Elemental Stitches

Embroidery Inspiration - Time for Pie

1. french knot cherry pie, 2. Sweetie Pie embroidery pattern , 3. Vintage striped toweling with hand embroidery ~ pie,

4. pie-em, 5. Fruit Pie embroidery, 6. Embroidery ATC,

7. Sunday Pie, 8. All in favor, say "Pie!", 9. Sweet Cherry Pie

Free Thanksgiving Embroidery Patterns

Its time for turkey!  I love Thanksgiving.  My husband, being part Native American, has a love hate relationship with it.  He says that as long as we are celebrating the season, the harvest and all the prosperity we have had the past year then its okay.  If you start getting into Indians saving Pilgrims and long dinner tables full of food in 1621 then he starts getting sick to his stomach.  Check out the history of Thanksgiving for more about the origins of this holiday.

I love Thanksgiving food and the chance to catch up with friends and family.  Tom and I try to focus on what we have gained over the last year.  What was our "harvest"?  Every year we have goals for ourselves and for our family.  At Thanksgiving we celebrate how far we have come to reaching our goals and we start planning for next year. 

So enough about me, onto the patterns! 

I went on a long search for Turkey Day patterns and here is what I have.  If you know of a pattern that isn't listed please leave it in the comments so I can add it to the list.

Free Turkey Day Embroidery Patterns

-Adorable Turkey from Badbird

-Turkey, I Love You by Barbara Parrish

-X-Stitch Turkey

-Pumpkin and Sunflower Pattern

-Pilgrims

-Thanksgiving Turkeys and Word "Thanksgiving"

-Seasonal Kids from PatternBee

-More Vintage Patterns from PatternBee

-Fall Acorn Border

-1891 Ingalls Thanksgiving Pattens

-Google Thanksgiving Coloring Pages Search - Its awesome!

Harvest Inspiration

I found very few completed embroideries for Thanksgiving.  I am working on a pattern list of Thanksgiving embroidery patterns from around the net so look out for that in the next couple days.  Hopefully we will see some more turkeys in the days to come.

1. Autumn Wreath embroidery, 2. Tired Turkey Embroidery, 3. squirrels: the acorn fairy stitchette, 4. Hibernating Bear,

5. Brown Tumbling Leaf Embroidery, 6. hello, autumn, 7. acorn embroidery, 8. Bunny stitch along close up,

9. autumn bird, 10. hosten3, 11. The Guardian (Palomino), 12. AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN.....,

13. Wild Turkey Pillows Custom Embroidery, 14. Squirrel Friend, 15. Fall Embroidery, 16. Finished Turkey Towel

Gnome Home Embroidery

Halloween was lots of fun.  My little one dressed up as a ballerina.  She didn't want to get a tutu so we used her ballet costume and she picked out stockings, a crown, and a star wand.  She dug the black ribbon around her waist out of my ribbon drawer for her "sash".   Her leggings are the sleeves of a felted wool sweater that still had a little stretch to it.  I just cut the arms off and put them on her legs!  Easy as that.  They fit perfectly.  She picked out the color.  I tried for pink but lost. 

Onto crafty things...  I finished another embroidery.  This one is eventually going to be framed in a 6 inch wooden hoop.  Jo-Anns is 45 minutes away so its going to have to wait until I go to town again.  The Owl Embroidery is in the same boat.  I need a certain color thread to finish it.

The house and workshop were done in backstitch.  The trees were done in split stitch.  Seed stitch for the grass.  The moon and mailbox are in satin stitch.

I am working on a pattern for a Thanksgiving embroidery based on a vintage Thanksgiving postcard.  I am about done with the pattern and I cant wait to start stitching it.

Hope you had lots of treats and few tricks this Halloween!

Dia de Los Muertos Sugar Skull Embroidery Complete

 

Got it finished!  I wish the pictures were a little better, but I didn't take them until this evening and the light was terrible.  I had to use a lamp to get enough light.  I love how his eyes turned out.

