New Pillow Case

Pillow Flower Basket 01Embroidering a new pillow case in the evenings. It is a “Flower Basket” pattern from one of my many iron-on patterns purchased over the years from (Aunt Martha’s). I love the way this one has a little ribbon tied to the basket handle.

Pillow Flower Basket 01Really, I don’t know what kind of flower is portrayed in this design. Not taking the time to research it, I am using any color that I feel like for the flowers. If you do know what kind of flower this is, please let me know. In the flower petals, there will be lots and lots of satin stitches happening.

Pillow Flower Basket 03Now, you can see some of the gold flowers have the stamen (anther & filament) done in black lines and french knots, coming out of the middle of the flower.

Pillow Flower Basket 05I am using all kinds of different greens on the leaves and vines and a good mixture of reds, yellows, and pinks on all the flowers. This is the most enjoyable way for me to paint with thread, just do whatever I feel like. How about pink? Nah, Yellow-orange, yeah that fits right here.

Pillow Flower Basket 06You can see that the ribbon is one of my favorite blues, I have a lot of shirts in this color. We all know it takes some time to finish one of these pillowcases. But, embroidery is a lot of fun for my hands in the evening. A repetitious movement calms me as I take one stitch after the other. I almost can feel the presence of my Mom, Grandma, and Great Grandma in the room sometimes. We enjoyed sitting in the living room doing our crafts together and visiting as we listened to music.

Cutwork Flower Tablecloth

Cutwork Flower Table 13This Cutwork Flower Tablecloth was a discovery at a garage sale. It was sitting on a table full of miscellaneous craft materials. When I unfolded it, there were stains all over it. Would I be able to get them out? I could smell cigarette smoke and the stains were brown. The lady offered it to me for $2 so I thought, what the heck, why not.

I always keep my eyes open at garage sales and thrift stores for treasures!

When I got home I put it in the washing machine and let it sit overnight soaking in “Oxy 10”, then washed it in the morning and it came out sparkling clean.

Cutwork Flower Table 03You can see that it was machine stitched (embroidered) in a simple flower pattern with leaves between the blossoms. I have already added a darker pink outline to the interior of the petals of this flower. The edge of the cloth and some of the areas between the leaves are cut out and edges are reinforced with stitching. This is called, “Cutwork“, and here is a good definition of it if you are interested, this style of working makes a wonderfully interesting edge. BTW, I did not know the proper term to call it so I had to look it up myself for this article.

Cutwork Flower Table 04However, the machine stitching is just boring, so, I intend to “spiff it up” with some bright lines and satin stitching until I can say I love it. See the blue flower on the left where the original machine stitching pattern makes you feel like yawning? On the right is a yellow blossom that has had orange outlines added to the yellow blossom petals and red french knots added to the center. Okay, now we have some pizzazz going, and we are on a roll.

Cutwork Flower Table 07I added embellishment all around the edge and then thought that the center of the tablecloth needed something more than the two little sets of a pair of pink blossoms. So I added some vines, and daisy’s in many colors. Yep, yep, yep.

Cutwork Flower Table 05This idea spread to the corners and sides until I had all kinds of flowers and plants around the entire border of the tablecloth.  That is what happens when you go weed in the garden and all of the flowers are blooming.

Cutwork Flower Table 10Okay, a bit excessive but it was so much fun. It is a colorful addition to our tablecloth family.