Handmade Holiday Gift Idea: Custom Embroidery Kit for Teen Girls

I'm trying to get a little bit of a jump start on Christmas gifts this year because, where appropriate, I want to make as many of them as I can. Today I put together this custom embroidery kit for my niece, Eva, who is twelve. (I'm pretty sure she doesn't read my blog, so hopefully I'm not ruining any surprises here.) A few weeks ago she casually asked me if I could teach her how to embroider, and I tried to act all cool and nonchalant and said "Sure thing", when inside I was jumping up and down with excitement. Though I try to infect my boys with the crafting virus at every opportunity, they have for the most part remained immune to the lure of needle crafts. 

For this kit I've included a hoop, some needles, a few skeins of embroidery floss, some pretty scissors, and two pieces of linen. One piece is plain, to learn her stitches on, and on the second piece I traced a pretty letter E with a floral border that I got from this book:

To transfer the letter to the linen, I scanned it into my computer, enlarged it to fit the piece of linen I wanted to use, and traced it right onto the fabric using embroidery carbon paper. I put everything in place for tracing, then taped it all down onto the table so it wouldn't move around. 

This picture doesn't show it, but I also taped the carbon paper to the linen and taped the letter to the carbon paper. Notice the carbon paper is right side down, the letter is right side up. Then I traced the whole thing. 

So here's the tracing on the linen, so she can stitch right on top of the lines. 

I had to include a close up of these gorgeous embroidery scissors, which were hard to resist keeping for myself. They cost about ten bucks, bringing the total cost of this gift to about $13, or £8.50 I also included a tagged card that tells her this gift includes free embroidery instruction with me, which, of course, is priceless.

If you're making gifts for anyone this year please share your ideas with me. I'll be adding more of my own as my holiday making plans kick into gear. To my American friends, have a very happy Thanksgiving tomorrow. Even though we won't be officially celebrating here, I'll be counting my blessings as always. 

Adventures in Stitches

As a follow up on a recent post I wrote on the Burford Needlecraft Shop, I thought I'd bring to your attention the amazing needlework of the late Hungarian artist Mariska Karasz. Karasz had a successful career in New York the 1920's and 30's as a clothing designer, but later abandoned that path to pursue needlecraft as a fine art. Her work is extraordinary not only for its masterful craftsmanship and beauty, but because it can be seen as a precursor to the feminist arts movement of the 1970's. Before Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro began incorporating traditional women's crafts into the fine arts arena (at Womanhouse, for instance), Karasz had begun to establish textile arts as a new field unto itself. I found her book (pictured above) on Amazon. You can visit the website about her here.

Amazing, aren't they? I love embroidery as an alternate method of drawing, and her images convey the possibilities that the medium affords.

On a totally different and more humble scale, below are a few images of projects I've worked on lately that incorporate embroidery. The first is a floral drawing I've done on some white linen which I wanted to look like crewel work (which wasn't too successful, hence the crewel kit I bought in Burford recently). The second is a pair of baby booties I made for a friend's bun in the oven using this tutorial from the Purl Bee Blog, which uses only a blanket stitch around the bottom. The third is a blanket I also made for said bun, which is variegated purple floss on purple linen with a wool felt backing. I traced different sized embroidery hoops onto the linen for my circles, then just added running stitches.

Now, back to my last minute preparations for some small person's birthday party tomorrow. Twenty three felt crowns, satin capes and glittery sceptres were completed in my studio at nine o'clock last night. More on that to follow.

First Dispatch From England: Needlecraft Heaven

So I'm going to go ahead and pretend it hasn't been three months since my last post. (Fine-three and a half.) Those who know me are aware of my family's recent move from the States to the UK, so I'll leave it at that as far as excuses go. But we're settling in nicely-the kids are in school, I have moved into my studio, and the rhythms of a more structured existence are falling into place. Everyone is happy.

I've posted before on various embroidery projects that I've done, and I continue to love the versatility and gratification that embroidery-either on its own or incorporated into another craft, provides. Though I'm still a novice to the craft, my interest in this art form continues to grow, and today I died and went to embroidery heaven when I visited The Burford Needlecraft Shop.

When I first walked through the door, into a little room absolutely bursting with supplies, I was a touch disappointed, because the shop seemed so small. Here was the view from the entrance:

But before long I quickly discovered a labyrinth of rooms, including some upstairs, that stocked needlecraft supplies I never even knew existed. Here's a quick visual tour:

Above: a bunch of wool for crewel work, which is my favorite form of embroidery to look at.

Here's some of the tapestry wool (above); they also stock several printed tapestry canvases. But that's way beyond my modest abilities at the moment.

Their collection of books is rather small, but I was so happy to see that they carry Diana Rupp's "Embroider Everything Workshop", an excellent book by the woman who taught me basic embroidery!

On one half of the upstairs (above) I found tons of specialty threads, including lots of beautiful metallics, as well as buttons and silk ribbon.

And the other half is stuffed with a delicious selection of knitting wool. This part of England is known for its wool, and Burford was once a wealthy beneficiary of revenues from the trade.

Stuffed into various pockets of the shop, I also saw all sorts of unique supplies that I've never seen elsewhere, like Danish Flower Thread (which is a single strand thread with a matte finish) and Mandarin wool floss for cross stitching:

They also carried the biggest selection of metallic floss I've ever seen. I need some of that.

I wanted to buy one of everything, but I settled on one skein of the Danish floss, and this pretty crewel starter kit with a pomegranite motif. 

 I also picked up this mini Tower of London cross stitch kit. There was a whole series of famous London buildings-I might have to do all of them.

