Category: Crafts

Bird-day Presents

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Haha, bad pun. Anywhooo….

My grandmothers have birthdays about three weeks apart, so I was looking for something I could make each of them relatively quickly. When I told my mom we needed to go to the craft store to find something, she pulled a kit out that had been given to her. It had two pillowcases with hummingbirds on them. Perfect!

That one got sent out to my maternal grandmother a few days before her birthday. Took maybe two weeks to finish? I don’t really remember. But it was pretty fast, mostly because my mom had already started it. She did most of the light green before putting it down and forgetting about it a bit.

This is where I am with the one for my paternal grandmother. I’m plugging along pretty well. Too bad her birthday is less than a week away. If I’m really lucky I will get it sent Monday. But I’ve still got to finish the backstitch and french knots (grrr, french knots…) plus wash it and let it dry. I should also find a card…Better get back to work.

Surprise Minion Cross-stitch

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One good thing about NaBloPoMo was finding new sites to read. One of those, Little Thread Crafts, inspired me to pick up some cross-stitching again. I used to, when I was younger, but then I got much more into the embroidery than just cross-stitch. Kind of went with my major a little easier.

So reading Little Thread Crafts inspired me to cross-stitch something for my mom for Christmas. unfortunately, I was inspired to do this around 2pm the day before we were to exchange gifts. I wrapped up the supplies with this note:

(Yes, Simpsons fans, that is a poorly drawn, tiny Captain Lance Murdock riding the Whiplash…to be completed in 1994.)

I used this pattern from Crafty Guild on 14 count Aida fabric and was able to finish in less than a week:

It’s a minion! It’s also my first counted cross-stitch. I think my favorite part of this is the slight shiftyness to his eye.

Scrap It and Start Again

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Literally, because most of these pieces are way too short to really be of use anymore.

But this method totally didn’t work. Especially once I started weaving in the ends. It made it way too thick, plus the color showed through to the other side.

So now I’m starting over from scratch. Going to just make tube socks with afterthought heels and duplicate stitching the decoration. Hopefully that makes it all go a bit faster. After all, there are only fifteen days left until Christmas.