Wild Olive Stitchery Swap

As an equal opportunity crafter, I love to occasionally do things other than sewing and quilting.  In keeping with this, one of my (many) favorite blogs is Wild Olive, where Mollie always has adorable crafts, printables, and most of all embroidery.  She's currently hosting her first swap ever and even though I promised myself no more swaps, I couldn't miss this one.

We were each assigned secret partners and asked to stitch up/finish a 4" hoop project.  The flickr group for this swap is pretty impressive, on my best days I'm only what one would consider an "advanced beginner" in embroidery, and many of the participants have made some really really beautiful things.  Anyhow, my partner said she liked teacups and pink/yellow/green, so I drew up this little teacup man and stitched him onto a fun piece of textured yellow linen I found in my scrab bin.  I put little embroidered flowers around the edge (the petal stitch is one of the only stitches I know) with individual seed beads in the center of each one.  I tried to use a more sophisticated, spring time pink/turquoise/yellow/green color scheme rather than my default "bright" choices, and I think it turned out ok.

As the hoops were to be finished and prepped for hanging, I painted mine turquoise (instead of bland wood brown color) and followed this tutorial for finishing the back.  I used felt instead of card and made a label for my partner.  Unfortunately,  I used fusible to attach the label to the backing felt and somehow the felt shrunk up and was too tiny to fit in the back of my hoop.  I had to peel off the label, make another backing and then sew the label down.  I am definitely a novice when it comes to felt.

I think it turned out cute and I really hope my partner likes it.  I feel kind of bad that it's so simple.  Instead of making a zip pouch to include as an extra, I made a fun sort-of-flower pincushion (which reverted back to bright colors).  At some point maybe I'll make one for me, but as I mentioned on Wednesday, no more tiny projects until I make good progress on the big ones!