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You Set Me Free – Hoop Art

06
Feb 2011

Do you ever have projects that just pop into your head – all ready to go?
I don’t have it happen too often – half the time I start out with something in mind and then by the time it’s finished – it’s something different. :)
Or I have an idea that I’m sure will be just the most amazing thing ever and when I get about halfway through it I realize it looks like something my cat coughed up.
(Case in point – the Valentine’s Wreath FAIL that is now mocking me from the corner of my dining/craft room. Seriously. It’s hideous.)

But in the case of this little stitched art – the great rarity happened. I had the idea – all ready to go – and I like how it turned out!

I’ve been wanting to do something that combined embroidery hoop art and machine stitching and this is what I came up with:

I love that it’s Valentine-ish but not so much so that I can’t leave it up through the spring.
It’s all machine stitched – kind of a free-form/follow-the-lines thing.

Want a tutorial? Sweet! I happen to have one right here. :)

You’ll need:

Embroidery Hoop – this one is 9″
Fabric for base (about 11″ square), cage (about 8″ square) and birds (scraps)
Contrasting Thread
Pattern – click here
Reversed image of birdcage – click here

Begin by cutting out the fabric for your base. It just needs to be a few inches larger than your embroidery hoop.

(This is so not ironed.)

Print out your pattern and trace the lettering onto your fabric.
An easy way to do this is to tape the pattern on a window, then tape the fabric over it. You can easily trace your lettering with the light shining through.

I didn’t put any kind of interfacing or stabilizer on the back of this, but I think maybe you should. My fabric held up pretty well, but if you have thin fabric in might cause some puckering.
I recommend practicing this on a scrap piece of fabric to get the hang of the lettering. Also, try different speeds and stitch lengths to see what works for you and your machine.

Take your presser foot off. This will let you move your fabric as you need it and it will help you see your marks too.
Because your presser foot is off, you will be moving the fabric through. So if you pull fast, the stitches will be long, if you don’t move it much, the stitches will be very tiny.

Start at the top of the “Y” and sew down and then back up the, covering the marked lines. Repeat this 3 or 4 more times.
Once the letter looks the way you want, move onto the next letter. Don’t worry about clipping your threads, you can do that when you’ve finished the word.

Don’t worry about wonkiness in your stitches. You can cover it up if it’s crazy with the next pass of stitching, and some wonkiness adds to the fun look of the lettering.

Continue stitching in all your letters. Press the fabric to remove any wrinkles or puckering.

I wasn’t sure what the best way to do the birdcage was - I was worrying about the thin lines of the cage and trying to cut them out with a pattern.
But then I thought, “If you can print on freezer paper and fabric, can you print on heat-n-bond”?
It turns out you can!

I cut out a 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of fabric and a piece of heat-n-bond (or other iron on adhesive).
Iron the fabric onto heat-n-bond.

Run the fabric piece through your printer so that the image (use the Reversed Image of the Birdcage) prints onto the paper backing of the heat-n-bond.
Do this when the hubby isn’t paying attention so you don’t give him a heart attack about the crazy things you’re running through the printer. Again.

Cut the birdcage out with scissors or a sharp exacto knife. I used a combination of both.
Iron small pieces of heat-n-bond onto your bird fabrics and cut them out as well. Make sure you reverse them so that they face the right way on your final image.

Peel off the paper and iron the birdcage onto your base fabric.
Stitch over the birdcage the same way you did with the lettering. Go over as many times as you like – I used 2 passes on the cage bars and 3 or 4 on the wider parts of the base and top.

Iron on your birds and stitch them on as well.

Sew on little dots for eyes with your machine, or do a small french knot.

Place your fabric in your embroidery hoop and make sure it’s on tightly.
Trim about 1/2″ around the edge and glue down the fabric to the inside of the hoop with hot glue.

And you’re all done!!

I love it.
It’s kind of mushy – but considering everything that Mr. F. T. and I have been through – that’s how i feel.
Ok. Maybe really mushy.

I’d love to hear what you think!

Category: Holiday, Sewing Tags: birdie, Sewing, Valentine's Day 69 Comments

My Halloween Mantel on a Budget

05
Oct 2010

Beverly

I’m stepping out of my comfort zone here with you today. :)

I am showing you an actual place in my house that I have . . . gasp . . .decorated.

I know. That’s not my thing. I’ve never claimed to be a decorator.
I’m a . . . well I don’t know what I am but I know what I’m not.

But I’ve decided to be brave and show you my Halloween Mantel.
We’ve never really decorated for Halloween before,
just some pumpkins and things scattered around for Fall.
But there is soooo much inspiration out there that I got caught up.

I knew I wanted to do something fun, but our budget doesn’t run to lavish holiday displays.
So fun and cheap were my criteria.
I think I did pretty good but I’d love to hear what you think.

Some disclaimers -
1. It’s Cloudy in So Cal. So these pictures are a combo of flash and not much sunlight. It goes against everything I believe about blog pictures but I didn’t have a lot of options.
2. Did I mention I’m not a decorator??

Brace yourself. There are lots of pictures here.
Click on any you want to see better for the enlarged images.
I’ve included “before” pictures when applicable so you can see where I started.

Ok. Down to specifics.

My favorite thing on the mantel – the mirror.

I started out with a 3.00 mirror from a Garage Sale.

I taped off the mirror and spray painted the frame black.
I left it kind of splotchy because I didn’t want it to look too new.

