I have to freaking try this --> epic embroidery transfer

Thank you God for Pinterest.

While doing my usually start the day internet rounds, I was greeted by this wonderful pin whilst trolling Pinterest

Which led me to this wonderful post 

Which means that I have to figure out if they'll let me do this at OfficeMax.

Mind. Blown.

^_^

I've been a bad blogger... again

It's been... I'd have to say, at the very least, a week since I last worked on Buttaflies and I haven't shown my progress!

I forgot! 

>_<

So, to make things short and sweet, behold!: 

As you can see, Buttaflies is almost complete! 

I do admit I had a bit of a tricky time with the shading. I couldn't get the direction quite right (which is why the bottom left wing looks a little more radial than the one on the right) but you learn from your mistakes, so I am nonetheless happy with it!

Here's a closeup: 

I used split stitch for the lines and single-thread french knots to fill up those round bits. I almost used satin stitch, but then I remembered my experience with the yellow thingies in Doodleplex  and completely switched gears.

-shudder-

Anywho, Next on Buttaflies: thorax, antennae, and final details!! 

^_^

Weekend Pledge

Now, I promised I would do something, and I did--and I made sure to take pictures.

My project of choice: Buttaflies.

Last seen as: 

So, I began with the background of the bottom wings. 

As per "protocol", I outlined the shape in my favorite when it comes to shading edges: split stitch (note: the stem stitch I used here is made with the needle splitting the previous stitch from above by going down into the fabric instead of coming up and splitting it from the bottom)

And, as far as I can remember, this was my progress at the end of Saturday:

(please forgive the horizontal lines, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them post-picture-taking and my light wasn't cooperating)

Now, come Sunday I started a little earlier and finished the whole dark orange section in (for me) record time.

And, about an hour ago, I finished!:

My patience was seriously tested when trying to go around those little circle thingies.

But, done!

^_^

Arrowhead Stitch Tutorial

If you tuned into some of my last posts, you'll remember a "brief" mention of a certain "Arrowhead" stitch.

If memory serves, this is my first embroidery stitch tutorial--so bear with me.

The example you'll see below is actually a part of Doodleplex. I'm using this tutorial to add a little miscellaneous embellishment to mix things up.

Let us begin:

First, make a long stitch (or line of long stitches, depending on how big the shape is and if the center line is straight/curved) down the center of the area you want to fill.

In this case, that would be a McGyvered flower/leaf thing near the edge of Doodleplex Part II:

Next, you make two stitches at the "bottom" of your shape, for as long as you can go while following the outline. Sink the needle either in the same hole as the first big stich or underneath the thread as close to the hole as possible. In this case, because the leaf I'm trying to fill has such an elongated shape, my stitches are long compared to the shape of the leaf:

(please forgive the horrible picture, I couldn't get my camera to cooperate)

Afterwards, keep filling in the shape with stitches parallel to those bottom two stitches. Your stitches should start at the outline (or slightly outside of the outline depending on preference/desired effect), and end under that big stitch down the center.

And just continue that way until you get as far as you want.

If you want an arrow like finish, just keep stitching until you're sinking stitches at the very end of that long stitch. If you want a rounded finish (as seen here), adjust the angle and the length of your stitches when you get to the rounded portion of your shape.

Out of curiosity, I tried stitching a leaf the opposite way. Parallel stitches first, and then the long stitch down the center.

First off, I made a mistake and made my bottom stitches waaaaay too long, so if it looks funny there's a 95% chance it was due to an error on my part.

Other than that, I'd say the effect was very similar if not the same. So, whichever works for you should turn out just fine.

^_^

Doodleplex must NOT be forgotten.

However, I am sad to admit that I often do forget not so little 'ol Doodleplex...

But, here you can see the beginning of the last "round" of Doodleplex Part II:

Actually, now that I think about it it's the end of the "second to last" chunk of Doodleplex Part II.
I did jump the gun a little, though, and thread the three colors I want to use for the "tree"... who knows if I'll be able to use it this stitch session, though.

