While our family were checking out the various recycling yards and op shops in our area the other day, my son adopted a poor little teddy bear he named Blinky.
Meet Blinky.
Charlie felt sorry for Blinky, and convinced that I could fix him, he brought the bear home.
It turned out that I had a matching eyeball in my stash. What self respecting crafter doesn’t have an eyeball stash? (I have noses too) 😉
The result? Please enjoy my new tutorial: How to replace a teddy bear’s eye.
Yesterday we took a family trip to the recycling yard (as you do), and I found some boxes of sticky foam sponge shapes, that I assume were meant to be used as packaging somehow.
The type of foam reminded me of the kind used to make Art Foamies, so I stuck them onto three cork place-mats, and now I have a new set of printing blocks!
(Above) This one was inspired by the Mid Century Modern school of design. I might carve some little flower and motif stamps to print over the top. Or maybe some fish.
(Below) I decided to see what I could do with all of the pieces that had been cut up and the odd shapes. This block was inspired by the designs on the Pyrmont incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin in the 1930’s. I had the honour of seeing it shortly before it was demolished. The architectural detail was stunning even in the state of decay it was suffering in 1990.
I used the last of the foamy sponge pieces at an angle, a bit like herringbone brickwork, only with two sizes of oblongs and great big gaps 🙂
These are multi purpose plates. I can roll paint onto them using a foam brayer and print with them that way. I can sponge colours on for a multi-colour effect, or use them as texture plates with a gelli plate. I have so much experimenting to do! I think I’ll start with printing some fabric.
I also found this little bonus in one of the pots of foam pieces. It looks like the previous owner had a similar idea to mine as they had made a little set of round stamps.
Do you like printing on fabric or using gelli plates? Leave a comment with a link to your work becuase I’d love to take a look!
Today’s new knitting pattern is a beautiful lace scarf inspired by Shetland lace by Margaret Anderson of New Zealand. Written in 1936 for a knitting competition in an Australian knitting magazine, I think you’ll agree that Miss Anderson was robbed when she only tied for 6th place!
I know I asked yesterday if anyone would like a pattern for a baby jacket or an edging but I couldn’t wait to get a new pattern up. They’ll be next!
Welcome to the beginning of the 23rd year of Knitting-and.com! To celebrate over 22 years online, I’ve updated the whole site. Yep, the whole thing.
You’ll find all your favourite things that were here before, like the knitting pattern for the Feather and Fan Comfort Shawl, the Baby Surprise Jacket tips page, and a heck of a lot of flower loom tutorials.
You’ll also find you’ll be scrolling a lot less to find things (yay!), there’s a comment section at the bottom of every tutorial and pattern so you can leave a note right on the pattern if you need to, AND (!!!) everything still prints without any of the stuff you don’t need when you’re not online.
Even with all that, the thing I think you’ll like the most is something you can’t even see. I’ve made it eight bazillion times easier for me to add new content. That means more knitting patterns for lace edgings, more vintage embroidery books, more of everything!
You can subscribe right here to be notified every time I add new content. (If you previously subscribed to the Wiki or Blog, you will need to resubscribe).
So grab a cup of tea in your favourite rainbow mug* and have a look around. I’ll see you soon with some more free knitting patterns. Would you like a baby cardigan or a new lace edging?
There are an almost infinite number of places to look for inspiration when it comes to designing hand embroidery and with the invention of the internet, we’ve never had access to more.
This machine sewn and hand embroidered sampler was inspired by an article written by Rebecca Ringquist, on Weallsew.com in 2015
The premise: pick a few stitches from your sewing machine. See what hand embroidery they inspire. I chose not only to replicate the stitches by hand, but also see what stitches might work with them if they were used together. IÂ worked on an old worn out and slightly stained piece of vintage hand work, as I did with my found embroidery pieces in my previous post.
The completed sampler shows the eight machine stitches I chose and all the stitch variations they inspired.
At the top of this photo you can see the machine stitch with asterisks were worked short and long, woven and eventually morphed into eyelets. The diamond stitch became several fancy borders before turning into a traditional triangular filling stitch.
I also used the triangular filling stitch on the crossed petals on the right, along with woven detached picots, satin, fly chain and back stitch.
I repeated the zig-zag stitch with different threads before trying it on several different shapes. The diamond border on the centre right became a small motif, border and large area of back stitched trellis. Back stitched trellis and the triangular filling stitch have become firm favourites of mine, along with eyelets. I’d happily embroider them everywhere!
On the left you can see a machine stitched variation of feather stitch. I found that working it in feather stitch made it a bit sloppy unless worked very small, and my favourite two versions are those on the right.
Finally, the leaf stitch was worked in both sizes offered by my sewing machine. I worked it in variations including detached chain and chain stitch, back stitch and fly stitch.
To finish off the sampler, I threaded knitting wool along the crocheted edge to frame it.
I highly recommend both working on old, worn embroidery and making a sampler inspired by machine stitches. Even if your machine has only the most basic of zig-zags you could work a sampler with all sorts of variations by changing the length and width of your machine stitches and then seeing how many hand stitches they inspire. You can come up with some unexpected new hand stitches, and may even be inspired to use hand and machine stitching together.
If you do choose to stitch one, I’d love to see it! I’m tempted to go and work one with just zig-zag to see what I can come up with…
