As some readers will know, I’ve been designing and digitising for many years now, and as a result I have a HUGE collection of designs in my files. I have no idea how many there are but it’s up in the thousands. I know I should try to file them in some kind of sensible way but I never seem to get round to it, and as a result it can be difficult to find a particular design, or to discover what use I’ve made of it

Which means that this month we have a freebie which I don’t THINK I’ve offered before, but I'm just not sure. It's one of so many designs in the files, so if you have it already, many apologies.

 

A bird from the past

 

It’s a classic William Morris sort of bird  and I know I’ve offered a lot of free birds recently, but I hope there’s room for another one in your collection. It’s for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and HERE it is, in .pes v.6

I really wish I could post on this blog every week, the way I used to, but now that the exhibition season is approaching, I need to produce works which will be right to hang on gallery walls – that is, they need to be less decorative and more “arty”.  And that means that they are usually very complicated and take a LONG time to do. Oh well, I’ll post when I can. And I’ve just finished a design which will do as a small scale work for an informal exhibition somewhere

 

Flutter

 

It comes from an abstract sketch of three birds fluttering in a tree, and it’s colourful enough to draw the eye. I’m not sure if I think it’s very good, but it’s astonishing how these colourful little things can sell unexpectedly, so maybe this one will find a new home. Or, looking at it critically, maybe it would make an interesting round mat of some kind. So I might just re-invent it as a kind of table decoration

Anyway, I will be back as soon as I can – that is, when I have something new to post.

First, I was really pleased by the number of people who said they liked the Flower Bellpull in my posting of last week. Several people asked if it was for sale anywhere, so this is just to say that you can find it (along with more of my designs) in my Secrets of Embroidery shop: https://secretsof.com/machine-embroidery/designs/The-Accidental-Embroiderer

Anyway, back to this month’s freebie. It’s spring now (or it’s supposed to be) so here is a little spring-like design to celebrate the season. It’s for the 5×7 inch (130×180 mm) hoop, and it’s embroidery only, with no appliqué.

 

Two colourful birds for spring

It’s a fairly complex design, but if you hoop your fabric securely and follow the colour suggestions, it should turn out all right

There are a HUGE number of jumps in it, but I’m afraid they’re unavoidable. If your machine can cut jump stitches, there should be no problem, but otherwise I’m afraid you’re in for a long session with the scissors

So – good luck! Here is the design, in .pes v.6

 

In the dim and distant past, when I started to write this blog, I tried hard to post something new every week – and mostly I succeeded. But more recently I’ve been finding this difficult, because I just don’t have a new design ready to go up each week. This is entirely because I’ve been doing more and more complicated designs, which take a lot longer than a week to draw, digitise and stitch out. And this week we have the result of what must be about a month’s worth of complicated and detailed effort

I’ve always loved the “bellpull” format – that is, long, thin designs. They’re a challenge to design but they can look so effective when they’re mounted and displayed. So for the past few weeks I’ve been concentrating on a detailed and elaborate bellpull design. It’s made up of 6 5×7 inch (130 x 180 mm) panels, which are designed to align together when they’re stitched in sequence on a long, narrow strip of fabric

Now – this image is so large and long that you may have problems viewing it, but I thought I should try to show it close up so you can see the details. The whole thing turned out more or less as I wanted it to, so I shall now breath a deep sigh of relief and go back to designing something a little less challenging!

All right – I know I’ve been trying to get away from my constant preoccupation with images of birds and flowers, but I can’t help it – that’s just about all I’ve been working on recently. One reason is that I want to produce some more collections for my Secrets of Embroidery shop, and for that I need to create sets of designs that are more or less on the same general theme. And after all, what’s a more appealing theme than birds and flowers!

I am always been interested in art and design from past cultures and distant lands, and I’ve recently been captivated by images of ancient Persian art. It’s such a rich culture and so much of the art features animals and birds. So, still under Persian influence, I put together a collection of “Persian” birds. Now, these are NOT reproductions of Persian art – a genuine Persian would never recognise them! They’re just inspired by it. But the colours and shapes are genuine enough, and they translate very well to modern embroidery

 

So perhaps you can see that they're maybe a little more exotic than my usual productions. But I've finished 12 of them now in the same style, and they're all ready to go, so I should be able to go on to something different – I hope!

