The Accidental Embroiderer

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Sparrows and hellebores

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If you downloaded the free designs I posted in November, you might be interested in the idea of blog reader Mirjam, who suggested that they might be made into coasters. As it happens, someone did exactly this some time ago – you can see the results here.

Coasters from the designs

I’m not much of a seamstress, so I’m not sure I could do this myself, but at least I know it can be done!

Now – most of my time recently has been spent in preparing for, and going to, local art and craft fairs. I get a lot of requests and commissions from these, and one recent request was for a large embroidery intended as a gift for a woman who liked hellebore flowers and sparrows. So – how to combine these two subjects in one piece? To be honest I would never have thought of using either of them in an embroidery! Sparrows aren’t exactly eye-catching birds, and although hellebores have lovely flowers, the plants themselves are often clumsy and difficult to draw

But after a lot of cogitation and trials and errors, I came up with this. I just hope it will gain the approval of the recipient!

An unusual present!

Now, with the festive season approaching rapidly, I will take a brief break from blogging, but will be back in the New Year with lots of freebies, and I hope that you will re-join me then

Have a happy holiday!

Three Christmas freebies

MiaUncategorised4 Comments

Three Christmas freebies (I hope…)

Well, I’d be lying if I were to say that this blog is as easy to do as the last one – it’s a MAJOR headache. But let’s give it another try

I’m probably asking for trouble here because I’m going to try to post three freebies, which involves trying to post three images and three .pes files. But nothing ventured, nothing gained…

Here are three Christmas decorations – they’re very old and I think I posted them as freebies something like 12 years ago. But I don’t suppose I have many readers left from those years, so let’s give it a try. They have an appliqueed background with decorative motifs on top – you should be able to see how they’re meant to look

They’re for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and as usual they’re in .pes v.6

Christmasfree1v6Download
Christmasfree2v6Download
Christmasfree3v6Download

Good luck! Buy the way, if you’ve sent a comment in to the last posting I won’t have answered it because that’s a complicated business now. But I did read them, and I really appreciate it. And who knows – I might get used to this new system in time!

Another Art Nouveau freebie

MiaUncategorised3 Comments

I’m still getting used to this new blog format, but with luck I should be able to post again with no problems (wish me luck!)

So – here’s a new freebie, as I promised. Many years ago I was fascinated by many of the older “schools” of design, such as Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau, and did a great many designs based on their principles. And here is something from my old Art Nouveau collection.

It’s a very simple little floral design which could be used in many different ways, and is perhaps most obvious as a quilt square. The green frame is quite optional- it stitches out last so can easily be left out if you prefer

It’s for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop. Here it is in .pes v.6

Art Nouveau freev6Download

Back again – I hope!

MiaUncategorised6 Comments

 

Well, here I am again! It’s been a long struggle to shake off the old Typepad system, but thanks to some capable friends, I hope things are now more or less back to normal. Some of the very old posts still need to be reinstated, but for the present everything is pretty much OK

So, I’m trying out my new system with a Christmas-themed freebie, one of the designs I made to use as a Christmas card. It’s for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and if you wanted to make it into a card, it fits nicely into a tri-fold aperture card with an opening of the same size. As usual, it’s in .pes v.6

star tree v6


Good luck with it! I just hope it will download well for you
And may I ask a favour? If you know of any other machine embroiderers who may perhaps have read the blog in the past, could you perhaps tell them that I’m back? The new address is

http://www.theaccidentalembroiderer.com

Thanks!

A new blog coming up!

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Well, things are starting to get better. A couple of very talented local people have been helping me with the problem of transferring this blog to a new address, and although the new blog isn’t entirely finished, I hope it won’t be long before it is

Typepad – and this old blog – will close down on the 30th of September, so after that date I will be at this address

http://www.theaccidentalembroiderer.com/

As I said, the blog isn’t ready yet, but if you check back in a couple of weeks I hope that things will be back to normal. And I will celebrate being back with a lot of freebies, so don’t forget!

