Monday, January 19, 2009

Took a little detour




Found myself in Russia gazing at beautiful stitch work.

I don't remember what word I put in Google the other day. But, This is what I found! Plus her tutorial for the Hex shaped needle books.
I have an addiction for making needle books.
So I made one for myself today ;)

The pictures of the tutorial are so universal I hardly needed to use Babel Fish to translate. (You can enter a web address and it translates everything for pages & pages. Mostly understandable, even!)

I made mine quite a bit smaller, once I realized how much larger 17.5 cm is than I thought. Next time I need to decide on a template size and stick to it. That way back & front might come out more or less the same size - first try. I used a CD as the template for the cover circles and instead of hemming the edge I sewed 2 circles together, trimmed extremely close and snipped a slit in the middle of one of the circles and turned.
Slit is completely covered by insert.
(Way easier!)

This one does have a bit of a design flaw as my stork scissors stick out of the pocket too far. Plus I cannibalized a 6 inch crazy quilt block with the hummingbird already stitched. I wanted to get started right away - instant gratification. It started out as several fabrics with embroidered seams, but the more I cut it down to a smaller size, the more was lost. You can just catch a glimpse of the other fabrics. One of the seams had a pink embroidered chain that stood way out of place without the rest of the block seam work. I snipped off the pink, but the needle marks still show.

But most importantly: I finished a project AND have one less orphan block in the treasure box!

4 comments:

Susan said...

Oh my gosh! These are wonderful! I love the hummingbird stitchery...it's just beautiful! I think I may have to take a little detour too and make one of these for myself.

RG said...

Hey Laurie :c)
It is gorgeous!!
I love your word, 'cannibalised' tee hee
Would you mind if I put a link to this on our group please?
let me know.
Thanks and hugs
Keep up the inpiring 'stuff' :c)
Robyn xx

RG said...

in the side bar?! tee hee

Pat Winter Gatherings said...

Beautiful! I will have to try this. Very neat idea, and I love making the sre hummers.