Country Garden Stitchery

I've been working on this little flower blossom in hand dyed silk called "hopscotch days" on some warm pink hand dyed fabric. I think I will make it in to a needlecase with some of my pink fabric that is in the background. Almost finished with it. I've stitched this design before in a lighter color of pink so I wanted to try it in brighter colors. I've been busy sewing today with my new fabrics. I got a bunch back a week or so ago and have been wanting to sew them into something. I bought some insul-bright at the quilt show last weekend and used it all on these potholders. It's nice so your hands don't scorch when you take hot pans out of the oven. I'll have these in my Artfire shop soon. This is one of my favorite samples. This is my second sample I ordered from Spoonflower . I had the first one set at a very large repeat and I scaled it down and like it much better. I increased the size just a little bit to spread the design out a bit more. Love t...

The quilt show is in town this weekend so I went to have a look at all the beautiful creations. Lots and lots of big beautiful quilts. It was really fun to look at all the color combinations and designs. I like little projects to make and wanted something new to make with my fabrics I've been designing. Cupcake potholders I just had to have and I found another pattern with a pear potholder. Will be fun. I'd never seen these before, little postcard patterns. And they are small projects using fat quarters, perfect for me. They have pretty photography and elegant names like "Pristine" and "Eden Rose". These will keep me busy for a while with my new fabrics. My new cross stitch pattern has flowers and butterflies and these are the colors I chose. Will be nice for fall. I've already started a few stitches on some of the flowers and I really like the fabric.

I got some more of my Spoonflower fabric samples in the mail this week. They turned out nice. I did have to play with the reds a little bit to get more color, but other than that all the colors look great. Pinks print very well. This was a watercolor stripe I painted in different shades of pink and then put it into a flower shape. The printing picked up the watercolor effects nicely. I put pieces of this fabric in my Egg Fancies runner below. This was one of my favorites that came back. I wasn't sure how the yellow was going to print and it turned out nice. A great soft buttercream yellow. The little chicks turned out nice too. Haven't decided what I will make with this yet. I don't think I want to cut it up. I used four of the fabrics I got back to make this runner and added commercial fabrics for the binding and backing. New spring decor. It is hanging in my kitchen.

I was very excited to get my fabrics from Spoonflower in the mail last week and was inspired to make some small things with it. I used my spring snippets fabric along with some of my other watercolor fabric in this needlecase. This zippered pouch uses the cabbage rose watercolor fabric. It printed out in large scale before I knew l could scale it down :) I didn't think I would like it big, but I like it sewn up. Like the big flowers. This is another one that was printed big and I liked the big flowers too. This was one of my first four fabrics. I am quickly getting addicted to Spoonflower. There's nothing quite like sewing with my own fabric that I've designed. Very fun. You can see my other fabrics here. http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/countrygarden

I finished my chicken cross stitch pattern this week and framed her in a wooden frame with fabric strips for the matte effect. She is very easy to stitch using just cross stitches and eight colors of Weeks Dye Works flosses. I used 30 ct. hand dyed Havana linen from Weeks Dye Works. They've got some lovely linen colors now to coordinate with their flosses.

Bright flowers for spring stitching. This pattern uses Weeks Dye Works flosses, one color for each flower so very easy stitching - I like simple stitching. It is stitched on hand dyed linen from Wichelt Imports. Finished as a pillow. I called this design "Flower Portraits". It uses all DMC floss on aida fabric. I put a little sunshine charm on the sun at the top. I like to paint flowers and found this really pretty blue vase to paint in watercolor. I'm getting all of my flowers out to decorate for spring.

This is an update on my blue lilacs. There are lots of color changes to give a watercolor effect so it is taking me a little while to do this one. I really like the colors and simple flower design. I want to find some French blue fabrics with a little yellow to finish the design in a table runner. These are my first four fabrics I designed on Spoonflower. It takes a while to get them and I have five more on order and very excited to see them. I adjusted the size of the image so it will be a smaller overall print on the fabric. I liked how it printed the watercolors and the ink drawing. It captures all the details. I've really been inspired by chickens lately so chose some country rustic colors from Weeks Dye Works and their "Havana" fabric to stitch my chicken with. This pattern is much easier and I should have it done soon. I designed some fabric with chickens on it from Spoonflower to finish this design with, you can see a preview of the fabric on my drawing blog. I bo...