, an airdale, napped beneath it and I would read there once school got out and watch as my mom planted and weeded her vegetable garden. Well, sometimes my lethargic teenage self was roped into helping out with all sorts of farm chores but I was bound and determined to spend as much of my free time as possible reading in that hammock or in my favorite tree in the lane behind the pasture and sometimes I daydream about how nice it would be to be able to slip back into one of those summer days, if only for a moment.

I thought a lot about those summer days as I stitched up this piece with it's apple blossoms and state banner. It was a project I started long ago and far away and one of those things that's been lingering on my sewing to-do list for quite a while. I know, it's shameful to be finally finishing something in June that was originally going to be a christmas gift but hey, when your job is to stitch for a living, the personal projects sometimes just have to be put on the back burner. The finished pillow will now go live with my parent's in their knotty pine living room—fitting right? It doesn't quite go with my usual style but I do like it and think I might do something like it if I had a cabin in the woods or on the great lakes (definitely on my list of next to impossible dreams).

Can I just add how much I love the stem stitch for outlining organic things like leaves and petals and flames? I find I need to put a little more concentration into it than I do with the backstitch (used on the banner) or the split stitch (used for the veins and twigs), but it is totally worth it for things like that. I also brought the blossoms to the forefront by using all six strands and only three on the elements that I wanted to push into the background. This is a great way to give depth to any embroidered piece as well as more of a dynamic texture.

Ahem....what I do not recommend though is hoping for seams that match up perfectly when sewing with plaid. I ended up using my seam ripper a few more times than I would care to admit and had to settle for getting the lines of the plaid to match up as closely as possible, but not quite spot on in some places. If anyone knows how that is accomplished, please let me know because the darn stuff kind of makesmewanttopullmyhairoutandthrowabonifidetempertamtrum. Ok, ok I did not loose it over plaid (and I suppose I must admit to battling my inner perfectionist) but I was briefly tempted and am thinking that taking a bit of time to read in a hammock afterwards might not be such a bad idea!

Needle Nerds

While I was out running errands today I decided to stop at Goodwill and see if I could find any vintage sheets for quilting. Well, I didn't find any of those but I did come across this gorgeous hand embroidered red silk kimono/bath robe for just $4.99! I was wandering around feeling a bit sad about not getting any instant gratification in the vintage sheet department when I noticed something shiny and red out of the corner of my eye. As soon as I was able to verify that the stitching was indeed done by hand, I picked that sucker off the rack and commenced with the coveting all the way up to the register.

See that bit of white floss on the left crossing over the green of the bird's feathers?
That's what it looks like when you "carry" a thread from one place to another on the back of your canvas
without taking individual stitches in between the areas or stopping and starting with a new thread.

 

If you're out thrifting, at an estate sale, or just admiring a piece you don't know a lot about, you can verify that it's been done by hand if you turn to the reverse and check for carried threads or knots. Old school stitchers will most likely have not used knots to finish off a piece but I must admit that I do (GASP! more on that later) because, well, I'm paranoid like that.

In other somewhat unrelated news, I'm honored to have made it into Rachel's Top 9 picks for the Blogger's Pillow Party—how cool is that?!

P.S. For all you other needle nerds out there, did you read about the hand embroidered veil and hand-worked lace on the royal wedding dress that folks from the Royal School of Needlework accomplished? I love that this type of technical information was made available and that her dress was classy right down to the methods and materials used for it! Read more here if you tend to geek out about this kind of stuff like I do (it's ok, we can be needle nerds together).

Introducing Vintage Shop Embroidery Pattern

Two in a row, as promised! I think this may be my favorite one yet and had a lot of fun stitching up the sample in a variety of stitches and colors. Previously, I hadn't thought how much more detail would be found in manufactured vintage items and it was a bit more of a challenge to translate them into embroidery but I think it really makes for a unique and engrossing pattern to work on in the end.

Included are some of my favorite items from my years of working in an antique/vintage shop after school as a kid: a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, a retro cat figurine, coin purse, mid-century modern upholstered chair, a string of pearls with gold clasp, a 45 record, atomic lamp, a polka dot maillot bathing suit, vintage fan, a tv with rabbit ears, and Brownie camera with flash unit.

stem stitch was used for the upholstery on the chair while the back stitch came in handy for the fan and maillot

I got a bit nerdy trying to make sure each item was as authentic as I could manage and checked my drawings against several photos of vintage items where I couldn't remember details off the top of my head so rest assured you vintage-loving folks, they are as accurate as can be. Plus the PDF includes a color guide, as usual, in case you want to use the same palette as I did in this sample. You can find it for sale in my shop here.