The fishmonger’s fish that I posted last week proved so popular that I thought it might be a nice idea to make them the basis of a freebie. My first thought was to give readers the complete design – that is, the two fish together with the scrolled background. But then I realised that the whole design was for a very large hoop (7 x 12 inches, or 180 x 300 mm) and not everybody has machines that can use hoops of that size. Also there isn’t really much you can do with such a big and complicated design except frame it and hang it on the wall, and not everybody really wants embroideries on the wall

So I thought it might be better just to give one of the fish, which could be used in several different ways. And this is the free fish

A freebie from the fishmonger

I strongly recommend stitching it out with a layer of Mylar, to give it that nice sparkle and shine. If you can do this, then stitch the first three colours -that is, the fins in silver, and the bottom and top of the body in cream yellow and mint green. Now, lay a sheet of Mylar over the embroidery , making sure that it covers the entire body. Reduce the speed of your machine to very slow and holding the Mylar in place, stitch “colour 4”, which is described as “appliqué”

Now remove the hoop from the machine and pull or cut the loose Mylar away from the stitching, leaving it in place over the body. Put the hoop back on the machine, increase the speed to what you usually use and carry on with the stitching

If you can’t get Mylar or don’t want to use it, then the fish will be fine without it, although it will lack those nice shiny scales

Good luck! Here is the fish, in .pes v.6, for the 5 x 7 inch (130 x 180 mm) hoop

No freebies this week, I'm afraid, because I've been working on something else. Not far from here, in the Aberdeenshire town of Banchory, there's an excellent little fishmonger on the High Street. When I stopped in there the other day to buy some fish for dinner, I was astonished to see that the owner was exhibiting a very interesting collection of artwork on his shop walls. And, not surprisingly, all the artwork was of fish and fishy subjects. 

Well, we made it through the holidays and have come out the other side, and I hope you had a happy and peaceful time of it. But now I must push on with a LOT of new projects which I’ve started, but not got even near to finishing.

I have noticed a monotonous sameness to most of these projects – that is, they all seem to involve birds and leaves and flowers in various combinations. Nothing wrong with birds and flowers, of course, but you can have too much of a good thing. So I’m desperately trying to cut back on this theme and get on with something new and different

Now, this means that I have a lot of birds-and-flowers designs which don’t have parts to play in larger projects, so I’m hoping that blog readers will be able to offer some of them a home. And we’ll start this month with a couple of small squares which were supposed to be a part of a large pieced wall hanging, but the hanging gradually changed in composition, so these little squares didn’t fit any more.

 

Birds looking for a home? Design number 1

 

And design number 2

 

They’re for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and are embroidery only, no appliqué. By the way, many thanks to my friend Cherri, who stitched these out for me at the time when my machine was in the shop for servicing.

Here's the first one, and here's the second, both in .pes v.6. I hope they work well for you, and you had better look out for more designs on the birds and flowers theme during the start of 2024

 So we’re in December now, and you will know what we’re all getting ready for. Is it too late for some more Christmas card designs? I designed these two for cards to send to our friends, so it only seems right that I should pass them on to my on-line embroidery friends

 

Some bright Christmas balls

 

 

A partridge in a…well, you know the rest!

 

Just a couple of important details. Both of these designs are for the 5×8 inch (130 x 150 mm) hoop, but they were intended to fit inside the “windows” of blank aperture cards. So they’re smaller than 5×8: the designs themselves are for “windows” of 3.75 x 6 inches (95 x 150 mm)

The design with the balls is just begging to be embellished with metallic thread, so I recommend that where the design asks for “silver” and “brass”, you use metallic silver and gold. And if you have any metallic red thread, use it when the design asks for “dark fuchsia”

I hope this isn’t all too confusing! But now I will leave you in peace to get on with any preparations you have. I will be back in January with (I hope) some more interesting designs. Have a very happy holiday!

Here are the balls, and here is the partridge, in .pes v.6

Well, thank goodness that seems to be the end of the work on the Christmas card commissions for this year. I’ve lost track of exactly how many of them I did but it will have been over 50. And as soon as I finished them I had to do something about a Christmas collection for my Secrets of Embroidery store. So what with one thing and another I’ve had more than my share of the Christmas celebrations before it’s even December. I think we’ll try to have a quiet and peaceful holiday this year!

But here are a few of the cards that I produced – some of the designs will be familiar to you! And if you’re a regular reader you may recognise a few freebies from previous years

Some of this year's cards

 

Most of the cards I made were quite large, but to be honest I rather preferred some of the smaller and simpler ones. These were stitched with metallic silver thread on a painted blue background: they were perhaps less spectacular than the large ones but they had a calm and a peace which was welcome.

 

Some Christmas calm

Anyway, I’ll get on with some new work now and try to prepare a freebie or two for you next week