First of all, I've had a big influx of new subscribers in the last couple of weeks, so welcome to all of you. I should just explain, though, that not all the designs I post are free – just the ones that have "free" or "freebie" in their title. The others are just for your interest

Like this week's design, for instance. I designed and digitised it for my friend Cherri, who wanted some designs from which she could make bags as Christmas presents for her friends. I did about a dozen of them which I'll be posting over the next few months, and most of them turned out to involve combinations of birds and animals with simple, folk-arty flowers. OK, they're not what you could call sophisticated, but they're fun and colourful

The Chicken bag

For example, this chicken in the midst of flowers made a very nice bag, and I hope the recipient liked it! Thanks to Cherri for the stitchout and the photo, and also for the idea for the whole series

 First of all, a very happy 2020 to all blog readers! And it's time for the first freebie of the year. I'm always asking for ideas for freebies from readers, and this is in response to Beverley, who suggested a soaring hawk. This is simplified from the larger and more complex design which I posted on February 2, 2018, but I think it also does well as a smaller design (for the 5×7 inches/130×180 mm hoop). However it's still pretty complicated and might not be ideal for a beginner

The gold hawk on the wing

 

It has an applique body and wings, but the applique is overstitched – that is, it's not edged with the usual heavy satin stitch border. This means that the fabric edges may look a little rough, but I think the technique works well enough, seeing that the design is relatively realistic, and is not a cartoon or a simplified design. I would just suggest that for the applique steps you use a thread colour that tones with the other colours you've used on the wings. I used a russet brown, which is the same colour as the detailing on the shoulder (colour 14) but another colour might be better for you, depending on what else you've used

Anyway – good luck! Here's the file (in .pes v6) and here is the worksheet. By the way, my apologies for the fuzzy image. I'm having scanner problems today!

Here's a bright pot of flowers that featured a few weeks ago in a photo taken at our annual NEOS exhibition (NEOS is North East Open Studios and it's a big annual art event in this part of Scotland) The piece is nice enough but to be honest I was a little disappointed with it. That's because I had intended to develop all sorts of exciting new cutting-and-stitching techniques to make the blossoms really flamboyant, and to make them stand out from the background. But as usual time was short and the exhibition date was rushing up a lot faster than I'd thought, so in the end I just used plain old ordinary techniques to do the flowers. Oh well, it's nice and colourful, and I can always re-do the flowers with exciting new techniques if I ever have the time to work them out!

 

Colourful, but ordinary!

Well, the holidays are almost upon us, and like me you probably have a lot of things besides embroidery to occupy your mind. So I'll take a break from blogging until the New Year, and in that time I want to work out a new way of using the blog, and of presenting designs. In particular I want to start including a lot more freebies, as well as some interesting new projects, so I hope you'll still be with me when I start writing again in 2020. Meanwhile, all my best wishes for a happy and peaceful holiday season

The bags I mentioned last week are all very well, but a dozen little bags aren't really enough to make a good display, so I thought I'd make a few embroidered cards to go with them. These are a lot easier than the bags – you just need to embroider a small design and then stick it into a blank card, the kind you can easily buy from craft suppliers. The result is really quite nice – the embroidery makes a good show against the paper mount, and the cards are a little bit different from most of the printed cards you find. Not all these are Christmas designs, of course, but they're colourful and would do for a general purpose greeting card

Cards for the fair

So it's off tomorrow to set up the stall. If there are any Aberdeenshire residents out there, the fair is in Alford Public Hall, between 10 and 4. It would be great to see you there!

This seems to be the season for art exhibitions and craft fairs, and in a moment of weakness some time ago, I offered to take a stand at a local Christmas craft fair. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's only recently dawned on me that if I'm going to show at a craft fair, I'd better have something to show. So I've been hysterically busy trying to put together a decent selection of things to exhibit. The problem is that I'm much more of a designer than a crafter, and in particular I'm hopeless at sewing. However I made a commitment so I've put together a collection of things that I hope won't disgrace me. Here, for example, are some little embroidered bags.

 

As we're in Pictish country here, I thought it might be a good idea to feature some Pictish and Celtic motifs. They're very colourful and eye-catching, and look pretty good – as long as you don't inspect the sewing too closely!

