"Sparkle"

Her name is "Sparkle" and she's my newest dotee, made from a baggie swap at Swapbot from Sandy. In the baggie was everything you see and more! My swap partner made the adorable face which I just love.

80*F >>>>>> 24*F

For for those of us in the Celius mode: 26*C >>> -4*C. The beach at Nokomis is part of Casey Key, on the Gulf side of Florida.

Seafood was on our menu lots of times, and shrimp boiled in seawater is to die for!.

Crab was on sale at Publix and there were lots of loose claws. This was a great meal!

Before I left on my vacation I was lucky enough to find this great bag in Fabricland, on sale for $9.99! It's about 12" x 8". On the outside it has two large pockets, one zippered and the other with Velcro.

It comes with two "pages" with zippered pockets. The pages are anchored with strips of Velcro so they are removable. This is the middle where I have a variety of threads.

This is inside of the outside back. The inside of the outside front has one large zippered pocket that I filled with bits of lace and trim.

The sewing case was so great that I decided to buy another one just to get the two removable sections and add them to my original case. There were no black cases left, so I took the white.

The other double page I filled with beads. I used very small plastic bags to hold small amounts of various colours.

Security is very tight on the airlines, and on my last trip I had to forfeit my tiny scissors. There's lots of time to sew while waiting for planes and you absolutely need something to cut the thread. This little bit is part of a dental floss cutter. It measures only 1" x 1/2" and does a great cutting job.

These were some of the small projects I took with me to work on. They are all needle cases. The orange (above) and lilac ones (below) are folded in half.

Above is how this one looks folded with two folds. On the left is it unfolded.

These two needle cases are still unfinished.

There's lots of interest in making paisley motifs on the CQ websites, so here's my first attempts. The top one is 2 1/2" x 1 1/4". The other I'm still working on, and I like how it looks. It's bigger, 3" x 2 1/4". The sequins are all the same colour!

This is Lilifee my new Garden Angel Dotee. She came from Miriam in Germany in a Swap-Bot swap recently. She loves her new home in the orchids.

So now I'm home and need to get caught up with the daily chores. But not yet ......SharonB has just posted March's Stitch Explorer Challenge technique and I must have a go at that before I do the laundry!!

Added Monday, 16th March. This is finished now. The colours are better in the unfinished one above.

Creative Every Day

I've decided to join the Creative Every Day Challenge for 2009. It's not necessarily embroidery or sewing, it could be creative cooking or painting, etc. So I think that I can manage that. I have for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of January, three new dotee dolls, made especially for two friends and a child. Sometimes I can get them to enlarge here by double clicking, not the case this time. But they will be on Flickr and will be enlargeable there. This is an under-the-sea themed dotee.

This one is for the little girl, Alanna.

This dotee doll is for a gardening lover. Lots of silk embroidery.

Chicken Scratch & Dotee #5

I did get the wrapping done, and of course, there was time for one more dotee!!! I'm fascinated by this "chicken scratch" embroidery on gingham, and you'll see that #5 Dotee's body is all that. But before I started her I did a bit of practice using different colour threads (all #8 perle), and using the white square on the gingham as the centre the first time, and the darkest pink square the next. I tried white, pink and darker pink threads.My favourite is the top right where I used white thread and the white square was left open.The one next to it, top middle is my second choice: white thread and the darkest pink square was left open. The two pale pink tries don't have much impact because the colour of the thread matches the colour of the pink gingham. The darker pink thread - the two samples on the right - give a nice impact too. It worked up very quickly, and I found that it was much easier and neater when I used a small hoop.

Dotee 3

Well, this has to be the last one, I need to wrap presents now!

Dotee 2

Annet warned me on Flickr that these little dolls were addictive and I think she's right! Here's my latest.

Sewing instead of Shopping

I should be out doing the last of my shopping, but I had the urge to try a dotee doll. Here she is:I used gingham for the bottom half and tried some "chicken scratch" embroidery. Chicken Scratch is also called Depression Lace, Gingham Lace or Snowflake Embroidery. I've used a cross stitch, straight stitch and a woven circle stitch. I've seen some projects that have used the gingham squares for a counted cross stitch design.