Crochet Coasters

 Hi all 

Hope all are doing great.  I hope You have all find yesterday's tutorial useful.  I am working on an embroidery hoop design with woven rose flowers.  It will be posted next week.  Today I am here to showcase a set of crochet coasters which I have crocheted for one of my friend.  This is the first order I have completed within a day.  Before this, I have got orders to crochet purses but those projects will take atleast two to three days to complete perfectly.  This project brings instant satisfaction.  

I have crocheted four coasters in a combination of cream and red. 

I have used 4 ply acrylic yarn and hook size 4mm.  I have followed the tutorial from here.  These coasters measure 4.5".  It's perfect for a coffee mug.  

You can purchase these coasters set in amazon through the following link.

In the original pattern page a set of ombre coasters has been done using this pattern.  That catches my eyes and next time I will be making with those colors.  Hope all of you like the coasters.  

You can view my other crochet creations here.

If you want to me make one for you I am ready to make for you and ready to ship within India. Leave me a message in the contact me box or mail me. 

Woven Wheel Stitch - Tutorial/ How to make Woven Wheel Stitch

 Hi all 

Hope all are doing great.  Yesterday I have posted a embroidery done using woven wheel stitch.  You can view it here. Today I am happy to share with you the tutorial for doing the woven wheel stitch.

Woven Wheel stitch is also known woven rose as it forms a rose like circle after weaving. This stitch comes under the weaving stitch family.  Since it resembles a spider web it is also known as woven spider web stitch and woven spider's wheel stitch.

Let's see the tutorial now.  Points to be noted before proceeding with the woven wheel is "The number of spokes used should be in odd number.  Then only weaving of the spokes alternately up and down will take place.  Usually 6 strands are used.  The number of strands depends upon the size of the design.  Larger the size of the wheel higher the number of spokes so that the space between the spokes in the outer edge will be edge and it allows the thread to sit perfectly.

Other Embroidery stitch tutorials can be viewed here.

Hope all of you find this tutorial useful.  I will come up another stitch soon.  Till then, have a nice time with your needle and thread.  Have a nice day.

Embroidery Design - Woven Wheel stitch

 Hi all

Hope all are doing great.  Today I am happy to share with you another embroidery design using Woven wheel stitch. It is also known as Woven rose stitch. It is a very very easy and simple stitch.  Nowadays it is used to make rose by so many embroiderers.  

Last year I have made neck design in a kurti using woven wheel stitch with satin ribbons.  You can view it here.

Other Embroidery Stitches
Embroidery designs

Here is the Woven Wheel Stitch design.

Pattern for the design

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Stitches used

Flower - Woven Wheel Stitch

Leaves - Leaf stitch

Stem - Stem stitch

Anchor Thread numbers

Flower - 9(light- in center), 11(medium-in middle), 13(dark-in outer) -6 strands

Leaves without stem - 225(3 strands)

Leaves with stem - 257(3 strands)

You can see how I used the threads to make the flower from the following picture. 

I am linking this post to Craftastic Monday Link Party.

Hope all of you like the design.  Tomorrow I will come up with the tutorial for making the woven wheel stitch.  Till then have a nice time with your needle and thread. 

Zentangle X-Junction -- How to draw

Hi all

Hope all are enjoying your weekend.  Hope all of you like the zentangle pattern X-junction which I have posted yesterday.  Today I am happy to share with you the tutorial for drawing it. Also I have created a colouring page for that pattern and coloured that page for relaxing myself.  Here it is,

I have used the following colours to colour the page.  I have used ADD gel Little Artist twin tip pens to colour this page.  I have purchased it from here.

Now let's move onto the steps to draw X-junction. It is easily understood from the following pictures. Divide a space into four quadrants by drawing an 'X'.  Then draw a tear drop in all the four quadrants and add a circle on all the corners of 'X'. That's it.

Instead of tear drops you can also use other variations like below.  It's upto your creativity. 

Below is the colouring page which I have created in the powerpoint software. You can save it as a jpg file and print it out for colouring.

You can view the other Zentangle patterns which I have tried in the following links.  

Zentangle - Snowflower

Zentangle - WIRLZ

Zentangle - Mook-ish

Zentangle - BLISS

I will be creating a page soon for all the colouring files so that you can download easily from one page.

Hope all of you like this page.  Be creative and have fun.  Happy zentangling.

Zentangle Pattern -->X-Junction

 Hi all

Hope all are doing well and having a great day. Today I am happy to share with you another zentangle frame with a verse.   The name of the pattern is X-Junction. Very easy and to draw.  I am sharing the frame with the verse now. 

