Monday, September 26, 2011

A preview for you

Here is a peek of what I'm doing at the moment. I had a very lazy summer, but now I'm working again. I'm embroidering a heraldic pouch. It'll be a present again, this time for Mistress/Mistress Katheryn Hebenstreitz. The first side is finished, and it bears her device. On the other side will be a pelican in piety surrounded with a laurel wreath. I decided to use my old style on this, because I wanted to have a work to calm my mood and make me happy. (Embroidery Zen...) Silk on linen, split stitch and laid work, 15x15cm.

What do you think? Should the stems be a little thicker?

Monday, September 12, 2011

Die Schultüte, the old German tradition

My daughter will go to school tomorrow. First day, first class. She is very excited, as you may well imagine. When we moved to Germany, I learned about an old German tradition of a big bag, cone shaped, that one gives to a child on their first school day - die Schultüte. It was traditionally filled with candy and toys to make the school taste sweet. Nowadays there is more school things and toys than candy, but the tradition lives well and good. So this immigrant mom made one for her own child. They are used only one day, so these bags are usually made of cardboard and paper. What do I do? Shall I cut and paste a DIY kit which are sold everywhere? Nope! I bought a brown cardboard cone, and embroidered a cover for it! Here are the pattern and the finished Schultüte.


Serious business, this photographing thing. (Picture taken with an empty schultüte, she'll get the filled one in the morning.)

I boldly ripped the pictures from free colouring page pictures that I found from the net. As the fabric I used an old baby bed linen, that gave me a ready made nice border on the open edge. The weave of the fabric was too tight for embroidery, so I had to fight to get the needle through with every stitch. Annoying. I used split stitch and running stitch with some old fake silk threads that I had once bought from a flea market. The unicorn and the fairy's tiaras are embroidered with fake gold surface couched with white sewing thread. Every fairy princess has her own colouring.