Merry Christmas.

For all your oh-my-god-i-forgot-to-buy-wrapping-paper-wrap-presents-and-it's-christmas-eve needs: A tutorial I found via this very lovely blog.

Happy Christmas :)

Last Minute Gifts.

I caught the embroidery bug from a friend, who made an amazing Lung Tie for her pulmonologist dad.

Thinking of something I could throw in alongside small gifts for some girlfriends, I first thought "tea towels" but when I couldn't find plain tea towels worth embroidering, I picked up a set of 3 handkerchiefs instead. Here are the finished products:

They are actually a bit more cute-sy than I might have preferred, but hey, they are still cute! This was my first "real" attempt at embroidery, I and I don't think they're too bad!

This is the first one I did, and probably my favourite:

It's design is from a set of transfers from Sublime Stitching. As I'm in the UK, I picked mine up at the cool store Tatty Devine. (They had a very limited stock at the Covent Garden store.)

WAIT: Just discovered you can download designs from Sublime Stitching by registering on their website - then print! I so wish I had discovered this sooner!

The next one I did was this owl - the design for which I found on this illustrator's website. With this one, I printed it out and then used my husband's lightbox (hooray for being married to a graphic designer!) to trace out the design in pencil onto the hanky.

I did the same for the last one: a slightly wonky matryoshka doll based on this project on cutoutandkeep.net.

All in all, not a bad start on embroidery I think! I hope the recipients will enjoy them - at least I've got them other things to go alongside these just in case ;) I think there is a lot more embroidery in my future - especially now I've discovered those downloadable patterns!

Now off to go and ogle all the snow falling outside the window (again!).