Winter Embroidery Samplers

 One of my favorite embroidery blogs is Carina's Craft Blog.  I love her brightly colored flair and her fun patterns and writing style.  I've stitched her patterns before, most notably this tree pattern and a lovely fall wreath.

Earlier this year when it was still very much winter I started working on her Stay Home and Stitch pattern.  I committed to using all my pearl cotton and other heavier threads.  In retrospect I think they were a bit heavy for some of the letter fills, but I had a good time using different fill stitches.

I love the bright yellow leaves, the purple sparkly needle, and the orange and gold scissors.

Right after starting the Stay Home and Stitch hoop, Carina did a tutorial post on the Swedish embroidery style called Bottensöm.  I loved the look of it, and decided I had to try it at once.  I pulled out another hoop and a piece of the same scrap fabric as I'd used for the piece above and started stitching.  I had so much fun usin gthis stitching approach I've recently finished a whole art quilt using it.  Hopefully sometime I'll get caught up blogging about it too.

After finishing these, I had two ~6" diameter embroideries but no need for any more wall hoops.  I decided to finish them into a project bag with some colorful patchwork stitched up from my scrap bin.  The bag is really lightweight, no interfacing, no complicated pockets, just a nice project bag that closes with a zipper.  It's about 12x12 and is nice and capacious.  I look forward to carrying around future embroidery projects in it!

The inside is just more scrappy fabric from my leftovers.

I love hand embroidery- it's a great complement to knitting in my handwork arsenal, and it was fun to finish these up into something useful.