Here's a shot of the first stitches!

Anywho, the main chunk of this post is dedicated to the purpose of me complaining about my bizarrely sudden struggles with the fishbone stitch in the "leaves" above the flower.

In case you don't recall (and I'd be surprised and impressed if you did recall), I've already had some practice with fishbone stitch back in Doodleplex Part I:

and:

I was positive it would work the same here, but it wasn't until I started in on it that I realized that the shape of the "leaves" I was trying to fill were gonna be an issue.

And I went through a few different versions of stitches until I finally seemed to get a hang of this one specific stitch that I came up with one the spot. I haven't seen said stitch before, so I'll just go ahead and coin it.

I call it: Arrowhead stitch (displayed here in the green-yellow leaf).

Note: it's called the arrowhead stitch because of the "theoretical" appearance. Though, so far it looks like a feather or fluffy bunny tail (center leaf).

Why Arrowhead? Well, there's already a feather stitch, and "Arrowhead" sounds more epic than "fluffy bunny tail stitch"

Anywho...since I'd already threaded some thread for the "tree", I didn't exactly finish all of these leaves.

I did get to use that tree thread though.

Therefore, at the end of a marathon stitching session, I give you:

Tutorial on Arrowhead coming soon! ( © Karla Barraza)

^_^

Ah... clothespins ^_^

For those of you who don't know yet, I live in Cancun--way way way way south of the border in the tropics. The seasons are a little different here, but one thing for sure is that come September (and by now practically October) things are still pretty hot and muggy--emphasis on the muggy thanks to Hurricane season. 

Though we never get really cold whether, a drawback (kinda serious if you have breathing problems and a textile oriented hobby like someone I know...) is a giant petri dish for various forms of mold and mildew. 

Thanks to Lysol, I can keep it at bay but there are times, like now, when drastic measures must be taken. 

My mom suggested this after I spent two days trying to air out that foul smelling piece of canvas. The blinds have a little chord that you pull to rotate them or pull them across the window, so I figured, what the hey? 

I think it's working. I gave it a test sniff earlier today and the smell has gone down considerably. 

And yes, those are hot wheels. 

^_^

(3 slideshows) So... I came up with my own needle tatting techniques... i think

I say I think because for all I know, they're already out there and I just haven't found them yet... and they probably are--but it'd be kinda cool to think otherwise, huh? ^_^

The first thing that kinda stumped me when it came to needle tatting was a way to do thrown off rings, or "floating rings". I remember seeing a video out there, but it had a result similar to mock rings with shuttles. 

I'm a little OCD sometimes, so... that kinda bugged me.

Therefore, I thought I might as well take a crack at figuring it out. 

Tada! Floating Rings (Thrown off rings) with with a smooth chain underneath!
(Click the little speech bubble button on the bottom left hand corner of the slideshow for the instructions in the comments)

As you may have noticed, making floating rings requires cutting the thread supply off from the ball... Now, in shuttle tatting, I don't have this problem because of the supply on the bobbin--so I hit the internet again. I found some good tutorials, but I still felt like seeing if there was a different way for variety's sake:

Adding thread to tatting with the magic thread trick!

And lastly, because it seriously bugged the biscuits out of me when I had a piece of thread left over on the needle afterwards, I give you: 

How to start tatting with a left over thread!

I have no idea if these techniques will work for you guys, but I sure hope they do!
All I know is I'm having fun over here.
^_^

Busy Busy Days

Boy oh boy, it's been a hectic few days. Last week I was running around town doing errands for my parents, and I didn't sleep Friday night so I could wake them up in time for my dad to leave for the airport at 3:30 in the morning, and Saturday and Sunday it was essentially just regrouping for me and my mom--you know, holding down the fort n' all.

Anywho, I've started and finished a few projects:

1. still trying to make more "real" bobbins:

   Don't they look smart? I whittled the tips down to points and glued beads on them. It was what kept me up while my dad went to the ER (long story better suited to another blog).

