Happy Tuesday

Hello there, and happy Tuesday!  

I am having a hard time deciding which embroidery piece to do next.  I printed some Christmas ones out for tiny ornaments but I will probably start working on those when I am off the week after next, since I have a whole week and a half off work. 

I started this one yesterday after work, and then Eric and Haylan came for a visit, so I finished on my lunch break today.  It's another of the Japanese embroidery patterns from that book I got years ago, and if you have seen older posts, you may recognize it as one I also put onto a onesie.

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but I had a huge amount of leftovers from when I stopped selling at Moxie.  That was not a good experience.  The lady who owned the shop had absolutely no idea what she was doing.  She didn't want to market or advertise, because she wanted it to be a "word- of mouth store that only the cool people know about", which is the one of the worst business models I can imagine.  I never made much money, and I don't do this for money but it sure would be cool to be able to make a little on the side whenever I want to do some pieces.  I have made more from commissions than I ever did there.  Also, she didn't want us taking inventory (I found that very strange and I eventually insisted on doing my own because I didn't want people taking stuff from my booth and not paying).  That was a huge red flag.  

I ended that arrangement right before the store closed, and I can't really remember when that was.  Maybe 2010 or 2011?  It was kind of a relief, honestly.  I kept trying to sell on Etsy but wasn't very successful.  I think there is a lot of competition out there and since it's not my only source of income, I didn't do a lot of marketing or advertising either.  Also, someone stole my shop name and Etsy did nothing about it, and their fees got high and when I did sell something, I wasn't making much money in the end, and it was so much hassle for nothing so I eventually pulled everything off Etsy too.  I learned that making your hobby something you are obligated to do may not be the best idea.  

Anyway, the point of that long babbling bitch session is to say I had a bunch of embroidered pieces, onesies, and little t-shirts left over from Moxie and Etsy, and I had them in a pink milk crate thing that I think my friend Rebecca gave to me.  I remember distinctly having it in this house, but I have not been able to find it anywhere.  I am hoping I didn't have a moment of insanity and donate it all, but I am afraid I may have.  I would love to have some of those little ones back.  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to redo them.  I think I may work on a Tara McPherson/Sublime Stitching one next.  

Stitchy Weekend

Happy Monday!  I had a great weekend.  I spent the ENTIRE day on Saturday (except for lunch at Usta Kababgy with my cute lil hubby) drinking coffee, watching horror movies/true crime documentaries, and doing embroidery!  I also spent half of Sunday stitching, and the rest out with a friend.  

Here are the fruits of my labor.  

This one is a Cate Anevski illustration.  I did it a long time ago on a hot pad for a friend, and decided I need one for myself!

This one is from the Sublime Stitching/Black Apple collab.  My idea behind it was that the little hedgehog guy came to say hello.  He's so cute and look at this stylish little hat!

This is another from the Sublime Stitching/Black Apple collab and about halfway through I remembered I have already done this one and it's currently hanging in my giant collage.  Oh well, now I have two and I can hang this one in my office.  It's super cute anyway!

The last two I did are from a Japanese embroidery book.  I have done the girl and the cat on a onesie before but this time, I added a pattern to her dress.  

Those are the ones I completed this weekend.  I am looking forward to doing a lot more soon, and revisiting some of these patterns to keep for my own.  Then I can do Christmas ones starting in November!

Pimp Stitch

 I used to LOVE the Pimp Stitch group back in the day.  They had a blog and featured embroidery designers, and also provided free (and some for sale) patterns that were just SO CUTE!! 

 

I’m taking you on a stroll with me… I was looking for my Kawaii Fruits embroidery pattern, because I discovered that I needed a password to access it.  I reached out to the shop owner and she no longer had the pattern or the password.  But I went down a rabbit hole that led me to my very old email address and there it was! 

I downloaded it to my computer and named it with the password as well because you can’t access it at all without the password.  I’m so happy to have it back!! Now if I could only get the goddamned printer to work…

Anyway, I was going through some of my old embroidery patterns that I have saved on my laptop, and I found one for a Holy Cupcake… by Pimp Stitch!  So I was like “OH RIGHT! I remember them!” I got so many free cute patterns from them back in the day when I first started embroidery in 2009.  Well, they have a Flickr page where people used to post their pictures. 

I haven’t been able to find another community like the ones back then.  Feeling Stitchy and Pimp Stitch were two of my favorite places to find patterns and inspiration.  The blogs are no longer active, sadly, but the archives are there!

And now I’ll leave you while I go down a rabbit hole of my own. 

R.I.P., Pimp Stitch.

Final Facebroidery (For Now)

 This is the last of the Facebroideries for now.  Green is my favorite color and I thought this piece of green fabric would be great for a green Facebroidery!

The Stick N Stitch is good for some things, but I think I may give it a rest for now and go back to tracing, and maybe just use Stick N Stitch for pieces with long straight lines or circles (you know, the things I can't trace worth a shit), because if I'm using a dark color over the lines, I can't really see how straight the stitches are.  Or maybe I can use it and just not do dark colors.  

