WOW Winners are online.

The fabulous designs are all up on the website.

You must check them out.

I love them all. Glad I'm not a judge, because how on earth could you pick a Supreme from all this wonderful creativity.

Happy Creativity.

Phillipa



Watch the Birdie

He's flitted into here.

Slowly Stitching.

Phillipa



Evy is Amazing

You must, must must check out the work by Evy.

She may write in french but the photos are awe-inspiring.

Go check the site out here :)

I'm soooooooooo in love..lol

Happy Stitching

Phillipa

Welcome aboard

Hello and welcome to all my followers and my new followers.

I am soooo chuffed that you find my work to be of enough interest to follow.:)

The number of creative blogs on the internet

is mind-boggling and HOORAY, you've found me.

(Does a little dance)

I'm interested in anything to do with stitching, in all its forms.

I never work on one project at a time,

even tho I am trying to make it fairly coherent on here.

So bear with me, follow along, tell all your friends, pretty please,

and see what I come up with next.

I hope to start doing a few more tutorials of projects.

There I've publicly said it. That should keep me on track.

While adding to my patterns that I hope to sell heaps of, so I

can keep up my op-shopping for treasures and Live in the lifestyle I'd love to be accustomed to..lol.

So

Welcome Aboard

from the Always Stitching

Phillipa



Unorganised Thread Piece. Long term project

I always have a small piece beside my chair that gets stitched with the lengths of thread that you always end up with when stitching an organised piece.

Even if its only long enough for a couple of stitches, it gets used.

nothing gets wasted.

Normally I make up a hotch-potch fabric collage then just stitch. No planning, no end result in mind, just to see what happens.

Weeell, this one is 3 flowers from my stash and, I never noticed till I photographed it that, Theres a little doggy shape there.

Can you see that sad little face?

Will this influence my stitching? It probably will, shape wise I'm sure.





These odd pieces take ages to do so I will just have to see how it evolves.



Happy Scrappy stitching.

Phillipa

Coffee Dying for my Stash

Things on the go all the time.

Coffee dying.

Half a bucket of Hotwater.

About 6 tablespoons af that really cheap coffee.

Dunk n swirl for 24 hours.

Then a very quick rinse. drip dry. then hot iron to set.

If you dont mind the coffee smell you can skip the rinse part and get a darker colour.

Happy Dunking n swirling

Phillipa

I Spoke too Soon. We have MORE Snow!!

Ok, I spoke too soon about us not getting snow That often here.

Yesterday morning .

This arrived between Midnight and 7am. Its still a

novelty for us. :)

Phillipa

Felt Rose

As if I dont need any more little projects. :)

How about a Felt Rose.

I have this gorgeous reddy pink felt and its a perfect colour for a rose.

I cut 2 circles of felt.The backing one is green.

Approx 2.5" diameter (7cms-ish)

A couple of leaf shapes as well.

Then I just back-stitched a spiral, starting from the centre.

Make a sandwich with the leaves in between.

Pin to hold and then a running stitch around the outside.

And Voila!!

Do I NEED a reason to make these little projects.??

Of course not. hehe.

I can imagine these on all sorts of things.

A bunch on a tote, or a single on a hairband or clip.

As a brooch.

Perfect for that little gift or stocking stuffer.Even as an embellishment on a gift.

If you make some I'd love to see your versions.

Happy happy stitching.

Phillipa

PS. OOhhh noo. Different colours of felt are demanding to be made into other flowers. Will keep you posted ;)

Wrapping your hoops.

Nooo. I havnt lost my mind. well not all of it anyway.

Just a tip for the beginner embroiderers.

I wrap the inside ring of all my embroidery hoops, as this helps to give better grip and less marking of your fabric.

Hoops can be used au-natural but I would recommend wrapping after  you've made sure that the hoops are lovely and smooth.If you feel any rough areas, a light sand with sandpaper (fine Grade) or even an emery board will do the trick.

Wrap with a bias cut tape and stitch the end  to keep it tidy.

Each of the above hoops has been wrapped with different tapes as Ive bought them at different times.

The brown is bias binding. The white is a cotton tape and the black is a tape for hat making.

Hope this helps

for Happy stitching

Phillipa

Woohoo!! My first sale on Etsy

My Hearts and Flowers Pattern sold on Etsy.

I'm sooooo thrilled that I'm on the right track in designing patterns.

Tell all your friends ;)

Happy Happy Stitching

Phillipa

 Christchurch doesnt get snow very often,but last week we got heaps.

Here is my rusting area slowly reappearing.

 

 

The thaw took ages as the driveway doesnt get any sun.

The ice was very tricky to navigate. :)

 

Rusting always.

 

Phillipa

Shabby Collage Book wrap

Another eclectic mix of vintage linens and

crocheted doilies and some very yummy ancient lace.

Ta da..:)

A deliciously tactile book wrap for that precious keepsake.

Happy stitching

Phillipa

Budding Paleontoligists in the family?

Since I have heaps of ideas for patterns for

girls and household, I thought I had better do a couple of patterns for little boys.

I'm sure your little hunters will love these. :)

Happy Stitching

Phillipa

Rusty Tools from the charity shop and Beads

Another nifty find at the charity shop.

They are already hard at work and the 2 beaded necklaces have been added to my beading stash. The blue have already been used on a crazy jewel tone block.:)

Happy stitching

Phillipa

Eco Dye. Camelia

On one of my jaunts to the post office i spotted some windfall camelia flowers. So what's a girl to do?

See what the potential is.

A lovely pinky colour with a nice perfume :).

will add to my shabby stash.

And since the liquid is still quite strong, Ive started another batch with lacey bits and scraps.

The first batch was left for just on a week, as I kept forgetting about it.Will I forget again?

Probably.lol

Happy Stitching

Phillipa

Hand Embroidery Patterns. By ME! Yippee!!

A while ago I posted about some little embroidery's that I did.

Well I had quite a few nice ideas from peoples and so

I'm now doing my own patterns.
These will be available as PDF's. No worrying about postage costs. :)

The first 4 are now on my Sella account .

I have heaps of ideas in the ol' noodle for many different designs, both traditional and contemporary.

For my overseas followers I have also started an Etsy shop.

I'd love to have you follow along.

I will have freebies and ideas and lots of other items on stitching in the future.

Now that Ive made a public statement about it all, I'd better pull finger and get moving :)

Happy stitching

Phillipa

Jewel Colours. Another block done

A blingy butterfly and a spiderweb complete with resident.

Enjoy.

Happy stitching

Phillipa

Jewel Colour and Butterfly Bling

Bling butterfly on hand crocheted doiley

amid  a bouquet of daisys.

Silk ribbon daisys are fun and effective to do.

You can see that they've been set among others

done in different threads to bounce the textures

against each other.

Happy stitching

Phillipa

Colour, colour, colour and spider-web.

Nearly forgot the spider-web and spider.

Couched gold threads held down with

DMC Metallic 273.

I love that thread and use it alot.

Happy Stitching

Phillipa

Jewel Colours. Crazy Quilt Block

Inspiration.

Enjoy

Happy Stitching

Phillipa

I cant reply to comments..Sorry

I cant reply to comments on my own blog and comment on other peoples blogs. Ive seen that others out there in blogland are getting similar problems.

Dont know why.

Its darned annoying.

So if you "Can" comment. I'm jealous.If you know how I can fix it, please let me know.

And be assured I am reading your comments. :)

regards Phillipa

Playtime continued

2 photos of the same thing.

These could become rather addictive ;)

Happy stitching

Phillipa