Here you see them in action:

I was pretty proud of myself--but then pride always comes before the fall right?


There is now one left. The friggidy frackin' beads kept falling off. Grrr.

C'est la vie...

Also, I've been tatting away. I'm retatting Anna's Doily and here's a general summary of my progress:




So, I'm using Omega cotton crochet thread, size 30. This is the second version of this doily, which I'm also using to refine the pattern.

I will soon post before and after shots so you guys can see the differences =D

Also, I've been working on Evelyn's doily, and started work on a new doily (mat?) which, up to this point, decided to dub: the Flow Doily.


I had some rather... irritating problems with the first round of the Flow Doily. I wonder if you can see what it was...






I tried to figure out what went wrong, but I didn't pin it down until after I started and finished version 2.0 of the first round. What I did, was essentially make it in two parts that I joined together at the center.



And I must say that I rather liked the effect.

 Anywho, that's as far as I've gotten on Flow.

The thing that Flow did for me though, was made me remember something that I saw on YouTube, about starting from a chain instead of a ring. I then realized that it was the way I had started the previous time (from a ring, with the chain coming out from the center) that had left no room for the last chain of the round to join.

So, then comes the redo of the first round of Evelyn's doily. I wanted to retat it, testing and such, and I did--and I will soon post pictures of how it turned out =D

^_^

P.S. My dad took the camera with him to the states, so the reason these pictures are so fuzzy is because I took them with the camera on my phone, which I've had for about... 6 years.

VICTORY!!!!!

So, a few months ago, I found this nifty video on YouTube that told me how to turn sharp corners in bobbin lace, and it was sooo cool because I hadn't seen how to do this before.

Then, I forget about it.

Last week, I remembered it, yet I couldn't think of the name. I could've sworn it was "double stitch" or "punto doble" or something along those lines--> see, because I was being honest with myself and admitting the fact that sometimes if I read something in Spanish, I remember that it was in English even though it was in Spanish. Also, I remembered thinking: Huh, I haven't heard of that before. What is it? 

So yesterday, I'm scouring YouTube for forever and a day--and nothing. I can't find the friggidy frackin' son of a biscuit video anywhere.

And it's driving me crazy. 

I can't find it, therefore I can't get it out of my head. 

So, today, I was all: screw it I'm gonna google it, and may be that'll give me better results. 

An hour later, I am proud to present to you: 

THE BACK STITCH!  (So I was a little off, whatever...)

^_^

This makes me feel better about yesterday's tragedy. 

Tipsy tips =D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLxMMDEx4KM&feature=g-all-u

So, I found this super nifty way of figuring out which size thread to use. Superdeeduper simple!

It's in Spanish, but the great thing is that there's such a thing as Google translate! ^_^

Bleh (continued)

So, the offending stitch is listed here in The Encyclopedia of Needlwork (Thérèse de Dillmont) as the sixteenth lace stitch. Let the boos resound.

Here were my first attempts:

As you can see, the bars (damn them) are vertical and not at the angle that I would so like them to be.

So, after very much frustration and very many headaches, I decided to look again at the picture of the stitch--several times-- to no avail.

At last, after much struggle and torment, I caught sight of text below the image and thought "Oh, what could this be?"

Note to self: It's a good idea to read the instructions

Though still not perfect, I've managed to wrangle the little devils into better-ish shape: 

It turns out that I was making the knot at the top of the loose buttonhole and working down when I should've been making it at the bottom-middle-ish of the buttonhole and working up. 

Oh, btw, the way I've been practices stitches is with a piece of canvas. What you do, is you essentially sew the edges into the canvas and work the stitches over the top. I like canvas because of the open weave which makes it easy to measure the distance between stitches --> which is good if you're semi anal-retentive like me. 

pretty pretty flower

Hiya there, so, I've been working on a little project that took waaaaaaaaaaaay longer than it should of, what with school and all. It was smaller than the palm of my hand, but then again priorities are priorities =)

   So, on your left you see the pattern. It's been sewn onto the backing (two pieces of fabric) and pricked to make the couching easier. Also, though you can't see it, I sewed another piece of paper (normal notebook paper) onto the back so I could see the pricking on that side also.
The great thing about needle lace is that you can make just about anything. It's great for free form shapes.

