Well, hello there! Happy New Year! I hope this finds you all well and that you had a terrific holiday. Mine was wonderful. As you probably already know, I took a hiatus from...well, everything. I just "unplugged," both literally and figuratively. No blogging, no sewing, no work, no emails....Oh, I will pay for it now, but it felt good!
We went to Florida to visit my parents, and it was a nice trip. It's always good to be home, but I'm missing the warm weather and my parents already....
When I came home, I received an email from Sarah Vedeler's newsletter. It said that the PTA at Sandy Hook Elementary School wanted to decorate the entire school with snowflakes to welcome the children back into the building. I thought that was a neat idea. Sarah wanted to do something. She took some snowflake designs that are in one of her embroidery sets and made them available on her website free of charge, along with some instructions for how to make some snowflake ornaments. I decided I wanted to make some.
And here they are! I made three of them....one from each member of my family (me, Papa Pea, and Sweet Pea) to the children. I took the photos early this morning, as the sun was rising. I tried to get good light! And the wind was blowing pretty well, so it was hard to get good photos. I got a few on this tree, and then I had to move behind the shed, where there was less wind.
It was a pretty sunrise, though. This was the view over my shoulder.
Here is a close-up shot of the smallest snowflake. For all of the snowflakes, I used some of my cherished hand-dyed silk/cotton blend fabric that my friend Jackie dyed. (It is cherished, because she isn't doing it any more, and I can't get any more!) I used Floriani threads, and when they were all put together I embellished them with Swarovski hot-fix crystals. (Finally, a project where bling was appropriate!) This one is Papa Pea's favorite...he likes the simplicity of it.
Here is a larger snowflake. The snowflake was supposed to be an applique, but I forgot to put the applique fabric on before I started stitching all the details. Oh well! I rather like how it turned out anyway! (You can see these photos were taken behind the shed. I hung the snowflakes on the handle of our wheelbarrow! LOL)
This shot is a little closer of the stitching and the bling. I love Sarah's designs because of all the wonderful detail. I like how there are all the "beads" stitched into the designs. I have one of her design sets. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet. So, this was a great way for me to play with and learn about her designs.
Here is another large one. I remembered to put the applique fabric on this one. I really like Sarah's method for marking and applying the applique for machine embroidery. I hadn't tried that particular method before. I will use it again. My only regret on this one is I felt the threads I had weren't quite the right colors. I think I made do pretty well with what I had. I wish I had used something more silvery where the dark gray thread is.
A close up of the bling.
All of these are two-sided. The back is also stitched with an identical snowflake so that they will look the same on either side when you see them hanging.
All in all, I'm super happy with how these turned out. They were fun, and I think they are beautiful. I hope they add some sparkle, shimmer, shine, and color to the kids' lives at the school as they return to their building.
Many thanks to Sarah for the idea, inspiration, and designs for doing this! I hope I did her designs justice.
Now, to keep things real...my first attempt was a total fail! I put the stabilizer in the hoop and then added the fabric (as directed in Sarah's instructions). The silk/cotton blend is such a drapy fabric that the machine ate it! It actually went right thorugh the stabilizer and into the needle plate! Woops! I should have known better.
For my second attempt, I put an iron-on stabilizer on the back of my silky fabric, in addition to the stabilizer in the hoop. That worked much better.
But the end result was a C- in my view. I didn't trim the edges close enough, so you can see some of the raw edges stiching out after the satin-stitched edge. Yuck. (The white stuff you see is the water-soluable stabilizer, which I didn't bother to remove, because I knew I wasn't sending this one anywhere!)
And then I turned it over and realized I had forgotten to change out my bobbin thread for thread that matched the top thread. I was supposed to do that for the final satin stitching on the edges so that the satin stitching would look good on both sides. Another oops! So, I chalked this one up to practice. The three pictured above are much better. I corrected all my errors in those. So, let's have one more look at them all:
(Again, sorry for the blurriness...they were a-blowin' in the wind!) These get an A-. There are small imperfections, but overall, they turned out really nice. I corrected all my errors on these. I would expect nothing less than A work from the kids, so they should expect nothing less from me, right?!
Well, these are in the mail this morning. They should arrive on Wednesday. If you want to send some snowflakes of any kind, there is still time. They need to arrive before Jan 12. Here is the address where to send them:
Connecticut PTSA
60 Connolly Parkway
Building 12, Suite 103
Hamden, CT 06514
If you want to access Sarah Vedeler's designs and tutorials, you can go here to do so.
Well, it's good to be back. I have tons of photos to show you of stuff I did for Christmas and other things I wanted to blog about. Maybe I'll catch up someday. Maybe....
Oh, and by the way...you may recall, I don't do New Year's Resolutions, so none of that here. I'm always working on goals. And, I am not doing a UFO set of goals this year. I don't want to stress myself out about my UFOs. They are what they are. I am just going to spend the year working on what I feel like working on. That's the way it's going to be. Ha!
