Doodle Stitching!

I'm so excited! The items I ordered from Amazon came yesterday!

I was hooked when I saw the fanciful cover and there's something I just love about handstitched embroidery. I imagine it on baby shirts, sheets, pillowcases, pillows (projects that take a very long time to finish). The book is great! Lots of pictures, I love the author's color choices and ideas.

There are really good, clear explanations of all the different stitches with photos.

Here's a really original idea, stitching on balsa wood to make charms for bracelets or necklaces.

There's also a CD in the back with templates for embroidery ideas. With all these ideas, I started thinking about this little shirt I found for Baby P on clearance at Old Navy.

I thought it would be easy to outline a few things with embroidery thread, but where to start! The birds were easy, but I didn't know what to highlight on the dune buggy.

The tires seemed fun and maybe the main body of the car, but I thought that thick orange line on the left side brought out the wrong perspective and looked odd.

So...I took out some things and added some others, but still thought it was too much.

Here's what I ended up with, just a few things highlighted, a few drops of water on the surfboard and light reflecting on the windshield.

Not perfect, but interesting. I think it might be harder to embellish an existing design than to embroider something from scratch. It's too easy to accidentally highlight the wrong parts or overwhelm what's already there.

The other thing I ordered from Amazon is this 2 inch, Clover, bias tape maker. It's humongous! I can't even tell you how big it looks compared to my 1 inch. I can finally finish my quilt!

Here I am making tape out of white muslin for the edging on my quilt...many, many yards.