One of the things I love about living in Aberdeenshire is that we're surrounded by the most spectacular examples of Celtic and Pictish art. Carved Pictish symbol stones are so common in parts of the countryside that some are just lying out on the ground, unprotected and open to all weathers. And of course they're the most wonderful inspiration for designs of all kinds

For example, here's a carved Pictish stone of a goose and a fish (although if you're a purist, it comes from Moray and not Aberdeenshire. Oh well, it's just a few miles further north)

 

The stone goose

 

And this is an embroidered version

The embroidered goose

 

I may have posted this particular goose a long time ago, although I can't find the post, so it might be new to the blog after all. In any case this is a new version of it. The stone carving is so simple and yet so graceful and well-observed that it's a natural to turn into embroidery – and indeed it would do well in many other media as well. It's one of a series of Pictish designs that I work on when I get the chance. I must get round to stitching them out some day

 

 

 

Well, it's nearly That Time of Year again, and some people may be indulging in some festive embroidery to prepare for it. So here's a little Christmas tree embroidery, which you could perhaps use for Christmas cards, napkins, table runners or something like that. I embroidered the stars in a metallic thread, which does add a little festive glitter, but as usual the glitter doesn't show up in the scan. Also, because the embroidered stars are quite thick, the scan is a little out of focus in places

 

There's no worksheet for this, because it's just three colours – green for the tree, brown for the trunk, and silver for the stars. It's for the 4×4 inch (100 mm x 100 mm) hoop and there's no applique – it's just embroidery. Here it is (in .pes v.6), and good luck!

I'm still working through the commissions I received at this year's NEOS exhibition, one of which involves lapwings. I'm not sure if there are lapwings anywhere outside the UK, but they are graceful, beautiful little birds of the shoreline and moorlands, with a very distinctive whistling call. At NEOS someone asked me if I had any designs of lapwings, and as it happened, I did have one at home, so I promised to send it to her. But when I examined it, it just looked wrong. For some inexplicable reason the head was in the wrong position and I felt that I couldn't really send it to my customer.

What on earth is going on with that head??

 

So I drew and digitised a second lapwing, which was a little better.

At least the head's OK this time

 

The feathers on a lapwing's back are an iridescent greenish-black, and it was difficult to get this effect in the stitchout, and even more difficult to reproduce it in the scan! But although neither version was perfect, I sent them both off to my customer and I hope she will like them

 

Children can make wonderful art, and some time ago I thought it would be fun to try to digitise some of it. However that was before I'd actually tried to do it! The problem is that children's art is loose and free and spontaneous, while digitising is a tightly disciplined and sophisticated technique, and somehow the two of them don't go together well. I did do a few things but they were never as good as the original artwork so I gave up the idea

But at NEOS this year a little girl came up to my table and trustingly handed me a drawing she'd done that was inspired by my embroideries. So – what's a digitiser to do! Anyway here's the original drawing

 

 

and here's the result.

I did change a few things – for one thing I edited the shape a bit so it would conveniently fit into a hoop, and I straightened out a few lines. I also added the plastic applique bottle shapes (those are the shiny things reflecting the camera flash) Actually this worked out a little better than many of my previous attempts, probably because the original drawing was slightly formal (rather than very loose), and because she used such interesting colours. But you can see the difference between the original spirited drawing by the child and the more formal digitised version by the adult. My version isn't all that bad, but it doesn't capture the energy of the original. So I think I'll slink back to digitising my own art!

For some reason I've been thinking that I'd already posted this, but I don't think I have yet, so it had better go up before I forget about it entirely. I've always been a huge admirer of the artist M. C. Escher, and his wildly imaginative tessellation drawings. I wish I had a fraction of his talent! But I still love using his ideas in embroideries.

For an Escher cushion

 

This is a recent design and it's not really tessellated, but it's done in sort of a general Escher style. I did it to use on a cushion cover, but it wasn't 100% successful. That was just because I did it as a BIG BIG design – something like 10 inches square – and I didn't really stabilise the fabric enough for such a wide expanse of fabric, as you can see from the scan. Oh well, I've learned my lesson and I'll try it again sometime. But I'd better post it now in case I forget about it yet again