A wintry Lincolnshire

I hope you've had a lovely week and thank you for all the messages for the pattern.  I think I've sent them all out so if you haven't received a copy please let me know and I'll email you a copy.  There are lots of lovely princesses appearing on the flickr group to inspire you. We had a lovely break in Lincolnshire 

Gorgeous sandy (mudflats!) beaches for Ash to race along

A whole week of lovely baby cuddling with a bit of driving my sister around.  Sapphire has downs syndrome and we went to the hospital for her heart test while I was there, nerve racking but she has none of the major heart problems associated with downs and at the moment she doesn't seem to have a hole in her heart either (although they can't be certain about that until she's a year old).  My sister has just started a blog about her journey with Sapphire here.  Her blogging is a little sporadic (caesarian, new baby,two other children...) but she promises to keep it up.  In addition to this one of my nieces Harmony has also started a blog here which is rather entertaining, all about the bits Rachel has missed out and how hard life is for big sisters!

snowdrops galore!  I never seem to see them in Cornwall so we took a LOT of photos of them!

Lovely walks

Big scenery, so flat you can see for miles, really not like Cornwall at all

another lovely niece

and gorgeous skies

so now I'd better get started on some work.  I know I had lots of plans I just don't seem to be able to find them!

x

Going away

we're going to Lincolnshire for a few days to visit nieces, in particular our lovely new addition to the family Sapphire Bea

or Elvisette as my sister likes to call her!

I suspect it will be a little colder than it was when we took the top photo!

So I will see you in a week

x

Making a princess

I may possibly have suggested that this post would be here the day before yesterday but that may possibly have been a little ambitious!  So an appliqued princess in pictures

first I transfer the pattern using a light box and a frixion pen.  You can use a window just as easily as my terrible light box, in fact if it's sunny I suspect it would be a lot better

Next I embroider all the lines using back stitch.  With this girl I've used a single thread for all the grey lines

I keep scraps of fabric and attach bondaweb to them when I have a bit of spare time.  This way I just have to cut out the dress pattern from them and iron it straight on.  But before I do any ironing I embroider everything, mainly because a frixion pen disappears with an iron

this time, for her hat, I alternated stitches between pale and dark pink thread.  I've left gaps in the row for the darker thread and I worked the two threads at the same time

this is the finished effect

I cut out the dress and check it fits then once all the other embroidery is done I iron it in place

then stitch it in place, I wanted a contrasting colour here

her shoes were (accidentally) filled with three strands, normally I would have used two!  Her stripy tights are single strands and single stitches.  I like them to be a bit uneven

Her hair is double stranded cotton as is her veil

and she is finished.  There are some other beautiful finished princesses over at the flickr group.  It would be lovely if you joined us there 

x

New embroidery pattern finished

Finally done, this is my lovely new cover for my commissions book and the pattern for the embroidery is now for sale here, here and here.

these are my favourite bits, her daisy hat, her plaits and...

of course her stripy socks and Mary Jane shoes

she looks lovely on a book cover but I think she'd look sweet on a little pillow or even a bag.

Hope you like her 

x

Princesses, presents and a bit of work

Today's post isn't about the princesses but there were a couple of names without emails or with emails that bounced back so if you haven't received the pattern please contact me lili_popo@rocketmail.com and I will reply with the pattern.  I am intending to do an appliqued dress at the weekend so I will pop some photos and notes about it on Sunday.  The flickr group is up and running http://www.flickr.com/groups/lilipopo_princesses/

you're all welcome to join, my princesses are looking a little sad all by themselves!

I should have done this before now but, well time gets away from you sometimes... this christmas there was a lot of effort put into making presents and where we couldn't make buying presents that some one else had made.  Because of this we have had some beautiful stuff to (reluctantly) give away.  Unfortunately the things that left the house weren't photographed.

