It's All Magic

Wow, time sure does fly when you are having fun stitching with friends.

Today was our first class stitching the Poinsettia Lady from Maggie.  The original art to this piece is by Corrina Luyken.  You can visit her site here.  There are so many of these canvases I want to stitch.

The charm of these canvases for me is the face.  There is so much expression in so few lines.  I love bringing the face to life first.  Here's the challenge, we need those black outlines to be there, but at the same time we need them to be much smaller than a single stitch.

Here's the Watering Can Lady from several years ago.  If you want to see all the details of this mystery unfold, check out the links on our mystery class page. Click here.

I still love her.  She was so much fun to stitch even if there was a lot of brown for me :-)

Her face and clothes are outlined in Stem Stitch using a single ply of embroidery floss.  That works, but for Poinsettia Lady I wanted her outlines to be smaller and more delicate.  I had to find an even thinner thread.  I used Au Ver a Soie 100/3.  This stuff is magic.  Ultimately it is silk sewing thread but wow. Smooth, yummy and just the right size for delicate outlines.  Magic!

We created the perfect hair for this girl thanks to the magic of bouclé.  If you've never stitched with bouclé, it really is magic.  It is a lumpy Brazilian embroidery thread that requires no effort to make it look great. Use a large needle so that you can thread it.  The large needle will open the canvas holes allowing the thread to pass through.  From there on, simply work irregular long stitches.  The thread will do all the work.

Now that our girl has personality, its time to start playing fashion designer and making her clothes.  Just a few details today.  More to follow in two weeks.

I'm such a flirt

I love the flirty girl series.  They started out as a group canvas of 60's girls having fun.

 
Then they morphed into inserts for leather goods, small squares and now these fun collages.

It was hard to pick a favorite to stitch, but I settled on this one.

I sent the canvas to Sheena and asked her to stitch it and write the stitchguide.  If you follow her blog, you will know she does some great stitching!  You may remember she stitched our computer pixie awhile ago.  Sheena worked her magic and a masterpiece was born.

I love having her on the shop wall.  She hangs amongst our new Valentine project bags and waves hello as I come in each day.  If you are curious about the Valentine bags we have XOXO and Be Mine.  9 x 12 only in light pink, bright pink, red and purple.  So fun.

I Mustache you a Question

Have you caught the latest trend?  It's all over the internet.  Everything's got a mustache on it.  Check out etsy.  10,914 options from temporary tattoos, to mugs with staches, to tee shirts, to cookie cutters to baby binkies.  Put a mustache on it and suddenly its hot. 

Not wanting to miss the next big thing, here they are.  Whimsical quirky mustache art for needlepoint.  All designed to fit in premade leather accessories from Colonial Needle.

 Insert in a mirror, a coin purse, a luggage tag or a jewelry box.

Perfect for that ipad you got for Christmas.

This one is designed to fit an ipad too but wouldn't it be cute inset into a tiny pillow on your bed.  Just makes me smile.

And of course since we all love mustaches now we need to commemorate the event.

And as long as we're on the subject of mustaches, why not have a mustache app for your iphone?  Dress your friend's faces with the mustache of your choosing.  What a riot.

Smiles, Ruth