I figured out the teeth as soon as I finished the outline of the mouth.  It was an "duh, of course" moment.  Tom didnt like how I had the nose on the original pattern and I have to agree after stitching it.  I am making a couple of changes to the pattern.  It will be posted on flickr in the next day or so.  I chose the same bright colors that you would see on a real sugar skull.  I had the opportunity of decorating a great Day of the Dead altar last year with some friends so I had lots of inspiration. 

Isn't that the coolest bread!  Those are supposed to be bones crossed on the top.  Its a Mexican bread traditional on Dia de los Muertos.

The photo is me in 8th grade with my dad who passed away in 2005.

Hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween!

Fall, Mail, Yarn, Projects

There is a lot of crafting going on at Chez Melissa.  The leaves are falling, a chill is in the air and a severe weather alert is in the forecast.  70 mile per hour Northern winds are scheduled for Tuesday evening.  These seasonal changes have caused my insides to scream for cozy yarns.  I forecast lots of knitting in my blog's future.  Today I was thrilled when I received this.

My Christmas Knitpicks order.  I have a lot of knitting to do this Christmas season!  Here is my favorite.

This beautiful hand painted sock yarn will become a pair of socks for me.  I can't wait to get started on them, but I wont let myself begin until I finish the green pair of socks.   Speaking of unfinished projects, I have a pile of them I am trying to complete.  Today I worked on hemming pants, sewing potholders, and I finished a quilt top that I haven't worked on in years.

These are some Christmas gifts that are almost complete.  Below is another that I am really happy with so far.  It an owl cable hat.  I need another ball of yarn to finish it.  I thought I ordered another ball in this shipment from Knitpicks but it looks like I forgot to order it.  I guess I will have to make another Knitpicks order now.  Oh darn!

There was also a little crafty instruction going on.  She embroidered for a good half hour.

What did you do this weekend?

Embroidery Inspiration - Spiders and Webs

1. Black Spider Pouch, 2. spider web, 3. Embroidered Card: Spider Web, 4. dangle on a tattered vintage hankie, 5. Spider Close-up, 6. not to be feared, 7. SPIDER hand embroidered brooch, 8. Spider web, 9. golden spider

Free Dia De Los Muertos Sugar Skull Embroidery Pattern

I love Halloween!  I was looking for a good sugar skull embroidery pattern and I came across a couple good ones like

Urban Threads Skull Pattern

Jenny Harts Day of the Dead Pattern

Marygold Sugar Skull Pattern by Polka and Bloom

However in the end I decided to make one myself.  Tom and I stayed up until 2 am the other night working on it.  We had so much fun!  I haven't had time to embroider a sample, but I wanted to get it out early enough for others to try.  I am going to try it out this week and will post when its finished.  I am a little concerned with how the mouth is going to turn out.  My plan is to fill in all the black areas around the teeth and leave the teeth white.  I might even make one gold! 

I am still working on the owl embroidery.  I ran out of brown thread for the branches so its back to JoAnns.

Embroidery Inspiration - Owls

1. Owl Embroidery for Fruitloops, 2. Embroidery owl, 3. Owl Embroidery, 4. Buttercup Bag, with Owl, 5. round neck top with owl embroidery, 6. owlie owlie owl, 7. ABC Quilt Block - Owl, 8. Framed Crewel Embroidery Owl circa 1960s, 9. Kathy's finished Owl embroidery! So awesome!!, 10. owl swap, 11. Owl Mandala, 12. Owl patch., 13. Cherry blossom owl, 14. Owl Embroidery - Gift # 1 of 5 things, 15. hello owl critter, 16. Hooty owl zipper pouch

Embroidery Inspiration - Skulls

1. Middle view of skull, 2. Alas poor Yorick of the West, 3. Sugar Skull (WIP), 4. Sugar Skull_Completed, 5. Dia de los Muertos Embroidery, 6. Embroidered Sugar Skull Key Chain, 7. skull and cross bones vintage buttons, 8. Calavera, 9. 102_0828, 10. Dia de los Muertos (close-up of embroidery), 11. Halloween pumpkin pattern, 12. progress..., 13. sugar skull, 14. Tiny Sugar Skull Embroidery, 15. Marigold Sugar Skull, 16. sugar skull embroidery