Hooray! Tomorrow in the wee hours of the morning i will gather with friends and family to celebrate the Baptism of my 2nd little nephew at a downtown church. Pray with my husband I don't spontaneously com bust as I walk through the front doors.
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To celebrate this blessing of the boy I decided to Make Him Something, as I try to do on occasions such as this. Enter embroidery. I have loved embroidery all my life and gave cross-stitch a try a decade ago. I actually finished a couple of cute counted cross-stitch pieces, but, being the creature I am, I didn't continue doing any more. Until now. I decided that since my nephew has a wonderfully unique name that I would make something with his name on it. I pulled out two trusty books: Colorful Stitchery by Kristin Nicholas and The New Crewel by Katherine Shaughnessy for inspiration. Both books are amazing intros to contemporary needlework, providing templates, stitching illustrations and guides as well as amazing examples of finished design projects. I was fueled.
I decided to do something simple since this was only my second attempt at designing and stitching a piece of my own. I wanted it boyish but not something babyish either. I went into MS Word and started with his name. I scrolled through every font I had and downloaded more. The final piece was designed entirely by fonts I downloaded on one of my favourite spots on the web EVER, the Fonts for Peas website by the amazing and generous Kevin & Amanda. Pea Leanna was used for this name across the top, and the little trees? Yes, they are a font too, called Pea Suzie Trees. Imagine. The trees were hard to resist, why bother drawing and scanning them in myself when I can type out the same sweet trees with a font? I know.
I played around with the design until I was happy, and then changed the font colour to a light grey. I printed the design out on a Wilton Fabric Transfer sheet (the yellow package in the link) essentially a light weight piece of cotton canvas adhered to a stiff paper backing that allows it to run through your little printer. They are perfect for embroidering with the paper backing left on - the paper acts as a removable fabric stiffener you can peel off when your piece is stitched and ready for mounting. Added bonus for sure!I used DMC Floss for all the stitching. I used a variety of stitches, but mostly the stem stitch, back stitch and french knots. Easy peasie! It took about 10 hours to stitch, a perfect amount of time to kill while watching your favourite tv stuff.
Here is the design, scanned in. I get too angry trying to photograph anything under glass, so the scanned image without the final matte and black frame will have to be inserted through your own perfectly capable imagination. It looks good. Good enough that he's actually getting it and not some last minute toy from the gas station tomorrow morning. Done and done.
How fun was that? I might be addicted. Happy Sunday!
♥ leel
p.s. I have another piece of embroidery ready to share this week as well! who knew?!
p.p.s. His name? Yes, it is a vacuum name as well. We love it. Little Dyson... sigh.
3 comments:
THAT is sooo adorable. I wish my aunt would have done stuff like this.How awesome are those trees??? LOL, Dyson the vacuum..if he grows up to be a big eater, he can blame it on his mama for the name,, hehehe :) Great work, Leel!
thanks for all that, Kid!
I loved all the handmade stuff my grandmother had made for me as a kid, and i want my sweet nephews to have that stuff. The internet sure helps, unlike 20 years ago.
And good call on the name thing, I will pass that on to them tomorrow morning :)
What a good Auntie! That's really, really cute! Love the sweet little trees.
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