Another issue is that I can't get the wrinkles out of the fabric after rinsing.  Anyway, I do think this one is pretty cute.   I chose to not fill in the eyes on this one. I like how they look a little hollow.  I also used some more etoile thread but as usual, the sparkles are not showing up in the photo.  It sure is pretty in real life, though!  

Recent Facebroideries

I have finished a few more Facebroideries, and I have one more to go and then I think I will have done most of the ones I really like. These will go in the giant collage that's in our bathroom.

I have really gotten the embroidery bug again, and I think it's due to reading over my old posts. I started that one in my early 30s and since I'm now in my late 40s so of course, I have grown in a lot of ways. I think back when I started this blog, I was trying to mimic other popular bloggers. Now, that's not at all important to me, and no one even reads this blog I'm sure, but I'm no longer doing it for others. I'm doing it for myself and if people happen upon it, that's great and if they don't, that's not a problem. Since embroidery and cross stitch are such a huge part of my life, I just like to have them to look back on, and to read what was going through my mind at the time I completed them. I have learned a lot since I started the blog. I try not to critique myself too harshly anymore, because who cares? It's something I do for fun. It's not a competition and I don't sell my pieces anymore. So what if there is a stitch out of place? I may, now and then, say something like "Oh the stitches are wonky" etc but... sometimes I may not! I try not to critique, I said. 

I feel like this one is just about perfect. I am happy about the colors I chose. This is the fabric I almost got my ass kicked getting (I told the story in the previous entry).

This one is pretty good too. Not as good as the other one, but it's still cute. I'm happy with the fabric I chose for it. I got this fabric during the same trip where that girl at the fabric counter acted like she wanted to assault me, and I thought it would be cute to do a facebroidery on it, because it would look like freckles, but then I decided to do this animal one. I'm not sure what he is, but he's cute. I may do another human facebroidery on the other piece of the fabric.

I started that one on my lunch break yesterday and finished it watching the season premier of 1000 Lb Sisters. That is one of my guilty pleasures. I don't normally do reality shows, but I like the ones with very obese people. It's fascinating to me how one gets to that point, and also watching their journeys to losing the weight is really interesting to me. So I love these shows! I understand that this one and the 1000 Lb Best Friends is likely staged a bit. The ones like Too Large and My 600 Lb Life, however, are more serious, and I really like those too. I only see one season of Too Large, and I'm not sure why. I liked that one. I also like Hoarders. Okay, I'm getting WAY off topic.

There is one more I have printed out on the Stick N Stitch stuff that I will probably work on today and then post it.  I'm very excited to revisit some of my earlier pieces after that one!  I have a lot of fat quarters (I hoard those) and since I like to do the Cate Anevski stuff on them, I think I'll probably do a couple of hers that I did in the past but gave away.  I may not even get around to Christmas stitching this year, other than the Wild Olive ones I've already done!

Stick N Stitch

I think I have talked about this before, but if you don't know, they make this stuff called Stick N Stitch. You can use your printer to make stick-on embroidery patterns, which eliminates having to trace them. It's a really cool thing. The only issue I have with it is that after I wash it off, some of my stitches are loose, as you can see in the picture below.  

Anyway, I guess I'll just have to keep working with Stick N Stitch to get the right tension. I don't like pulling my stitches too tight. In fact, I taught myself not to! This is a re-do of a Cate Anevski Facebroidery that I did forever ago. I do like how it came out, except for the loose stitches here and there. The lines are straight for the most part. You can't really tell, but I stitched some of the hair using etoile thread so that some of it sparkled. I LOVE that thread, but it's hard to get the sparkle to show in pics. I should use more of it. I also realized that you can't see all of the stitches in the picture for the hair.  The thread I used is almost the same color as the fabric.  You can see them in real life, but in the picture, they don't really show up.  It's a pity, really...

I'm working on redoing some of the Facebroideries, because some of the ones I did long ago look terrible, or I gave them away and I would like to have some for myself. I am working on a really cute one right now on the prettiest fabric, for which I have a funny story. 

 I went to JoAnn on Friday to look at some fat quarters. I usually go to the one at Arbor Walk, but thought I'd try the Round Rock one. It is awful. It's really messy and disorganized. They barely had any fat quarters, and they are not organized neatly like they are at the Arbor Walk store. I was going to look for some hoops and also for some fat quarters because I like doing the Cate Anevski patterns on patterned fabric. 

 I picked out a few fat quarters, and then saw this pretty fabric. It's kind of a dusty rose color and it has random half moons on it in black and white. You'll see it when I post the finished piece. It was on a fabric bolt rather than a fat quarter, so I took it to the fabric counter. The girl at the counter was folding some fabric back onto bolts, so I waited patiently. She looked at me and acted as if I was interrupting her. I get that her job is probably hard, dealing with customers all day, so I really wasn't that upset about it. Then she turned around and started doing something else, and after a few seconds, said over her shoulder, in a really aggressive tone, "I'll be with you in a MINute!" to which I replied "Oh, no rush", because I wasn't in a rush, and look, JoAnn is my happy place, so I'm not really mad if it takes a little longer. Then she turned around and gave me a look.. it's hard to explain. I want to say it was a challenging look, as if she were daring me to say something about her service. I said "Hi, can I just get a quarter yard, please?". She took the bolt and measured, and kept giving me disdainful looks. Then she cut the fabric, and measured it again, and then gave me another look, as if to say "I dare you to say something about what a cunt I'm being right now".