The Burford Needlecraft Shop sells some of its inventory online, here. Its a pretty limited selection compared to what's in the real shop, but still worth a look if you're a needle arts geek like myself. 

Irons in the Fire

I know its been quiet around here, lately. I have to confess that I've been a little less creative at home with the family than usual, what with all of life's little to-do's getting in the way of my preferred mode of hanging out at home in our pj's, playing and making stuff. But I'm still at it. Mainly I've been working on a bunch of things for a new Etsy shop I'll be opening soon. I'll be selling baby and toddler accessories, and I'm having a lot of fun making every single thing that you'll find there. For instance. In the picture below you see Michael (in which we are snubbing our noses at child labor laws) modeling a pair of upcycled wool legwarmers. Here's a sneak peak at a couple of other things I'm working on. Once the shop is up and running, I'll be sure to let you know.

Also, I've been busy gathering materials and finishing making samples for a class I'll be teaching here in Brooklyn in a few weeks, on turning your child's drawing into embroidered art. You can check out my blog post about that here. If you're interested in signing up for the class, which will be held at Hootenanny Art House in South Slope, on Monday March 12th at 7 pm, shoot me an email, or check back soon for details on how to register.

Lastly, I've decided that its time to update the design of my blog to reflect the fact that I am in fact a creative person, capable at the very least of designing my own damn header. But Blogger and I aren't really getting along right now, and the idea of spending more time trying to write code to manipulate these pages in a way that satisfies me is most unsatisfying. So please excuse the lackluster appearance of things right now. Like everything else in my life, its a work in progress.

Embroidered Drawings

Now that we've fallen back with the clocks and the nights are about to get very, very long, I'm trying to recommit to finishing up a bunch of abandoned craft projects that I had started but never finished. The first thing on my list to work on is this embroidery project that I began about 3 years ago, after I first let Jake watch the original Superman movie. Pictured above you will find Jake's interpretation of the attempted mugging scene from said film, which made a deep impression on him. In this scene, Lois and Clark are stopped in an alley at gunpoint by a very bad man who shoots at the pair in the kerkuffle that ensues when Lois tries to be a sassy smartypants, rather than just hand over her purse. In Jake's translation, Lois (far left) screams "Eeeek!" while mild mannered Clark nervously reasons with the mugger "Sir, you can't solve a mystery with a gun." (I believe the actual words Clark utters are "Sir, you can't solve the world's problems with violence."). The mugger replies: "After I just rip off this lady's purse-now hand it over." I LOVE the details in this drawing; the bricks in the background indicating the location, Clark's hat and glasses, Lois's purse, the mugger's gun. The dark lines in the brick show where I've started embroidering so I've still got a long way to go. When its finished I'm going to make it into a pillow for Jake's room.

Detail from the Superman mugging scene:

Sometimes my kids' drawings are just so special to me that I take the liberty of reappropriating them into art of my own. In this picture, and the additional examples that follow, I've taken drawings that my kids have done, transferred them onto fabric and embroidered them. I love this idea so much-and I'll give props here to the mom whom I most hate to love (because I so deeply respect her lifestyle yet fall so short of emulating it), Amanda Blake Soule, from whose book The Creative Family I got this idea-that I had planned for a time on starting a business translating kids drawings into embroidered art. Alas, I somehow wound up making tote bags instead, but no regrets. I've taught Jake to embroider too, and he will occasionally sit with me and stitch a few lines still.

Here is another one of Jake's early drawings of a giraffe that translated beautifully into an embroidered image that now hangs in Michael's room. Jake actually did a series of these giraffes; I can't find the original one that I used for the embroidery art shown below this image, which is another great reason for stitching a good drawing-it'll last longer! Jake was five when he drew this. I was so moved by his having included with the giraffe a thought bubble, into which he drew a heart, then another heart inside of which he wrote his name. I'm not sure what he was thinking at the time, but I'm pretty sure it was something happy.

The drawing:

The embroidered piece:

Detail:

Note that the fabric is a bit puckered around the image in this drawing. I used plain muslin cloth for this project, but I'd recommend a natural linen for better results, since the weave is wider. I'll also add that to transfer the Superman drawing, which Jake drew on a letter sized piece of paper but which I wanted to put onto a bigger piece of fabric, I used an opaque projector to blow up the image, and drew it onto the fabric with a superfine tip marker. For the giraffe, I employed an embroidery transfer pencil, with which you can trace the image directly onto tracing paper, then iron onto the fabric. Be sure to flip your image around first if you're tracing letters. (So trace once, then flip the tracing paper over and trace again from behind; the backwards image will be the one you iron onto the fabric.)

Finally I'll share a much quicker image of Charlie's that I recently made since I'm trying to jazz up his pitifully under decorated bedroom with some cute wall art. I'll leave this in the embroidery hoop and hang it just like it is. I see an image of a mouse in profile, enclosed in a circle. Yes, he's got very long legs. For this picture I gave Charlie a pen and a piece of muslin and just asked him to draw me a picture. I embroidered right on top of his lines. It took me about 15 minutes to embroider.

PS, I learned to embroider in just a couple of hours by taking a class with Diana Rupp at the awesome Make Workshop. If you don't live in NYC or can't find a live person to teach you how to embroider, I'd recommend (as Diana did to me) getting yourself a copy of Melinda Coss's Reader's Digest Complete Book of Embroidery, which will teach you way more stitches than you'll ever need to get up and running with this craft form. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there that are less traditional, but this one is a great reference guide.

UPDATE:
Diana recently published her own book on how to embroider call the Embroider Everything Workshop. She teaches you all of the basics and then some, and includes some terrific projects to make. I highly recommend it!