stitchery & weekend reading

a few weeks ago was my great friends birthday. Her husband asked me if i would custom colour one of my wallpapers to go with the paint in their bedroom. Well the custom colouring was a huge success and mr H and I hung the paper while our friends were in London so it would be a surprise on their return (it was a bit of a morcombe and wise or laurel and hardy affair as their ceilngs are nearly 3m tall and the paper is 130cm wide!!!)

anyway i wanted to make her a special present to go with her wallpaper , so i embroidered her a cherry blossom polka dot cushion to tone in , and was rather pleased with the whole effect. I have posted on machine embroidery before i know, but my degree was in embroidery (yes there was much eyebrow raising when i told people thats what i was studying). Despite moving into more commercial elements of design for a job, embroidery is something i always come back to when i have the luxury of time, or want to make something special.
To do free stitch embroidery just takes practise and time, you have to get used to moving the work and making the needle behave like a pencil. I have an ancient bernina machine which allows you to drop the teeth and put on an embroidery foot, but most machines will allow you to drop the teeth and even if you aren't able to find a foot to fit you can put your work in a hoop (i find the sprung ones made by madeira the best) and have a go.
Poppy Teffrey is a queen of machine embroidery and has written a gorgeous book on the subject you can buy it here, she also writes a blog here

what initially prompted me to think about recent forays into machine embroidery was an email from the lovely charlotte macey - who it turns out lives only a few miles away! but she is another free stitcher whose work i really like - she has a lovely sense of colour. You can read her blog here and buy her products here.

Anyway I am sorry this post is actually all upside down - i intended to start with charlotte and end will wallpaper but i loaded the photos in the wrong order and blogger won't oblige me by copying them back in, so its a topsy turvy world today!!
happy weekend.