Petite Pillows

I am completely finished with the girls patchwork pillows!! The girls just love them, which makes a Momma happy. 🙂 They actually turned out how I pictured they would look, and that rarely happens. Usually what I intend and what is reality doesn’t match up.

This one is Addison’s pillow. She picked out the picture. She was giddy over the French knot colored sprinkles too. See, it’s true that everything really IS better with sprinkles.  I wanted to do embroidery with red thread, so that it looked like the vintage redwork embroidery… but then I thought it needed a few colored accents. These transfers were Aunt Martha’s Ducky Duck transfers.

Here is a close up of the crochet border. You can click this link to go to the tutorial on how to do this: You Go Girl! is the name of the blog. This links you to the part where you are actually doing the single crochet border, followed by the shell. If you don’t know how to add the blanket stitch to the pillow, you need to go to that tutorial and back up to her week 3 post.

Below is the back of Addison’s pillow. I created an envelope enclosure to insert the pillow. (You can’t see it well because the material is so busy. I wanted to be able to take the pillow out if needed, plus it’s easier to crochet the border without the pillow insert inside.

Back of Macyn’s pillow.

I think I mentioned this in the previous post, but I love the hand quilted look, so that’s what I did! :)  Now, I am not patient when quilting. Not everything lines up the way it should… but I just eyeball it and make it work! I am pretty sure my friend Roxanne was appalled today when she saw me sewing this together. She is an ACTUAL quilter.  I jacked up the corner around the picture there, so I decided to create my own “washi tape” to tack on top to hide the flub.

This is Macyn’s duck that she picked out, headed off to market!

And these are the two recipients! (Notice our new kitten Gatsby? Macyn is trying to get him to look at the camera. There is nothing like a 3 year old and a kitten! I have to limit her “holding” time to when I am in the room only. She’s learning to be gentle, and Gatsby is proving to be a sweet kitten.)

I love my girls. :)I think this picture expresses their personalities so well. I am so blessed!

I Heart Stitching!

I have been doing some embroidery projects and wanted to share a few.  This is the picture that Macyn picked out for me to stitch for her. I am making a pillow with it. So far, I have the top done! Yay! I will post pics of it when it is completely finished.

I love hand quilting. It is so pretty! I just like the way it looks vs. machine stitched…even though I am new at it and my stitches aren’t always the right length.

I used scraps to make to make the patchwork topper!

I also bought some #8 DMC Perle Cotton. I am really enjoying stitching with it because it’s only one strand. An IG user, Bitsofstitching, introduced me to it. (She also has a blog btw: BitsofStitching)

I am also joining in on a Stitch Along with BitsofStitching with this Barney Park Sampler from Charlotte Lyons’ Etsy store. It didn’t come with a stitch guide or anything, so I am just doing whatever stitch I feel like, which was the point of buying it… I would love to learn some new embroidery stitches.  I  am using this website for instructions on new stitches: Rocksea Embroidery.

Here are some of the stitches I used on the roof: Back Stitch, reverse chain stitch (probably the most common stitch I use), braided chain stitch, buttonhole stitch, satin stitch, feather stitch.

For the yellow flower, I used an eyelet stitch and outlined it with a backstitch. I think it made it look like a marigold flower.  I actually ran out of thread on the gray, so its not finished yet. I just had to come to a stopping point because I was stitching at my mother’s house, and we had to pack up to go home! 😉 The leaves are a lazy daisy stitch, and the frame around the window is a raised chain band.

My girls fight over who this is in the window. They both think it’s a picture of them.  I did lazy daisies on the edges, and the satin stitches outlined with a back stitch in Navy. The coral color is a reverse chain stitch, yellow a back stitch, and gray French knots.

The tree trunk was a really cool stitch. I used a whipped fly stitch… and outlined the sides in a back stitch.. of course! 🙂

The pink was supposed to be a pyramid stitch I think, however, I didn’t know that stitch until after I had stitched it. It still looks the same though, but probably would have been neater and easier if I had done it correctly.

MK is my little model when I am taking picture of my projects. 🙂 She ALWAYS wants me to take photos of her. Hehe.. she even put on her fancy rings.

She is explaining that the cat in the sampler is our new kitten,Gatsby…and the dog is our boxer, Dixie….and of course the girl is her.

If you are interested in doing the “Stitch Along” go visit Charlotte Lyon’s Etsy Shop and grab a sampler! It shipped quickly. 🙂 And you don’t HAVE to get the same one I did, but I think it’s pretty cute. Just tag your photos on Instagram with the tag #housewrenstudio.  If you want to follow me on IG, my user name is barber1029.

Happy Stitching!

The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery Springtime Sampler

Nothing excites me more right now than to share my Springtime Sampler on my blog! 🙂 I have worked so hard to complete this, and I am so proud of it! I know it’s geeky… but I can’t help it. 

I believe this sampler came out at the first of April, and I have been working tirelessly on it. I bought this pattern from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. They release one week of the pattern at a time. It’s actually neat to check your inbox every Monday to find the next piece of the puzzle!

This actually was not the first pattern I bought. You know which pattern made me fall in love with this company??! The Macaroons.  I have yet to stitch it, but its on my list of things to do. I was distracted with crochet at the time I purchased it, and just never stitched it.  Then the Winter Sampler came out–Bought it and didn’t stitch it. Then THIS one came out, and I was determined to finish it…AND I DID! I really want to do all four seasons now so that I can frame them all. It just seems right, so that’s what I am going to do.

It’s definitely not perfect, but its mine. There is satisfaction in completion y’all. I am here to tell you. I don’t think there is a single square that I didn’t somehow, somewhere make a mistake on. Some of the mistakes I ripped out and started over; some of the mistakes just weren’t that big of a deal, so I just kept on going. I just made sure the overall look worked.

I know to some of you are gasping in shock now.. but I am just trying to keep it real here.

For some reason, the egg gave me fits. I just couldn’t seem to count it right, so my egg got fatter, and fatter…and his spots weren’t quite right. I am going to just call him “Unique”. 

I think the raincloud was actually my favorite square. (Which isn’t hard to believe if you know my favorite days are rainy days—weird, but true.)

For now, this is where my sampler will sit. I can’t hang it behind my couch in my picture frame collage until I get the others. It would look weird on that huge wall by itself.  (By the way, the frame I bought was a 12×12 from JoAnn’s.)

I also have to mention that I won a contest from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery’s Facebook page! You all know I am an Instagram user, and after posting pics to there, my name was drawn as the WINNER!!! Oh My Goodness.

And just so you know, when I found out that I won, I was totally at the lady doctor. My legs were up in stirrups, and while I was waiting for the doctor to come in, I started browsing Facebook…. and saw that I won! Y’all, I got so excited. I bet the doctor had never seen a patient so happy, even though it wasn’t the most desirable place to be. 🙂

I won 62 skeins of floss, the “Fruit of the Month” pattern, and linen to stitch it on!! YAY! It will look divine in my kitchen. Y’all don’t laugh if in about 5-years, my walls are covered in cross stitch!!