Happy Monday!

For your browsing pleasure, here’s a round-up of interesting embroidery-related bits I’ve come across online lately. Some are information, some are inspirational – I hope you find them a fun way to start the week!

Pour yourself a cup of your favorite morning beverage – it’s tea for me this morning – and join me in a brief browse through some recent favorites.

Let’s start off with something really enticing! Well – I think it sounds fun, anyway!

Win the Houston Quilt Festival!

Stella Lighting is having a Sweepstakes! It’s called Stella’s Fly Away $2500 Sweepstakes, and the prize is a trip for two to Houston’s Quilt and Creative Festival in November of this year. The prize includes $1000 airline voucher, four nights in a hotel close to the convention center, a $250 visa gift card to use while exploring Houston, and two of the new Stella task lamps.

I’ve always wanted to go to the Houston Quilt Festival. Wouldn’t this be a great way to do it?

Anyway, no affiliation here – it just looks like it would be a good contest to enter. (It’s open to US residents only, according to the Official Rules.)

A Bit of Wooly Inspiration

Laura Wasilowski, over on her blog Artfabrik is running a neat little series about stitching on boiled wool pieces cut from repurposed boiled wool jackets. I’m going to enjoy reading this series as it unfolds! It starts with this article.

Once upon a time, I had a few boiled wool jackets that I just loved. They eventually went the various ways of out-of-style, out-of-fit, worn-ragged, and developed-a-huge-hole-in-an-awkward-spot-for-no-apparent-reason. But you know what? I still saved ’em! And now I know why!

Make Your Own Snap Frame / Stand – All in One

Kathy Shaw, over on Shawkl Designs, has a wonderful DIY tutorial for making a PVC snap frame for embroidery. It’s built in two levels, so that one level serves as a lap stand or table stand. It’s quite clever! And it looks pretty easy. So if you’re even remotely a Do-It-Yourselfer, you could have a pretty nice table stand with a just a quick trip to the hardware store!

A Schwalm Filling

Luzine Happel’s been adding some nice articles to her blog on Schwalm Whitework. I like this latest filling tutorial! If you like whitework and you’re looking for ideas for creating drawn thread or pulled thread filled areas in your embroidery, you should check out all the tutorials on Luzine’s blog – she has quite a few!

Goldwork & Silk & a Historical Pattern

Here’s a bit of inspiration for you!

You might remember this article I wrote quite a while ago, about The Lady’s Magazine and their stitch-off using old patterns.

Well, here’s an article by Mary Martin, who used one of the patterns and developed it into a lovely goldwork and silk embroidery piece. She takes us step-by-step through the process. Definitely worth reading! And the end product is gorgeous! Don’t forget to click on the photos in the article, so that you can see them nice and large.

Fun Information about Textiles, Samplers, Needlework

Nicola over on Stitching by a Cornish Sea has really been upping her blogging lately, providing heaps of interesting and fun information about all kinds of aspects of textiles, stitching, and historical stuff related to textiles and stitching. For example, this article on the color purple. Or this article on workboxes. Lots of good reading going on there! For some reason, the blog format is a bit wonky right now (at least in my browsers), but you can still read the articles easily enough.

But What Does it Mean?

The EAC (Embroiderers’ Association of Canada) has a cute little article on their blog, featuring a list of commonly used acronyms in the needlework field. Admittedly, I’ve never used “STASH” as an acronym, but I think “TOAD” is a pretty good one! Anyway, it’s a nice little list to know, if you’re just immersing yourself in the online quilting or needlework world and wondering what it all means!

Scenic Paper!

I know this isn’t particularly stitching related, but it’s definitely inspirational, and I could see some stitching ideas flowing from the concepts! On All Things Paper, just this morning, Ann posted an article highlighting the paper cutting artistry of Sarah King. Love it!

Well, that’s this morning’s browse, my friends! The list could go on and on, but my tea cup is empty, and the day begs to begin.

I’ve got some good stuff coming up for you later this week, so we’ll meet again a couple days hence, ok?

Wishing you a sunny and productive week with your needle and thread!