Needlebook #2

 My 2nd needle case finished from Susan's wonderful e-course.

My 2 needle cases that I thoroughly enjoyed making.  Susan did a wonderful job on this e-course on her Plays With Needles site. 

Needlebook progress

 So last night I began sewing my needlebook together. Hand sewing/stitching I love, enjoy, take great pleasure in but sitting down in front of a sewing machine is a different story.  I'm sure the thing has it in for me!!  Putting the 2 sides together, I sewed around it and that turned out not too badly.  The next step was to sew in the felt pages using a zipper foot.  I had no idea what this looked like or where it was.  My mom was home and when I asked her if the piece I found was the zipper foot she said " No, that's for making buttonholes." Aaargh!  I did find the right piece in a container of spools and other sewing machine stuff and sewed in my needle pages. Voila:

 So here is my needlebook sans the tie which just didn't work out and sans the accent piece on the back which looked horrible due to my uneven machine sewing.  I have yet to finish the spine piece to cover up my messy sewing on the outside and also put a pocket in the inside. When I showed my daughter my needlebook, her response was "Another one?" Yes, I do have 4 already but now I'll have 5 :)

I didn't get my first one quite right so decided to make another one right away and hopefully I won't have to use the seam ripper on this one and now that I won't have to look for the zipper foot, it should go smoother. 

Hari-Kuyo Needlebook

Susan at Plays With Needles is offering a wonderful e-course on making a lovely needlecase is honour of our needles and all the hard work they do, hence the name Hari-Kuyo.  The silk ribbon flower is on the front of the needlecase and this "Broken but not Forgotten" is on the inside back cover.  Susan's instructions and videos are excellent and clear and it's fun seeing everyone else's work on the Flickr page.

Crewel Embroidery Needle case (back)

I wasn't going to waste the back of the needle case with nothing on it so I stitched this flower using a buttonhole stitch, french knots & chain stitch in the centre.

Crewel Needle Case (front)

Ta-da!  Happily finished my first ever crewel piece of embroidery.  There are 4 pages of felt inside for my needles.

Crewel Embroidery

The Regina Stitchery Guild offered another Learn to Stitch class on Saturday morning from 9 - 12:00, this time on Crewel Embroidery.  Our instructor was Evelyn Wahl & it was very enjoyable.  The stitches we worked on were the stem stitch, satin stitch, fly stitch & chain stitch.  This will soon become a needlecase.

Needle case continued

Joggles offers a fair number of on-line classes & this needle case is one that is currently being offered by Christen Brown.  This is a only a 3 week class & it's titled Creative Thread Embroidery.  Here is a list of the various stitches we will be learning & using:  bullion knot, cast on buttonhole, drizzle, woven, whipped and tatted plus traditional stitches such as the buttonhole, chain stitch, feather stitch, feather stitch leaf, French knot, lazy daisy, pistol stitch and straight stitch.  The instructions are excellent & there is also an on-line forum to connect with the instructor & others taking the class.  I'm already behind but that's okay as I'm not the only one & I can only do what I can do :)

Needle case

So many wonderful embroidery stitches that I've never done before & here are a few of them. I really enjoyed doing the whip stitch rose & using different coloured threads was great.  The buttonhole rose that I did in yellows & pinks were a bit more tricky to do but again I'm very pleased with how they turned out.  The bullion knot rose that I did in blue thread I struggled with for some reason.  Maybe because it was just too late at night.  Think I'm going to do some easy lazy daisy stitches next.