I have used black gel pens to draw the pattern and Maped colour pencils to colour it.  I will post the tutorial tomorrow along with the colouring page.  I have one more pattern in this series. 

Tutorial for drawing this pattern is here.

 You can view the other Zentangle patterns which I have tried in the following links.  

Zentangle - Snowflower

Zentangle - WIRLZ

Zentangle - Mook-ish

Zentangle - BLISS

Hope all of you like this pattern.  Will be back tomorrow with the tutorial to draw this pattern and the colouring page.  Have a nice day.

Happy Zentangling.

Finished Crochet covers and its making

 Hi all

Hope all are having a great day.  Yesterday I have posted two crochet pieces that I have crocheted to finish into cushion covers.  You can view the crocheted details in that post.

I have completed both the pieces into cushion covers and I am very happy to show you the finished product.  Let's see the covers and then we will move onto the tutorial part of making the covers. 

Back side of the cushion

Perfect

Making of the cushion covers

I have used the crochet pieces for the front side.  Made an envelope cushion cover out of fabric and then hemmed the crochet piece with the fabric.  

This is not exactly a tutorial.  I have given the steps I have followed in making it.  The cushion is of 16" x 16".  The crocheted pieces are 15" x 15" squares.  Always crochet the pieces atleast 1" less than the cushions so that it fit's the cushion in a perfect manner. 

For the envelope type cover I have taken the fabric of height 41" and width 16.5".

From the top mark at 13.5" and draw a line.  From that point mark 16" and again draw a line.  1 and 2 are raw edges that folds inside to make the envelope. 2 and 3 are top and bottom of the cover. 

After making this marking, now we have to sew the raw edges and top and bottom of the cushion though the fabric is uncut.  

Fold the fabric at the lines 2 and 3 and stitch with 1/4" seam. 

Fold the fabric with 1/4" seam on the raw edges and sew.   Then sew the opening on both the sides.  Here one edge overlaps the other side and forms an envelope.  

Turn inside out.  Your fabric cover is ready now.  

Now place the crochet piece on the front side soft of the cover and align the center of the crochet piece and fabric cover and pin it.  Do this for all four sides.  Like wise, align all the corners.  Start hemming the fabric and crochet piece from the middle of any one side.  I have made one stitch per chain stitch in the border of the crochet.  And that's it.  Crochet cushion cover is ready.

Hope this steps helps you in making a crochet cushion.  If you have any doubts feel free to leave a comment.  I will be happy to help you.  Few more crochet pieces are also waiting for its turn to be finished as cushion covers.  I will come up with one by one. 

Tomorrow I will come up with the next zentangle frame.  So do watch my space.   Till then, take care,  Bye.  

Happy Crocheting. 

Crocheting for Cushion covers

 Hi all

Hope you all having a great day.   During the beginning of this year when I was cleaning my crafty items I collected a big basket full of unfinished projects.  So I decided to finish them one by one this year.  From that collection I have got 6 crochet pieces I have crocheted for making cushion covers.  So I took two pieces from them and decided to finish it this week. 

Today I will be showing the crochet pieces and tomorrow I will be posting the completed cushions with tutorial of how to make the cover. 

So onto the cushion covers.

Close up of the pattern.  

This pattern I have seen in pinterest as a chart.  But I am not able to find the link now. 

Close up of the pattern.  

For this piece I have followed the pattern from here.

I have crocheted only the front of the cushion covers.  I am going to attach these to fabric covers.  I am in the process of sewing the cushion covers.  I  have used local acrylic 4 ply yarn and used 4mm hook.  Tomorrow I will post the details about the making process and the completed covers.  

You can view my other crochet projects here.

Happy Crocheting.

Magic Chain Stitch - Tutorial

 Hi all

Hope all of you like yesterday's design for Magic chain Stitch. Today I am happy to share with you the tutorial for doing magic chain stitch.  This stitch uses two colors.  The number of  strands for both the colors should be the same.   You can use contrast colours or different shades of the same color.  Both the way it will be beautiful. 

Let's look into the tutorial.

Hope the tutorial is clear.  Try your hands in doing magic chain stitch and let me know in the comments section.   Tomorrow I will be back with two crochet pieces which I have crocheted sometime back.  

Embroidery Design - Magic Chain Stitch

 Hi all

Hope you all had a great weekend.  Today I am here to share with you a new embroidery design using magic chain stitch.  All of you familiar with chain stitch.  You can view the chain stitch design here.

Magic chain stitch is similar to chain stitch but we have to use two color threads. In 2012 I have stitched a small design as a part of TAST.  You can view it here. Now onto the design.

