New Skills for everyone.

My happy group of stitchers have started on a new creative journey......very exciting for everyone. They are such a sharing caring group that they share their ideas, resources and time with each other. The encouragement is amazing and just what the group was set up for.

Lizzy was keen to start some scrap booking with pictures of her lovely boys, so with lots of encouragement and bits and pieces from others she set to work. I know that it is very addictive and you can easily get carried away with buying lots of lovely papers and trimmings. So I encouraged her to just make one special picture first, one that could be framed and put on the wall. She put this together with lots of encouragement and over the weeks has bought bits from discount stores and sales at craft shops and has now got a growing collection of stuff to play with.

Back to stitching, Karen made this over a number of weeks to hang in her kitchen.

....and Gemma made this very quickly for her mum and now wants to make one for herself.

Many of the stitchers choose to make things for others, Susan challenged herself with recreating this lovely printed card as an embroidery for her friend. An extra challenging project as it was done directly onto felt and needed a lot of planning. I suggested that she draw out the design and draw round it as a template as you can just see in the left of the picture, the details were then easier to measure and place.

It looked rather grand and splendid in a simple frame, with the name of the theatre and the date it was performed to finish off the design.

Back to Lizzy, this was her stitching from last term, which she finally finished off and was actually pleased to see the back of! But its good to get things finished so that you can move onto something lovely. I think the frustrating thing with this project was that she choose a muslin square to stitch the design on and it was very tricky to keep flat and neat, it will look good on the wall never the less. Good work!

More scrap booking, well done Gemma :)

.....and now for something completely different!

Cross stitch is not something I have ever really done, I don't think! So when a new crafter came along, I suggested she look in a charity book shop for some inspiration to get started. This is the first little design, which Suzie cleverly adapted to suit her style.

Week one, choose a design and get started:

Week two, get carried away at home and finish the design, so cute!:

Week three, decide to give it to a friend as a new home gift and turn it into a little padded cushion to hang up:

So, thinking I ought to have a go myself so I know a bit more and can advise others. I found a pattern I really loved and set to work, I had not realised how long it would take! Oh my goodness, hours.......and hours.......but it was less of a chore because I did enjoy just following the graph and not having to think too had about the design. So here is my tree ready to be pressed and framed.

I have now purchased the lovely new Embroidery Companion by Alicia Paulson and there are some cross stitch patterns in there, so perhaps I will have a go at another one??

Never to sell though, they take far too long!