   Here, I've already finished the filling stitches. (I forgot to take the picture of the plain outline, whoops).  The dense part is a corded Brussels stitch, with a single Brussels stitch along the edge of the outline to give it that sort of suspended effect. I learned it from here. You can see the same effect on the left hand side of the picture, where the stitching is dense. The lighter area in this picture is a questionable pea stitch. it was definitely an educational experience.

 Tada!! In the final stages of production, I have finished the buttonholing and now need to remove it from the backing and fix up a few details here and there.
Also, that loopy thing on the right hand side is not a pitiful excuse for a picot, but a loop for a clasp. I was thinking of selling this, but I screwed up a couple things and I honestly couldn't turn it over unless it was as well made as possible.

She lives!!! =D
What felt like a month later, and it's done. Muahahahahahahahaha =D

Other ventures

So, I've been going on and on about needle lace (don't ask me what kind, because I take techniques from different styles)... but, what ever happened to bobbin lace?

Bum bum ba-da!!!!! I present to you: Camile -->
She is my lace-making pillow. I made her myself, stuffing her with tow (some of it cut up, some not) and two socks filled with rice.
For instructions on making your own lace pillow... try to touch that face's nose:  ^_^

Anywho... the sticks with the rubber bands around them are my makeshift bobbins. They're actually dowels that I got for like ___ at this Mexican wannabe version of Micheal's called Parisina.They're really supposed to look something along the lines of this, or this depending on what type of lace you're making (click here for a brief summary of what "depending on what type of lice you're making" means)

As you can see... they don't exactly match up, which, my dear readers, is why I got a little OCD and decided to take matters into my own hands... mwahaha.

<-- Here left, I give you the results of my boredom (and a little bit of hardheadedness).
The first stick, is obviously the original dowel. At about six and a half inches long, it was a little clunky to say the least.

Stick #2, stage 1 of production: I chopped off the end at 4 1/2 inches and carved out the area that held the string.

Stick 3.0 --> Here's where I discovered that I have a problem: I can never let it go. It was just nagging, and nagging and nagging at me that the freaking bobbin looked too plain. Of course, I thought long and hard about my sore thumbs, potential calluses and possible future arthritis... but then decided to screw it. I wanted my bobbins to look nice--even if it took me two years to whittle out a decent sized set.

I think it turned out pretty nifty if I do say so myself =D I've decided on a schedule: I will only work on these things during the weekend, and I will only make two--and I mean two--at a time. This being a measure to make sure I keep my hands young (0.0) and to make sure I can retain enough feeling in them to type up my notes for school =D

First genuine attempt

Okay, so this time I actually just made something to make it, and to try to get a little fancier. I think it turned out pretty good, and I have to say that it took an insanely long time to make it, what with school and all. Counting only pure labor it took like... somewhere upwards of 15 hours to make (that's a loose estimate) give or take three or four hours--But all together it was somewhere like maybe three weeks or so.

 So, let's see what we have:

The solid areas area a very closely packed whipped buttonhole stitch. The netting is a point d'espagne (single twisted buttonhole stitch) and the edges are just your typical single brussels stitch, except just on the outside of the lace instead of the inside.

The edging was one of two new things that I tried. The second was the thin bars connecting the little loopy things in the middle of the design. Those are called Sorrento bars --> which I will soon post pictures of (really, I already have some sample stitches ready).

All in all, I think it turned out okay. Any comments?

Succeeessss!!!!

Muahaha, the third time's the charm!!

It took me a while to figure out the pattern, but I eventually came up with this funky octopus type thing (left) and maybe I forgot to take pictures of it until after I started couching the outline...

And maybe I forgot to take pictures of everything else during the process... buuuut, I did manage to remember to take pictures before I gave it away =D
The filling stitches are a double Brussels stitch (I promise that I will post pictures sometime within the distant/near future/alternate time stream).

