#Crafting365 Days 13-15: Flowers, Squares & One of my Favourite Stitches

Work-wise, the past few days have not been very exciting. I had a couple of days off thanks to a bug that's been doing the rounds, then spent yesterday mostly doing boring computer things which, frankly, are much too boring to blog about!

Thank goodness for #Crafting365!

While I was curled up on the sofa under a blanket, taking it easy, I had lots of time to (slowly, sleepily) work on my floral cushion. It's a big cushion, and there are lots of felt flowers to sew on... and lots and lots of stitching to do to make that happen!

For #Crafting365 day 13, I took a photo of the colourful threads I've been using to stitch the flowers:

 

Sewing loads of flowers was the perfect project for my half-asleep weekend: nice and simple stitching, no real decisions to make (just picking the next flower to sew), and lots of happy colour to cheer me up while I was feeling a bit ugh (v technical medical term that, "a bit ugh").

It was slightly surreal at times though as I was binge-watching Hannibal as I stitched, which is excellent telly but pretty darn gruesome! Sitting sewing a pretty project covered with flowers while watching something so dark and filled with blood and gore = very strange. It may have been a bit of an odd combination but it kept me very well entertained!

By the end of day 14, this is how the cushion was looking:

Lots of colour, but still lots of space to fill.

Someone asked in the comments of my last post what stitch I was using to stitch the felt shapes. I'm hand stitching them, using whip stitch. Whip stitch is my favourite stitch for sewing felt shapes to a background, it's so easy (though it's a bit more fiddly when you have to reach inside a cushion like I am for this project, instead of just sewing a shape to a flat piece of felt or fabric).

Wendi from Shiny Happy World has a fantastic video tutorial for using whip stitch to applique felt shapes - click here to watch it.

In her video Wendi uses two strands of embroidery thread (floss) but I'm sewing my shapes using sewing thread. She also sews from the outside of the shape in, while I sew from the inside out, but the basic technique is the same.

At the weekend, I also finished this teeny bit of lime-on-neon-pink embroidery (started on day 12).

I was a bit nervous tearing away the tissue paper to see how the stitching had turned out. Stitching through tissue paper is a great way to stitch from a pattern onto felt but the paper can obscure exactly where you're stitching, so removing the paper can be a bit nerve-wracking! Luckily this time my stitching turned out okay (hurrah!).

The neon pink felt continues to be a total pain to photograph, but you can see a photo of how the stitching turned out here. Please note: the quote I stitched includes the F word. It's a bit ironic that I'm worried about offending people by sharing a photo of a quote about not caring what people think, but I know that cursing is not everyone's cup of tea and it's not something I normally include in my blog so I thought it was best to give you guys a heads up :)

(Impossible to photograph neon felt and a curse word you're worried about putting on your blog? What an excellent choice of project to share online, Laura, you really thought that one through! Haha.)

Anyway... the embroidered quote is going to become a little felt bracelet, once I've worked out exactly how I want to put that together. I enjoyed stitching this so much I'm now thinking of some other (less swear-y! non-neon!) things I could embroider. Hmm...

In the meantime, yesterday (day 15) I did some knitting while working on lots of boring-but-necessary computer stuff. There was lots of hanging around as things installed and loaded and saved and transferred and so on, so being able to pick up my knitting and knit a row or two here and there throughout the day saved me from some intense computer-related boredom.

I'm continuing to (slowly) re-knit a whole bunch of squares which I (foolishly) knitted at the wrong size earlier. Seven squares re-knitted, sixteen still to go! Woohoo!

P.S. Like making cute stuff? Mollie at Wild Olive is running a fab series where lots of different makers/designers are sharing their tips adding cuteness to your designs. I was delighted when Mollie asked me to contribute a tip to the series! You can read my tip here and you'll find the whole series here.