IMPORTANT! Typepad is shutting down

MiaNews6 Comments

I've just had a very worrying e-mail from Typepad – thats the group that has been publishing this blog, but they are going to shut down. I will do all that I can to keep my records and subscriptions from the past and I hope that I won't lose touch with any of you. But if you don't receive the blog in the future, you will know what's happened

But let's hope for the best, and that the blog will reappear together with all its long history!

And more for the shows…

MiaNews9 Comments

It’s that time of year when all my time and energy are devoted to producing works for the upcoming autumn exhibitions, and of course I’m trying my best to come up with things that will have overall appeal. Brightness always goes down well – people are often drawn to eye-catching colours, so now is the time to get out all my most colourful threads.

This next design was inspired by a T-shirt that was recently worn by Audrey, a fellow artist who lives locally. The shirt was an attractive mass of printed flowers of all sorts of kinds and sizes, but it was all done in very muted and boring shades of grey, and I couldn’t help thinking that it would be much more interesting if it were just a bit brighter

 


Bright blooms for the show

Well, you can’t get much brighter than this! I think perhaps I got a little carried away, but at any rate this should probably get people’s attention!

But the problem with this kind of embroidery is that I begin to see things that should be changed, after it’s all finished and it’s too late. This one – well, maybe it needs some stems and perhaps leaves to join things together. Oh well, I have a few weeks left to make changes

A freebie from Secrets.

MiaDesigns for projects5 Comments

As you may know, I do a lot of designs for the Secrets of Embroidery website, and recently I’ve been organising a new collection for them. Without meaning to be rude, I have to say that many machine embroiderers who buy designs prefer to use the simpler and more conventional kind of designs, so the things I do for my “Secrets” collection aren’t always very exciting. My recent efforts are distinctly floral, and not very original, but I found these designs interesting to do. They are all oriented on the diagonal, as I thought that might be useful to people finishing off the corners of cushions and quilts.

However while I was playing around with them, I found that if you just made 4 copies of a diagonal design, and then rotated the orientation of three of them, you could make a very interesting construction out of them. That’s probably not very clear, so here’s an example:

Here is a floral design, designed on the diagonal

 

And here is the same design, moved into a more complicated construction

 

This design is free on the Secrets site, but I’m also putting it up here: just click on this link:   Download Free diagonal v6  It’s just the single design – not the large 4-times one! It’s for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop and is in .pes v.6

A summer freebie

MiaDesigns for projects8 Comments

Right – as I promised in my last message, it’s time for another freebie.  I haven’t the least idea where the idea for this one came from, apart from the fact that peacocks are among the most spectacular birds you could imagine, and are endlessly inspirational


The summer peacock

There’s nothing special about this one – it’s for the 5 x 7 inch (130 x 150 mm) hoop, but it’s quite a large project – it took me an hour an a half to stitch out. But it has a “presence” which might make all the time worth it, if you can find a good home for it. Click on this link:  Download Peacockv6 to download it in .pes v.6

A lesson learned!

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Well, that was certainly a busy couple of weeks! First, I had to prepare things for the craft fair and then set up the stall, and finally sit with it and chat with visitors. We didn’t have a lot of visitors – probably because of the unusual heatwave we’ve been having recently, which seems to have kept people in their nice shady houses. But I didn’t do too badly – in fact I sold a lot more things than I expected to, so I can’t really complain! Rather to my surprise, I sold not only a good number of cards, but also some of the larger pieces  that I’d just put on the wall to provide some colour

And I learned something interesting! If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I have a boring tendency to design things featuring lots and lots and LOTS of birds – and then of course flowers, as well as birds with flowers. I do so many of these that recently I’ve been trying to be more original and come up with designs of other, perhaps more “arty” things

But guess what most people seemed to prefer! Cards with birds and flowers! So that’s a lesson for me, and in the future I won’t be worried about too many birds

So here are a couple of pictures of the stall – not very elegant, I admit, but colourful and attention grabbing!

 

 

OK, it’s back to a more normal life now, and I’ll be back shortly with some more freebies