I do like the pink palette combo of appleton crewel colors 144, 142, 751, 753 & 222 they work very nicely together. I have the 'handmade felt is precious' disease. I need to get over that! Now that I've completed the project I wish the petals were touching each other and the overall piece was smaller. I wanted the felt to show through the petal design, but I don't think it works as well as I had envisioned. Vivienne says it's a mommy headband, it's not for girls. Her sweet way of saying, I don't like it. It's true it's a bit too big. I ended up whip stitching the edges so they would look nice when viewed from the side edge which is what you see when looking at the wearers face. I haven't been able to remove all the stabilizer either which is quite frustrating. I am worried about washing it since the felt and thread are wool and will shrink. Maybe I'll be brave enough for a cold soak to see if the stabilizer will disintegrate once more time passes and I don't feel so attached to the hours I spent stitching. Hope so! I learned a lot on this one so it's not all a wash.

Happy leap day!

Technorati Tags: crewel, embroidery, felt, felting, wool

Posted by big bunny at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm thrilled to have received the Old English Appleton crewel wool samples. I will now feel confident about the color choices I am making. I felt insecure choosing from the website swatches. Fortunately I love all color so I figured I'd just collect a bunch and work them into something in the future.

I've had some progress on the sashiko embroidery design. It's a bit tedious and I still have a long way to go. I do like the look of it, though I wish I had made my stitched longer. Short seed length stitches get lost in the fluffy felt. Now I know. I can only hope the stabilizer will tear away easily so that I won't be left picking little bits out. That too is tedious!

Technorati Tags: crewel, embroidery, felt, wool

Posted by big bunny at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm undertaking a new embroidery project. I love the look of sahiko patterns so I recreated a design I liked. I did a 14x14 inch pattern in illustrator and printed it out so I can embroider it on one of the pieces of felt I've made. I'm using the ashland bay khaki color merino piece I felted with crewel embroidery thread color 984. I imagine this will be a meditative process, ahhh can't wait to sit down and chill. If you find this posting because you were searching for a free sashiko pattern and you like this one, email me and I'll send you the vector file. < I'm big at bunny design dot com >

On another satisfying note, I also ordered myself a bigger piece of pool cover and a better roller. The last of the cheap rollers I picked up at Daiso broke last night — the ol' you get what you pay for story. The pool cover piece I have was a hand me down and it's too small and doesn't have squared or straight edges.

Technorati Tags: crewel, embroidery, felt, felting, sashiko

Posted by big bunny at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm having some fun being crafty — my happy time! I hand felted some thick black merino and cut it down to size so that Mr. C's galaxy tablet will fit inside. I printed the Avantgarde logo onto some interfacing (you can see the white bits which I still need to cover or pull out) and I am embroidering it with crewel wool. It's fun and easy. I'm looking forward to pulling out the sewing machine and seaming this up. I'll post more progress soon.

Technorati Tags: embroidery, felt

Posted by big bunny at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)