I'm going to take a brief hiatus from pattern making but expect to see the next one sometime in May...I'm still deciding between "World Traveler" (I've already sketched up a mean old leather suitcase with stickers and airmail envelopes) or "Off to College" (think typewriter, pennant, bicycle, and satchel). Which one would you prefer to see first?

P.S. I just got word that my Farmer's Market embroidery pattern was featured on MoonbeamWishes blog today—what a pretty site, I'm totally flattered!

In The Works...

new embroidery patterns in progress

Do you ever have one of those days where you just don't have much to say? Times when you are busy investing in your family or work and trying to bring so many good things into fruition for them? Well I had one of those days on Monday and then it turned into a whole week of feeling rather quiet and fastidious in my work...and not blogging about it. I don't want to sound cheesy or lofty (forgive me because i think i might!) but I like to think of this, my humble little corner of the internet, as a haven for the things which I believe quell the din and stress of life, things which can bring people of different backgrounds together and make the world, well, a more beautiful place to be. So, after three years of blogging, I'd much rather have a quiet few days here than just be making a lot of noise about nothing as there's quite enough of that coming at each of us, every day, from all directions. I just wanted to make sure you knew I had not forgotten you and am building up my reserves of focus and energy for all the good things that I'm working on and will share soon!

Now that my first pillows are in the shop, I've picked my sketchbook back up to create more embroidery patterns. I couldn't decide between the top two choices you'd helped me pick, so I am working on patterns for both the "Vintage Shop" (I'm probably too excited about the string of pearls I am going to stitch up in pearlescent ivory with a clasp of metallic gold floss...ooo ahh shiny!) and "Farmhouse Kitchen" (think dreamy french provincial kitchen wares).

O and just one more thing before i skedaddle on out of here for the weekend: I've created a flickr group for my shop, The Story of Kat, where I will share new items or work in progress and where you can share photos of your embroidery projects featuring The Story of Kat patterns, projects made from blog tutorials, or how you're using The Story of Kat handmade items in your home. I hope you'll stop on by to join as it will be a great place to show off your creations (plus it is a little lonely right now with no members and i LOVE seeing where all of my own creations have found homes)!

"Farmer's Market" Embroidery Pattern is Here at Last!

i'm pleased to introduce you to my first embroidery pattern, "Farmer's Market," now available in my new etsy shop The Story of Kat. it includes a green bell pepper, scallions, wooden apple crate, carrot, head of garlic, pint of strawberries, eggplant, potato, lemon, milk bottle, heirloom tomato, and market basket...all inspired by my favorite market finds and my days of helping my mother with the family booth at our local farmer's market! i can just imagine how smashing they'd look on a reusable canvas market tote, dish towel, or napkins.

i put together a 4 page PDF that includes the pattern backwards and forwards (to accommodate different transferring methods), a color chart and guide, as well as some tips on my three favorite ways to transfer the designs onto fabric. i also have plans to post more stitch tutorials here on the blog so that each PDF will include active hyperlinks to each type of stitch used in the pattern.

i've been drawing and brushing up on my graphic design skillz for what feels like forever and am so proudrelievedhappy to have it in the shop at last. i now understand much better what people mean when they talk about a book or some such project being like a child that you've put all this love and effort into and then you watch it go out into the world and get so anxious as to how it will be received. working on this has been a dream come true for me...although i know that sounds really corny. it's the perfect marriage of my stitching addiction and my art degree though so being able to act as my own publisher is very satisfying and i do hope you enjoy it as i get to work on the next one!

speaking of...could you help me pick out a theme for the next pattern? i've narrowed it down to a few from my list that i have almost ready and would love to hear which one you'd like to see the most!
1. off to college
2. cabin in the woods
3. farmhouse kitchen
4. vintage shop

playing catch up...

this is another christmas project that i wanted to share a glimpse of: a hand embroidered Michigan pillow in plaid to go in my parent's cabin-y knotty pine living room. and no, it is still not done because i am just that on top of things right now!

i had that one week to start and finish all my handmade presents between when shipping deadlines for the shop ended and when christmas actually took place and it was just not enough time to get everything done. i guess i will need to start during the summer for personal christmas projects, jeesh.

i'm not sure i can even think about that right now though, ha, i am just going to keep plugging away at this pillow and my quilt whenever i can steal a moment away from moving into the new shop. just a few items up so far as i am hoping to sell off most of my current stock and start fresh with new designs and items....i'm even planning on releasing some of my own embroidery patterns as soon as i can get the final pdfs smoothed out and looking presentable! so far, i am working on designs for a retro kitchen set, farmhouse kitchen set, and farmer's market set. maybe there will be a tea party set in the future and many more i am sure. i've had this idea brewing for a while but i have to thank my wonderful blog friend angela for giving me a bit of courage by suggesting it in a comment a while back! they need a whole lot more work put into them but i hope to release them in the new shop at the end of this month at the earliest, fingers crossed!