Until next time,
OMG those are awesome. You do such beautiful work. I didn't know about this link. I'll have to get busy. Thanks.
Posted by: carolld | January 07, 2013 at 11:02 AM
Welcome back! I have missed you, so I'm happy to hear you are doing well and enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and break.
These snowflake ornaments are so beautiful. I love the colors and details. Good for you for contributing somethings so beautiful to such a wonderful cause. I bet the school was sparkling.
Posted by: terriaw | January 07, 2013 at 11:03 AM
Lovely snowflakes! I thought of doing some but made pillowcases instead. I don't do resolutions either. I did a "to-do" list last year and noted which projects were UFOs on that. I may do that again. It's more of a way for me to keep track of what I have and what I've started rather than a list of things I *must* do.
Hope you have a good first day of the semester. We start back next week.
Posted by: Lynn | January 07, 2013 at 11:10 AM
Fabulous snowflakes Stephanie! They are my favorite of any machine embroidery I've seen!
Posted by: Mary on Lake Pulaski | January 07, 2013 at 11:13 AM
Those snowflakes are just beautiful and such a sweet thing to do. Bless you!
I took a break from just about everything too and it felt great. And I just might have to do it more often :D
Happy New Year!
Posted by: Sue | January 07, 2013 at 11:28 AM
I LOVE the photos. Beautiful flakes, perfect light and wonderful snow. They shall be cherished. So very thoughtful
Long vacation I see, but hey, you do have the least stressful job in 2013. (saw Jessica's FB post) haha ;)
Posted by: Melissa | January 07, 2013 at 11:37 AM
Stephanie - I LOVE your snowflakes. Great job!
Posted by: Sarah Vedeler | January 07, 2013 at 11:57 AM
Good to see you back, hon, oh I'm longing for Florida now, lol. Anyplace warm! Your snowflakes are flat-out gorgeous, what a lovely thing to do.
Posted by: Allie | January 07, 2013 at 12:44 PM
Esp love the snowflakes hanging on the tree! Very colorful and so generous of you to send them on to Sandy Hook. Glad you are back and esp glad we're not stressing over UFOs! :)
Posted by: Deb | January 07, 2013 at 04:53 PM
These are gorgeous, and so thoughtful!
I took a nice, unplugged vacation over the holidays, too -- feels good. And, thanks to the new sewing machine I got as a Christmas present, I'm eager to dig into some quilting this year!
Posted by: Kate | January 07, 2013 at 05:21 PM
Sarah Vedeler commented on your blog? Wow, how cool is that? I checked your blog a few times cause I was missing ya! Glad u are back. I do love your snowflakes too=)
Posted by: Jackie W. | January 07, 2013 at 10:41 PM
Stephanie, I am so glad to see you back...and WOW! Those snowflakes are incredible! Your photography is fabulous, as well.... I wish you the very best in 2013!
Posted by: Carla | January 07, 2013 at 11:04 PM
I am so glad that you took the time to decompress and enjoy your family! Love those snowflakes! Sarah's designs are awesome!
Posted by: Maggie Szafranski | January 08, 2013 at 08:22 AM
They're beautiful Stephanie! And I do love your attitude about your UFO's -- I need to adopt the same attitude -- instead, my UFO's just taunt me and stress me out LOL!
Posted by: Thimbleanna | January 08, 2013 at 08:53 AM
Welcome back and thanks for the link to Sarah's page. I just downloaded the designs, if I get them done today and in the mail tomorrow, I wonder if they'll make it in time . . . Yours look beautiful BTW, the applique fabric isn't necessary with all the lovely stitching!
Posted by: Deb | January 08, 2013 at 02:40 PM
You are so giving of your time and talent!
Posted by: Maureen | January 08, 2013 at 02:53 PM
How beautiful! You did an outstanding job on these, Stephanie! A bling girl after my own heart! And thank you for the address. I am going to do my best to whip a snowflake up quickly.
Posted by: Cindy | January 08, 2013 at 10:05 PM
These are gorgeous! I'm so impressed! And definitely planning a field trip to come over and check out your embroidery stitching!
Posted by: Lisa Ruble | January 08, 2013 at 10:21 PM
Love the snowflakes; what a wonderful thing for you to do. Especially for you to take time out of your super-busy time to do so. It always seems like it's the busiest people who get the most done!
I also love that you put a bit of your "failure" out there for everyone to see. I think it's good for people to see that even those as talented as you can have some mistakes the first time. It teaches that when things don't turn out right, you can learn from your mistakes and redo it so it's better the second (or third) time around. Good teaching, Mamma Pea!!
Posted by: PegVan | January 11, 2013 at 04:52 PM