I decided not to make them identical, not really sure why, but I figured it looked kinda cool. I padded the outline with nylon thread, but they were still kinda flimsy (as you can see in that funky twisted thing on the left earring.


I do believe I smell progress in the air ... ^_^

first flower

So, after the last ring, I decided that I wanted to branch out and not be restrained by purely band-style rings. Deciding to go three dimensional, I started in on a flower that I planned to sew onto a different style of band that I have yet to actually make.

Now, my camera was being moody so I didn't take as many pictures of the production as I wanted, buuuut I did get some.

 Here in the first one, you can see that I've drawn the outline on a piece of paper (the middle's all blurry because I screwed it up and had to white it out--not recommended by the way, since the ink/lead rubs off on the lace by the time you're done =/ ) and sewn it onto two pieces of fabric which you can't see. As far as I've read, you're supposed to put something stiffer like cardboard under the pattern, but I don't particularly care to deal with cardboard, so I just got a 8 x 11 piece of foam from Chedraui (it's weird how much random stuff they have) and stuck that in between two pieces of fabric--though not on this one, on another project I'm working on that came after this. Still, though, the two pieces of fabric worked fine, but I had to stick the needle in and out of every hole I made for the couching thread to make sure I could see it through the fabric.

Now, here you can see this thing that I recently stopped doing, where I buried the two outline threads you usually buttonhole on after you make your stitches into the outline before the stitches were made. I have since realized the error of my ways since this pulled at the couching stitches and in turn the paper, which was then grabbed during the button holing which then just ended up being a big pain in the in the a**.

I do however, like to burying the edges of my stitching in the couching thread instead of wrapping them around the outline. As a beginner, I found it easier to keep the stitches neat that way, but lately I've been thinking of venturing out of that habit since you have to make the couching stitches closer together or farther apart depending on how close you want your rows of stitches to be.


On the bright side, you learn through your screw ups =D

Lace Ring #2

So, after much consideration, I decided to try again. Learning from my last ring, I decided to give the band more support and made a new pattern with more horizontal bars.
And I came up with this:

aaaand by this time, I remembered my camera and got some pictures of the production:

On the other hand, I did maybe kinda forget to take pictures of when I actually joined the two ends of the ring, but I will definitely put it on my to-do list.

By the way, I did the stitching in the gaps before I joined the two pieces together.




I will, however, do my best to explain the absolutely horrible, tremendous, monstrous (just kidding =D ) process of joining the two ends together.

As seen on my left, I'm at the end of the pattern (I didn't do the last bit of horizontal bars). Now, instead of just closing it off right there and having a flat rectangle on my hands, I threaded both of the threads on the bottom (you can't see it, but the top threads are very short) on a fine needle (skinniest I could find), ran the thread through the loops made by the couching thread (light colored thread) through the top line of the pattern, and then through one of the vertical bars to reach the bottom line of the pattern. I did this to keep it strong and make sure it held.

So far, it seems to have worked. It has survived my klepto kitty and my chew happy pug. Not a newbie stitch out of place ^_^

Oh! And it's extremely washable since I made it out of polyester (Gutermann).

Progress

Apparently, I was doing the stitches wrong. Go figure. Shortly after the red circle, I completed a lovely dark grey circle with uniform stitches and everything... it is currently MIA, though I think my vacuum of a pug, or my pickpocket of a siamese might've had something to do with the M part.

Anywho, I decided to move on to what originally got my attention about lace. My mom told me that she saw it being made once, where they were actually sewing it onto the fabric and I thought hmm... there's probably some info about how to do that on the internet.

There isn't. At least none that I could find--but after a couple of forum hits, I decided to wing it and just pick up some of whatever material I was using during the buttonholing of the outline. So, I went to my local Chedraui (Mexican grocery store) and picked up some cheap organza, and I came up with this:

Here's the back:

Five bucks I did it wrong, but hey, at least I tried =D