trial and error

well our internet signal went missing for a bit but i am finally back with a new project to share! this is something i completed over the summer but after finishing it i hit something of a roadblock because i realized it wasn't something i could sell in my shop. on the other hand, it should make a great little christmas present for someone on my list.

remember these little drawings? well i based each little kitchen item in the towel after my own sketches and turned them into embroidery transfers using a sulky transfer pen. it worked great and i even completed another one of just vegetables but ended up giving it away as a gift to a dear friend before i got to photograph it. i'm happy with how the drawings worked out but i've got two problems: first off, the elongated design is incredibly difficult to show off in photos and if there's one thing i've learned about etsy, it's that a good photo will go a long way to helping an item sell faster; secondly, each little vignette really adds up timewise and so when i calculate a retail cost for it, there's just no way anyone would put that kind of money into buying a tea towel.



i think i will be focusing instead on finding one vignette per towel and enlarging it which makes it much more shop friendly. trial and error, trial and error!

grandma ida's crazy quilt

this is the other lovely (an understatement perhaps?!) heirloom that i inherited from my grandparents on my recent trip home to Michigan. um, i don't have words....i'm just flabbergasted and awed and humbled by it's beauty and meaning and i feel incredibly honored that i get to take care of it until the next generation of our family comes along...hopefully someone who knows a bit about sewing and will appreciate all the hard work and talent that went into it!



the box was found in my great grandma ida's ceder chest upon her death and we're not certain if she worked on it or if it was in fact begun by her mother, fannie, who was known to be a bit more crafty in her time. my granny and i poured over the thing looking to identify certain stitches and styles and we both agree that it's probably likely more than one person contributed to it.

there are eight quilt blocks in all, some that have been embellished with embroidered top-stitching and some still left to do. they were all folded up neatly in this little old christmas box (which is totally going to have a place of honor among our christmas decorations although i bet my ancestors would laugh). can you believe that the needle was still stuck in one of the blocks, threaded and all?! and look at all that original floss and thread that we found in the bottom. my quilter self and my nerdy museum worker self is going nuts:



all of the pieces seem to be upcycled from silk ties, handkerchiefs, menswear fabrics, and a few knits, velvets, and tapestry pieces here and there. it's amazing to me how conscious they were of not wasting a single little scrap of fabric...check out those button holes from a men's shirt that was used to piece part of the back!



my museum trained self is afraid to touch it and i want to take my time in deciding how to finish it. my mind just reels thinking about ones similar to this that i've seen in textile museums! i talked to granny about wanting to be able to piece all the blocks together while keeping true to the original style but she said something that really struck a chord with me, "don't be afraid to add your own element to it, your own part of the quilt's story."

just a peek

it's been a bit rainy and dreary here lately which means no lovely daylight with which to take photos in. the photography student in my cringes while posting flash photos here but hopefully tomorrow i can get a few good shots and show you the whole thing.

the above embroidery is part of a second camping clothespin bag that i've made for my sister's birthday. sounds like an exciting present right?! well, she and her boyfriend are serious back country canoers/campers so for them it will be: they are just sickeningly fit and adventurous folks and brought back some great photos from their climb of Mt. Katahdin this past summer. i, on the other hand, just have an l.l.bean mummy bag named after Mt. Katahdin...

for their bag, i changed up the color scheme, pulled some different designs from the sublime stitching transfer pack, changed the dimensions of the bag itself, and even added another stitch to my repatoire: the backstitch (some of which you can see on the fish's back fin, above). not too bad for a slightly rushed project! crossing my fingers that the sun shines tomorrow so i can share some proper photos of the whole thing with you! it's pretty snazzy if i do say so myself ;)

a little bit of beauty in my day

i decided it was time to bite the bullet and get my embroidery floss organized, especially now that fall is upon us and so too the busy holiday craft show season when i'll be scrambling to find things quicker (well, i hope sales keep my that busy anyway!). the above is just a small portion of my floss because one pack of the plastic bobbins was not nearly enough. it's actually quite soothing wrapping all the floss onto them and lining up the colors in my old cigar box. can you tell i'm an organizing nut?!

the luck dragon, take 2

well i did not win the sublime stitching contest with my handmade nation pillow entry. ah well, c'est la vive, eh? but i did finish a second pillow for our own home with another sublime stitching pattern and am proud of my work all the same, especially because i added a couple more new stitches to my repetoire!


he's a rather dapper fellow, dontcha think?! the symbols in the lower right are for good fortune and blessings which fit since the dragon is a symbol of good luck in china. as you can see in the first photo, i chose the colors to match our living room that is decorated with all sorts of asian antique pieces and centered around the oriental rug i inherited from my parents. they had gotten it shortly after they were married so it's an important piece to me even if it does have shadows of long ago tang spills! shh!

