Regular blog readers will know that I do a lot of work with my friend Cherri, who lives in Florida. Cherri is an enthusiastic maker of quilts, and I am only too happy to design and digitise anything she might need for her work. Recently she had what was to me an eccentric request – to make a large number of designs of bugs and beetles. So I set to work. I’m still not sure exactly how many I did but there were a lot! And here is the result, on display at the AQS Quilt Show, in Daytona Beach, Florida.

 

Cherri and the Entomologist's Dream

 

She calls the quilt The Entomologist’s Dream. Now if that’s not an original idea, I don’t know what is! If you want to see more of her work, have a look at

 

Judging from the response to the recent cat designs I’ve posted, there are a good number of cat lovers among blog readers. So – here are a couple of free ones for your collection. They’re very old designs – I must have done them more than 10 years ago – but they’re none the worse for that. They’re quite small, for the 4×4 inch (100 mm x 100mm) hoop, because I did them in the days when you couldn’t get hoops more than a few inches across. I certainly wouldn’t limit myself to that size today!

The Black Cat

They’re all embroidery (no applique) and once again I’m not bothering with worksheets as they’re pretty self-explanatory. All you have to do is follow the colour instructions and you should end up with something much like the stitchouts

The Brown Cat

Here's the black cat, in .pes v.6, and here's the brown cat, in the same format

A couple of weeks ago I posted the first of some very big panels I’ve been doing for Cherri – these are all for the 10 ½ x 16 inch (272 x 408 mm) hoop and I think she intends to make cushion covers from them. She has asked for several bird designs, which is fine with me. Birds have got to be just about my favourite subjects

Anyway here are four of them sitting in a row, embellished with an assortment of half Mexican, half folk arty floral motifs. Yes, I can see them on a cushion very well!

 

Four Big Birds, all in a row

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been brooding about the differences between designs in a decorative style (for instance, things that you’d use on cushions or table linen) and pieces that are more “arty” – that you’d be more likely to frame and hang on the wall. Of course, some artists can work in both styles at the same time – for example, some designs by William Morris can be both decorative and “art”. But I enjoy working in both styles, and as it’s been a long time since I’ve posted strictly decorative patterns, here are a couple of pieces from a series of floral patterns that I did some time ago.

 

Floral number 1 – somewhat in the style of William Morris

 

 

Another from the Morris school of design

Because they were inspired by the work of William Morris, they have a rather “Victorian” feeling, and if I ever have the time, I might stitch them on some scatter cushions. It’s true that our house is anything but Victorian in design, but they might fit in anyway

 

 

When I started with machine embroidery (and I hate to think how long ago that was…) the largest design you could use was about 5 x 7 inches (130 x 180 mm) That sounds pitiful now, with all the huge hoops that modern machines can use. Those large hoops have such a lot of potential – you can make designs with all sorts of tiny details, and the finished embroideries can have an astonishing impact

Recently my friend Cherri has had some ideas for some really large and colourful designs, and I’ve been enjoying myself designing and digitising them. (I leave the stitching to her – I just do the fun part!)

Anyway this is the first of what I think is going to be a very large series of very large designs. It’s for the 10 ½ x 16 inch (272 x 408 mm) hoop, and it’s just about the largest size I can manage on my digitising software. It has around 114,000 stitches, and takes something like 5 hours to stitch out. But as I say, I leave that part to Cherri!

A very Big Bird

For this month’s freebie I’m going back to a posting from some time ago, which featured a design adapted from Celtic art from the island of Iona. If you want to see the original posting with an idea where this design comes from, have a look at the blog for January 2019, at https://theaccidentalembroiderer.typepad.com/the-accidental-embroiderer/2019/01/index.html

 

Inspired by the art of Iona

Just bear in mind that the design in the 2019 post was done at a very large size, to fit on a pillow, and this version is a lot smaller!

It's complex but it’s pretty easy to stitch out, although there are a few jumps. It’s for the 4 inch x 4 inch hoop (100 mm x 100 mm) and it has 15,479 stitches with 6 colours and 7 colour changes. I don’t think you’ll need a worksheet – if you just follow the colours mentioned, you should end up with something like the picture. Here is the design, in .pes v.6

I’ll just take this chance to mention again that if anyone has any ideas for freebies that I could offer, just let me know. I can’t always do everything that’s suggested, but there are usually good reasons for this, and I’d love to know what might be popular

 

 

Well, I did explain a couple of weeks ago that I’d been doing a lot of cats recently, so here are two more of them. They’re pretty straightforward – nothing too unusual about them. They are of course digitised with the scribbled-applique technique which I’ve become so fond of, and which is particularly effective on stripy or tabby cats.

 

Maybe they need something to sit on?

These two are just from a test stitchout, and if I were doing this on a bag or as something to exhibit, I think I’d put in something for them to sit on – maybe a red cushion or something like that? Anyway, I promise that next week I’ll try to stay off the cats and post something different!

Recently I was asked by a friend and neighbour to design and stitch some embroideries that she could make into a quilt that she was creating for a young relative. All the designs were to be of plants and animals that were of significance to the person who was going to receive the quilt, and as a result I needed to draw and digitise some things that I'd never tried to do before

Today I'm posting the first two of these. Obviously the quilt recipient must be very interested in mushrooms, because on my list of Things To Do were two different kind of mushrooms, and here are the first of them. These particular ones are ceps, also called porcini. They're very popular ingredients in elegant cooking, but I'd never seen embroideries of them, so these may be a first!

 

      Maybe the first ever embroidery of porcini!

 

The second design is perhaps less unusual but all the same I don't think I've seen many embroidered frogs.

 

A froggy embroidery

I wish I could meet the quilt recipient – she must be a fascinating person to have so many unusual interests!

I mentioned some time ago that I had recently been doing a lot of cat designs. That probably was because I had discovered the "scribbled overstitching" technique, which was very useful for giving an embroidered design a furry texture, and so was ideal for doing cat portraits

Now, I'm always interested in learning how animals are drawn and painted in cultures other than my own, and recently I've been looking with great admiration at how the ancient Egyptians portrayed animals, and in particular cats. So it was inevitable, I suppose, that I should have produced a sort-of-Egyptian cat embroidery. It's not genuine, by any means – for one thing, the cat is sitting looking at you, while most authentic Egyptian cats are pictured in side view. But it's my version of an Egyptian cat, with the necklace (stitched in gold and metallic thread) perhaps giving some hint to its origins

 

A sort-of-ancient-Egyptian cat

I never know if I'm sad or relieved when the holiday season passes. This year in particular, it wasn't what we're used to having, but it was all the same a happy, if bittersweet, couple of weeks

Anyway- onwards and upwards to the New Year, and we might as well start with a couple of free designs. These are quite simple, as you can see, but they're the sort of designs that might be useful for making quilt squares, table linen, cushions – that sort of thing. Again, I'm not including worksheets because it should be quite clear what the various colours are and where in the design they're supposed to go. They're both embroidery only (no applique), both for the 4×4 inch (100 x 100 mm) hoop, and both are in .pes v.6

 

Leaf Circle 1

 

Leaf Circle 2

 

Here are the links to the files – here is leaf circle 1 and here is leaf circle 2. So – good luck with them, and my best wishes for a happy, healthy and safe New Year