I found an image I wanted to use behind the mirror – from the Graphics Fairy of course.

I flipped the mirror over and printed out an enlarged image of the woman for sizing.
I sprayed Oven Cleaner on the back of the mirror to remove the silvering.
If you’d like the whole tutorial for this process, click here.

After 4 applications of oven cleaner, the center of the mirror was clear.

Girls (and guys) PLEASE wear gloves if you do this.
I did not listen to Mr. F.T. even though he nicely suggested it.
As I mentioned on FB – my fingernails are jacked up after this. Stained dark brown.
From who knows what chemical.
Learn from my mistakes. ;)

I did listen to one of Mr. F.T.’s suggestions though. He recommended adding a skull image over the woman’s face to make it a little spookier.
(Though I don’t think he used the actual word “spookier”.)

Here’s the close up of the mirror with the skull image added.

I have one of those little battery tea lights flickering behind this at night. It looks great!

Karen from the Graphic’s Fairy had generously allowed me to share the altered image with you.
Click here if you’d like to download her face with the skull added.

The Candlesticks I picked up for $5 for all of them at a garage sale too. Spray Painted them all glossy black.

The Vase of Skulls are dressed up Dollar Store Items. My daughter glittered the skulls up for me.

I put them in the hurricane with netting at the bottom for filler and glittery ribbon in a big bow.

The bowl of black roses started out like this . . .

I spray painted the bowl silver and the roses black.

Inside the frame is a crow I traced onto black scrapbook paper and framed over a pink background. (It had to have pink!)
The crow came from here. I gave him a rhinestone eye for a little bling.

I got the idea for the metallic pumpkins from Roo at Nice Girl Notes.
The pumpkins and big flocked spider (sorry Cindy) came from the Dollar Store. Yeah!
(Cindy has an intense hatred for all things flocked)

I found a couple of things at Michael’s I couldn’t live without.

The Terror This Way sign was 4.60 on sale and the kitty was the most expensive thing at 7.00. But really. When you see a giant purple glitter kitty how can you pass that up????

The mice running around the bottom are silhouettes from Martha and the black runner thing came from the Dollar Store too.

So my mantel cost $27.00 not including what I had on hand.
And we all know that stash materials don’t count right?

I was going for Disney rather than Night of the Living Dead.

I want to hear what you think!!
Advice for a decorating newbie is much appreciated. :)

Update:

My Mantel made the Top 10!!!! (Insert Happy Dancing)

Comments

Category: Holiday, Home Decor Tags: birdie, Crafting, Dollar Store, Halloween, home decor 92 Comments

Beware! Semi-Scary Halloween Wreath

19
Sep 2010

Beverly

I’ve decided to be a complete trendsetter and go for the pink this year for Halloween.

I’m either going to start a whole new thing . . . or everyone is going to think I’m a goofball.
But hey, I’m ok with that.

So I’ve put together this super cute Semi-Scary Halloween Wreath to share with you.

Mr. F.T. says nothing is too scary if it’s made with a pink boa and netting. But I pointed out the crow.
Because um. . . Crows Are Super Scary.

So we compromised and called it the Semi-Scary Halloween Wreath.

Would you like to make your own? Well, I’m going to tell you how anyway. :)

Here’s what you’ll need:

A foam wreath base (Dollar Store – woohoo!)
Netting/tulle Rolls – I used 1 1/2 rolls
Boa or Boa ribbon (I bought the pink boa on a spool at Joann’s)
Wooden plaque
(ignore the one in the picture. It was waaay too big. I used a small oval instead)
paint
sticky rhinestones
Scary Crow (came from Michael’s)
Ribbon
Spider Bead

Start by cutting your netting into 13″ pieces. Yes. 13″. That’s semi-scary isn’t it?

Tie a netting piece into a knot around the foam wreath.

Continue tying the netting around the wreath, pushing it together to cover the foam.

Hot glue your boa around the edge of the wreath where the netting knots are.

Put your wreath aside for now. Get out your wooden plaque. Mine is from a school project of my son’s.

Yes. That says “Beauty Is Bacon!” It used to have a clay piece of bacon stuck to it.

I have a deep and abiding love for ric rac. He has one for bacon.
We have a wide variety of interests here.

Cover your plaque with white paint. Bye bye bacon.

Print out a piece of paper with your word on it – make it a little smaller than your plaque.

(If you have a handy dandy machine that does vinyl, you could use that to make your word. I don’t have one of those so we’re doing this old school.)

Flip your paper over and cover the lettering with pencil shading.

Flip the paper back over and center it on your plaque. Trace your letters with a pencil.

This will transfer a light outline of your letters to the plaque.

Fill in the letters with black paint. I also painted around the side of the plaque.

Now to bling things up a bit.

Add a border of rhinestones around the edge. These are sticky rhinestones so they’re super easy to put on.

Add a bow and your crow. This crow has an alligator clip on the bottom so it just clipped to the ribbon.

Glue the bow to the plaque – a little off center.
I also added a little spider bead on a chain that dangles from the bow.

Glue the plaque to the lower right side of the wreath.

Make a bow to hang the wreath from if you need to. Cut long strips of ribbon and loop them, then pinch the centers together. Wrap them together with another strip of wired ribbon and glue that down. Make a small loop and glue that to the back to hang everything from.

Cut a strip of ribbon double the length you’d like the wreath to hang from and glue that to the back of the bow as well.