a project just for me

(click to enlarge for detail)

i'm kind of a bit excited about this pillow cover. i've finished all the embroidery for it (in addition to another pillow cover for living room of a neato dragon) all in the time since we've been home for our trip. i had laid out the pattern just before we left and got to work as soon as we got home...going that long without working on something was really getting to me and just may account for how i managed to do these so quickly..i was ravenous!

i used two sublime stitching patterns for this pillow cover and then added in some flowers of my own design to fill it in a bit and tie it in more to the pattern on the fabric i was using of birds and flowers. i also then tied in the floss colors to those used in the fabric and admit i had way too much nerdy fun matching them all up in the floss isle of my local fabric shop.

AND because it combines three different themes, i've entered it into this contest! can i possibly wait an entire month to find out the results?! well, i'm going to try...

(click to enlarge for detail)

i did manage to add two more types of stitches of those i'm capable of pulling off with this project: the french knot and the lazy daisy. sometimes seeing them in stitch diagrams is a bit intimidating for me but once i'd done each a couple of times i was wondering why hadn't tried them before...so easy and fun too! all i have to do now is finish the button holes on the back of the pillow and wa-lah: a totally rad new pillow for the guest futon in my workroom!

i'm off to go work on making the rest of the pillow cover for the dragon one now and will post the results soon. this making stuff that i actually get to keep for myself is kind of awesome!

down the isle in style

i just finished this custom order for another pair of wedding converse. dang, working on these shoes is tough, but i love love love how they come out! and this pair is so cute with the little skull & bows on the second tongue of the shoe...should be one stylin' bride that's for sure.


among the custom work i've had in lately, i'm also knee deep in embroidery work right now for some new shop items and for a couple pillows to go in my own home. it will be nice to actually keep something i've put so much work into and i'm almost done so there will be plenty to share with you in the near future. i better get back to it...there really doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to do everything on my to-do list!

finished!

the front

it's only been a few days but it feels like ages since i've updated! in the meantime, i did manage to finish the embroidered clothespin bag to go with our camping gear and really enjoyed working on it...the transfers worked great!


i changed my mind about how it should hang and added on two loops of cotton belting at the top so it just strings onto the camp rope clothesline. they were much easier to attach and should be practical to use too.

i also learned a new stitch, the "stem" stitch, which worked out nicely with the flames of the campfire:


and on the awning of the trailer!


then i topped it all off with a neato wooden button which seems to suit the bag just right:

finished, tada!

sublime stitching indeed

well i've got all the finalized drawings done for the embroidered towels i'm making for the shop but i'm waiting on a new transfer pen to arrive by mail since they were all out at the local craft shop...grr, i hate it when that happens.

i've been just itching to do some more embroidery though so i started one of those projects that i've had waiting in the wings for eons. it's a simple clothespin bag for camping made from sturdy cream sail cloth so i'm brightening it up with some trim and embroidery from the one and only jenny hart.


the embroidery patterns come from her camp out transfers and i'm basing the clothespin bag itself off of this freebie i found on my internet wanderings. i'm changing it up a bit so that the size is different and so that it can hang with a loop and a handy dandy carabiner clip to the clothesline (or tent if it happens to rain again...fingers crossed it doesn't!).

i'm currently a bit enamoured with the top-stitching i just finished to secure the trim along the opening of the bag in a contrasting pool colored floss which shows up so well against the deep turquoise trim.


i better get back to embroidering then so i can sew the bag up and show you the finished project in a few days!

from the sketchbook

(little bits and pieces from my sketchbook...just click to enlarge)

i've gotten frustrated with the printing quality of my linoblocks. they are not at fault really; linoblocks just show off bold geometric designs the best, but my drawing style leans much more toward line-y, detailed little vignettes which just gets lost with this method of printing. i don't have the space to do engraving like i did in college or screenprinting so instead of carving new stamps and having to simplify or change my vision, i'm just going to scrap the linoblock stuff for the present (all except my polka dot towels which i love too much!) and move onto something that i know i can do.

i've been toying with the idea of how to add more ready-to-go embroidered pieces to the shop for a while now and am now finding it to be the perfect solution to my linoblock dilemma! with it's illustrative abilities, embroidery will be the perfect way to transfer all the little details of my drawings to fabric while at the same time pulling in some loose ends for the overall look that i want the shop to have. why didn't i think of this before?!


so during our string of rainy days this week, i'm busying myself in my sketchbook making doodles of vintage looking cooking utensils, herbs, seed packets, and tea accessories that i will later refine into my own embroidery patterns. the mediums of drawing and embroidery definitely feel "closer to home" for me and i think the change will allow me to show off my design sense more in the final items. and better design = better sales (i hope!).