My partner's mum received this beautiful pin cushion kit from Lorna bateman embroidery which she absolutely adored.

my son was lucky enough to receive this (remarkably accurate) portrait of himself in the morning from little black heart, I have to admit we all look quite a lot like this in the morning!

and I kept this most gorgeous little bird that also came from little black heart, she is sitting on my work desk where I can enjoy looking at her all day long (rather than working!)

my daughter so wanted this picture from caroline rose art that I couldn't resist.  She actually found it very hard to choose!  and who could blame her, I suspect that come her birthday there will be a boat along side her caravan (she clearly wants to travel, but travel in prettiness)

and, being in love with Caroline, she bought me this beautiful pendant from her folksy shop which I adore!

this one is a little bit of a cheat because I bought it for myself this week, a gorgeous charm from gracie's garden bazaar which came this morning and is sooooooo beautiful, I absolutely love it!

as for me I am busy drawing up the pattern for my daisy girl to go on sale next week I hope.  I love these antiquey colours from Anchor, they are so wonderfully subtle

and she has stripy tights of course!

A grand plan and a free princess pattern

I promised a free pattern and I am here right on time!!  (No-one is more surprised than me).  I am in love with the twelve dancing princesses fairy story and I had a plan last year to embroider one princess a month to make a quilt, hmmm well that didn't happen so this year I have decided that if it was a sort of sew along thing I might be a little more motivated but that the quilt will have to be more of a wall hanging type small quilt (although I'm sure any great, and ambitious quilt makers out there could go bigger than this).  My idea is a sort of 3 squares by 4 squares affair with fabric borders around each princess and around the outer edge.  On the other hand they could just go into embroidery hoop frames if you don't feel like testing yourself with quilting!  I decided that one princess pattern a month was a little more than I can manage so I am cheating and offering six patterns over the year with the idea that they are each made up in two different ways so you end up with twelve princesses

this is the first pattern I wanted a less traditional princess to begin with

you could simply outline her in black or another colour 

this one is outlined in a single thread, which gives a more sketched look

she is sewn in back stitch

but then you could add some silver slippers (I always use silver as a single thread, it's the only way I can control it!)

but then you might start to get carried away with that luscious satiny thread and start embellishing with addictive French knots

and those knots might spill onto her hat not to mention a few seed stitches

I have a strong desire to keep going with those French knots all over her dress

or you could go all colourful.  This one is sewn with two strands giving a more hand embroidered look

I've used seed stitches again but you could fill her hat and dress if you wanted to

Oh more French knots, how did they get there?!

If you would like a copy of the pattern then please leave a comment with your email address as emailing is the only way I can find to reliably send the pattern.  

My eleven year old daughter is also going to join in the project so she can learn to embroider.  I'm also thinking about setting up a flickr group so we can share our progress but of course that means understanding flickr so I will pop a message on here when (if?) it's done.

I hope you'll join me and give me the incentive to do the whole quilt!

x

a little bit of this and a little bit of that

at the moment I am definitely not very organized, this blurred picture of a dog is a big reason!  Ash is in need of quite a lot of training, especially around other dogs!  He is just a bit too excitable and friendly!  So we are doing quite a lot of stopping him chewing things and walking and training.

in the scraps of time left over I am working on two new sets of patterns.  The first is three girls to fit in a six inch hoop for display

these are only beginnings

I am thinking of filling in more than I usually do but I will probably also do a line version, maybe just in black and white

Can you detect something of a Scandinavian influence?!  I've been watching the killing and don't have time to knit a Sara Lund jumper so a bit of Scandinavian embroidery will have to do, hmm needs a few snowflakes

my second pattern set will be (hopefully) another set of three but this time they are little pixies to fit smaller 4" hoops.  I like the idea of displaying three hoops together.  This is number one done in some new vintagey coloured threads

I do love these colours even though they don't show especially well in my photographs.  

and of course stripy tights

some of the more observant of you may notice that my lovely fern border is somewhat wonky.  This could be to do with using the most rubbish broken compass in the universe to draw my circle and then, on noticing the wonkiness, rather than waiting until the next day to go and buy a compass, just stitching it anyway!  Rest assured I am on my way to buy a compass this afternoon so by the time it is a pattern it will be perfectly circular!

and last but definitely not least is my beautiful new niece Sapphire Bea who was born on the 29th December.  Unfortunately we can't visit until the 20th January but we can't wait to meet her in person.

x