=.(

I have sad news... my cat found and stole... my red ring O.O

First Flower Part 2

Hey there, ho there, hi there! =P I am happy to say that I have managed to scare up some nifty pictures of my latest masterpieces (o.0)


 So, the little, denser petals are a double buttonhole stitch, while the bigger petals are essentially the thread coming out from the outline (starting from the center of the flower), making one button hole stitch, going into the outline on the other side, starting a new row, and making two stitches on each side of the first stitch--and just alternating that (one stitch, two stiches, one, two, one, two, yada yada yada). I did that because I didn't want an big thick line running down the center of the petal to show the stem, so I tried to get my gears churning... and I think it sorta kinda works. Yay? Nay?
Back on the ranch, I don't know if this stitch is shown anywhere else (probably is, but who knows?), therefore I hereby christen it......(drum roll)......cracked stitch! (it looks kind of like a crack, doesn't it? ...or is it just me? =D)

                                                                  ^_^

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

happy new year!

happy new year everybody! if you had a crappy 2011, make 2012 better! and if you had a great 2011, then kick ass in 2012 =P

woo hoo! end of the world, here we come! o.0 =P

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).

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Rings

Around... week one and half of my pink-eye-imposed blindness, I decided that I had enough skill to try to learn how to make jewelry (lacery?) out of lace.

After debating a bit, I decided that rings seemed like the easiest thing to do (and the smallest thing not requiring earring hooks). I drew out a pattern and I did the outline, and moved on straight to buttonholing the outline without sticking any stitches in.
Needless to say, it was definitely a first try:

Now, it keeps it shape, but is extremely flimsy. When I put it on my finger, it rolled around and twisted up and had to be coerced into place.

It was good practice though. You know, learn from your mistakes and all that =)