Pattern for the design

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Tutorial for Magic Chain stitch is here.

Stitches Used

Spiral flower - Magic chain stitch

Stem scrolls - Magic Chain stitch

Leaves - Leaf stitch

Centre - straight stitches with French Knot

Anchor Thread numbers

Spiral Flower - 13, 10 (2 Strands each)

Stem scrolls - 255, 258 (2 strands each)

Straight stitch - 315 (6 strands)

French Knot - 13 (4 strands, 2 wraps)

Hope all of you like this design.  Tomorrow I will be back with the tutorial for doing magic chain stitch.  Till then have a happy time with needle and thread.

Early Stitching for X-mas

 Hi all

Hope all are enjoying the weekend.  

Every year I used to think I should stitch something for the special seasons like Easter and Christmas.  But it will not happen according to my plan.  Last year I managed to stitch a cross stitch wall hanging for x-mas but not yet framed.  I have so many patterns saved in my folders.  This year I came across this post "A year of Christmas stitching".  SO I decided to stitch those tiny charts every month and finished the first one today.  

I thought it is a small design and I can stitch within an hour or two. But it took me nearly 4 hours to stitch this small design even though it is stitched in a single colour.  But the result is simple and elegant. So have a look at the design.

I will be finishing this into a wall hanging.  Once done I will post it here.  

Next one is a WIP which is a kit.  The kit was purchased 3 years back when my hubby went to thailand.  The design is a small Thai girl in traditional dress.  I have completed 1/4th of the design.  Everyday I am adding some stitches to it.  Have a look at it.

Hope all of you like the cross stitch finish.  In my next post I will come up with an embroidery design.  Till then do watch my space.  Have a great weekend.

Zentangle BLISS - How to draw

 Hi all

Hope all are doing well.  Yesterday  I have posted a verse with a frame using zentangle pattern -  BLISS.  Today I am happy to share with you the tutorial for drawing the pattern.  

Before that I have created a colouring page using the pattern.  You can save the picture as .jpg in your system and can use it for colouring. 

Now onto the tutorial

The steps are easily understood from the picture.  So I am not giving any explanations here.  Be imaginative and add colourings according to your wish.  

That's all for today.  Download the colouring page and colour it and relax your weekend.  

Tomorrow I will come up with a cross stitch Which I have stitched seeing a chart and a cross stitch WIP.

Hope all of you like the design.  Drop in your feedbacks in the comments section. 

Zentangle Pattern - BLISS

 Hi all,

Hope all are doing well and great.  Today I am happy to share with you the next Zentangle pattern called "BLISS".  It is very easy to draw.  I have drawn this pattern as a border for the verse. Here it is.

For this pattern I have used black gel pen only and coloured it with colour pencils.  You can draw the pattern in different sizes.  To fill in the blank area I have added some other details like tiny hearts, semi circles, filled circles etc.  You can add as per your wish.  

Tomorrow I will be posting the tutorial for drawing this pattern and I will add a coloring page as well.  Hope all of you like it.  

You can visit the following links for the previous patterns.

Zentangle - Snowflower

Zentangle - WIRLZ

Zentangle - Mook-ish

Hope all of you like this pattern.  I will be back with the tutorial and colouring page tomorrow.  Till then have a nice day. 

Kasuti Embroidery motif -2 for cushion

Hi all,

Hope all are doing well.  A week back I have embroidered a motif for a cushion in Kasuti embroidery.  You can view it here.  

To match with that cushion I have embroidered another motif.  This motif is from the book "Karnataka Kasuthi Embroidery Designs - Vol 1 " from Mridulas school of Embroidery &Fashion Design.  You can get the details for this book and other course and design books from this link. 

This is the embroidery done on the net.

Previously I have said that I found it difficult to remove this net.  But this time I have sprayed water and removed it.  It was easy.  Thanks carin for the timely help.

Now I have to stitch these two  into cushion covers.  My next project on kasuti will be a simple neck design on a kurti.  

You can view my other Kasuti works here.  I hope all of you like this motif.  

 

Granitos Stitch - Tutorial

Hi all

Hope all are doing well.  Yesterday I have posted a design to practice Granitos stitch. Today I am happy to share with you the tutorial for doing the stitch.

Granitos stitch comes under the straight stitch family.  It is made up of series of straight stitches.  It is a thick stitch that looks similar to lazy daisy stitch.  It can worked easily and quickly.  It is often used in chikkankari work in India.  Later I will post a chikkankari work design that uses this stitch.  

Now let's move on to the tutorial.

Hope all of you have understood this tutorial.  Do give a try and give your feedback in the comments section.  