I didn't say a word. In fact, I was slightly amused, because it's fabric and it's Friday evening, and I'm full of Tex Mex dinner I just had, and I'm really not bothered by your being a jerk. Then she folded the fabric and shoved it at me, and gave me ANOTHER look like "You gonna say something now?" 

 Finally, she created the fabric ticket for me to take to the register and literally slammed it down onto the fabric and walked off. I said "Jeeeesus..." and walked off. Again. I have worked retail. I know it sucks. But she was a real fucking bitch to me, and I'm proud I held my temper. I mean, seriously, I wasn't even mad. I thought it was kinda funny, the way she looked like she was just waiting for me to say something about how incredibly RUDE she was being to me for absolutely no reason. And I also wasn't going to taint this cute fabric with attitudes. 

 When I checked out, the cashier was SUPER nice, and we talked about embroidery while she was checking me out. A customer came in and asked where the spray paint was, and the cashier told her and then called "Torie" on her walkie talkie thing to tell her that someone was coming back. "Torie" was the fabric demon. So I thought "Yeah, good luck with that, you'll be lucky if she doesn't spray the paint in your face".

Like what just happened??? LOL Oh well, I got some cute fabric so whatever!

Ja-ja-ja-ja-JACKALOPE

I finished this cutie from The Witchy Stitcher's Cryptid stitch-along. I think he might be my favorite other than the Jersey Devil.

I found these great 4x6 frames at Hobby Lobby that fit these perfectly and I have been using them to frame each one of these. The only thing is that they are not meant to hang on the wall so when I hang them, they sometimes fall a little crooked. I may have to just glue hangers on these to hang them. There is a cute song about the Jackalope by Shonen Knife I wanted to post but I can't get the link to show up... if you wanna listen, just look up "Jackalope" by Shonen Knife. It's worth it. G'bye!

Weekend Stitches

It's only October, but sometimes I start my holiday stitching early. Friday night, I stitched up two ornaments from Wild Olive. I traced these, so the circles are wonky and I may actually do another one of each, because I can print it on Stick N Stitch and not have to worry about crappy lines and bad circles. On the little reindeer, I put teeny tiny white beads to look kind of like snowflakes and I like how they look!

The C Word

I love "the C word"- Cunt, not the other one that kills people. I don't know why people are so offended by it. It's just another curse word. But it sure feels good to say it. I say it a lot. In Scotland, it's a term of endearment... kind of sometimes. Why do we hate it so much? ;) Of course, there are people who I will not say it in front of- children, my parents, old people, people who have told me specifically they find offense. But it's just a word... I dunno the big deal. I found this one online and copied it because I couldn't find the actual pattern to purchase.

A Couple More Cryptids

It's Friday and I am so happy! Fridays are awesome because they are very slow work days. I have finished a couple more Cryptids from The Witchy Stitcher's Cryptid Stitch-along. I finished one last year that I didn't post, and I finished one just the other night. The Chupacabra was finished in October of last year.

I just finished Frogman the other night!

I'm working on the Jackalope now, and will likely finish tonight. That will be 9/16 done!

Past Stitchy Gifts

I made this one for my sister when she was pregnant with my sweet nephew, who turns 12 in a few days. Time really flies! The pattern is by Subversive Cross Stitch.

I used to work with a woman who was a MASSIVE Big Bang Theory fan. I was poking around the internet for some ideas for BBT cross stich patterns and found this one on Pinterest. I thought it was really clever. I hope she still has it.

I created this one using a pie pattern from one of Makoto Oozu's books. My friend Holly and I had a brief baking business called Holly's Piehole, and she was always saying "Taste the piehole!" so I made this for her for Christmas back in 2012.

Witchy Pagan Stitches

My goal is to eventually have most of, if not all of, my needlework here on this blog. This means I have to dig back into my photos, and at this point, we are up to 2013. I think... anyway, as I take trips down memory lane, I will find some that I know I haven't posted, and I'll be posting them at random intervals on this blog. Here are some cool pieces I did back in 2013. They are both Urban Threads patterns.

Creepy Cute Stitches

In the spirit of the first day of October, I am posting a few creepy embroideries from back in the day. This one is from Wild Olive.  These are not really her style but I really love them!

Here are two really cute quick ones I stitched from Urban Threads.

This one I'm not super happy with. I made it for a friend's daughter and never gave it to her. I'm not sure why. It's not my best work, but it's not so horrible that I wanted to pitch it.

Last on this post is a design that I THINK an acquaintance of mine who is a tattoo artist drew. It's a sugar skull Harry Potter and his snitch. I just thought it was too cool not to stitch up. It's on a handkerchief because that was, at the time, the only blank piece of fabric I had handy, and sometimes, the urge to stitch gets ya and you have to do it NOW.