For other embroidery stitch tutorials click here.

Embroidery Design - Granitos Stitch

 Hi all

Hope you all had a great weekend.  Happy that you all had a nice time seeing my WIP's in my previous post.  Today I am happy to share with you a simple design to practice another simple design i.e) Granitos stitch.  

I have used this stitch in one of my table cloth project back in 2011.  That is the time I started doing embroidery and you can view it here.    Sorry for the poor quality of the photograph.

Now for today's design

Pattern for the design

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Stitches Used

-----------------------

Flowers - Granitos stitch (4 stitches)

Leaves - Granitos Stitch (4 stitches)

Stem - Stem stitch

Centre of flower - French knot (4 stitches)

Anchor thread numbers

--------------------------------------

Big flower - 28 (6 strands)

Small flower - 27 (4 strands)

Leaves - 255 (3 strands)

Stem - 258 (6 strands)

For big designs you can use 6 strands and 4 to 6 stitches for each granitos stitch.  For doing short granitos stitches use 2 or 3 strands according to the length of the stitch.  

Tutorial for this stitch will be posted tomorrow.  

Tutorials for other stitches used in this design

French Knot

Hope all of you like this design.  Do give a try and drop in your feedback in the comments section.  See you tomorrow. Have a nice day.

WIP's

 Hi all

Hope all are enjoying the weekend.  

Today I am here to share some of my WIP's with you.  These are long term projects which I have started earlier.  They are all going in a slow pace.   I  have started to do tutorials and designs for the embroidery stitches from last year and therefore these projects are staying behind and I am not working on it regularly.  

To get an inspiration to work on those projects I have planned a post to show the progresses once in a week or once in every two weeks.  Here I have showed 5 projects and some more are still lying in WIP basket.  I will concentrate on these first and then move onto the other.   So here they are.

This is again a needlepoint stitch kit from Anchor - The Last Supper.  I am working on with half cross stitches.

This is a long stitch Kit from Anchor under the name Glossy flowers. 

This is "Never Ending SAL" from here.  I am going to complete panel 1 from that.  

This is Rainbow Sal which I have started in 2017.  I have completed three months designs.  And luckily I have saved all the parts of the SAL in my laptop.  That page was not available now.  

This is a kutch work design I am working for a cushion cover.  

Apart from these I am working on an embroidery kurti and a saree which will be finished soon.  3/4 th of the designing is over in both.  So I will show them once it is finished.  

In crochet a cushion cover and a blanket (started in 2018 - joining process is going on) is in my basket.

I have made some quilt blocks also.  I will show it in the future.  

Even though I have these many projects in hands I always start something new.  This keeps me busy and also it is a way not to get disturbed by the things that are going on around and keeps me away from worrying about those things.  Because there is no solutions for some problems, only time can solve all those.  

It is always better to have some aim to achieve something in life.  For me finishing the "The last Supper" project and another Cross stitch project is one such aim for the next two year.

So, what's your aim in crafting.  Put down your thoughts in the comments section.  I would like to hear it and take it as a dose of inspiration.

On Monday I will come up with a new embroidery design.  Till then have a nice day.

Filet Crochet and a WIP

Hi all

Hope all are doing well and everyone will be getting ready to enjoy the weekend.  

After learning crochet and its different stitches, an year back I have tried a different technique in crochet called Filet crochet.  It is a technique that uses chains and double crochet stitch.  I have learned the technique from here.  I have used the same chart given in the page to do my first project.  You can find so many other interesting tutorials regarding embroidery and crochet in that page.  

This week I was cleaning my cupboards and I got so many abandoned projects(treasures), some WIP's and some Charts.  And one such treasure is this crochet piece.  So, yesterday night itself I have done the border and today it is here as a show piece.  

All the projects will start and end with a row of mesh.  To add a border, I made 2 dc's in the space between the dc's and 1 dc on top of each dc.  Then for the next round I made

 *[(sc,dc,sc) in a dc, skip 1 ch, sl st in the next dc, skip 1]* and rep from * to * around.

And my second project is a runner with a flower design.  That too is completed.  But is requires blocking.  Today I have completed the border and once blocked I will post it here. 

I am working on a kurti neck design and half 1/4 of the design is completed.  Have a look at it. Hopefully I will finish it next week. 

 Tomorrow I will post some of my WIP's so that I will give a report about it every week about the progress.  It will give me some inspiration to work on those projects atleast 10 to 15 mins everyday.  Otherwise the small projects are coming into priority.  

Do you follow any order to stitch your WIP's.  Do tell me in the comments.   

Have a happy weekend.