A Little Flower

A little flower sprouts a little bit of energy and motivation to get back into embroidery. Not done much in the way of intricate stitching for quite some time. As you will have noted that my blogging fluctuates with the posting, matching my mind set and projects. I've been working on getting myself out of the rut and looking after myself, first and forth most, and doing a little bit of what I love to do. 

To stop myself procrastinating about what I was going to stitch yesterday, I pulled out an old design, based on a Liberty fabric. Grabbed out the fabric and the colour threads I wanted to use, bright colours helping a lot to get this done, and just go on with it. 

It's tiny about an 1 1/2 in height. With padded satin leaves, back stitch stem, and a flower head incorporating trailing border, padded beadwork centre and little French Knots. I did it slowly over a course of an afternoon, maybe a few hours in total if that. I had no initial idea of what to do with it, frame it, turning into a part of a patchwork panel, or as my mind thinks about it, a wee little fabric covered box. I've not done one in an age. The mathematics to make one will certainly tick over a few grey cells.  

In which I attempt Crochet....and new idea.

There are many things I want to try out and sometimes I actually make an effort to do them, basically pull my finger out or have a sudden urge to do something new. It was a combination of the two that made me finally get round to trying crochet again. I didn't particularly enjoy learning how to do crochet the first time round, years ago, in fact I gave up pretty quickly because I found it awkward and wasn't particularly inspired. At that time I jumped to learning knitting and got on with that...

But the other day my copy of Mollie Makes landed on my doorstep and I was rather taken with the crochet flower garland tutorial. And so several online purchases and a couple of days later I found myself attempting crochet again.

I actually rather liked it.

I perhaps should have started with a granny square, learn each stitch in turn over a period time till I perfected but this is me I am talking about and frankly I'd much rather try a pattern I like the look of and just keep trying. 

I did comprise on this though as I knew I didn't actually know how to hold the hook or thread, frankly had any clue where to begin, so I did a scan round the net, and ended back at Mollie Makes. There they had a very handy little online tutorial from the Making Spot that teaches you how to make a wee little crochet flower. I spent about two nearly three hours last Friday watching and rewinding the little video and attempting my very own flowers, needless to say I got a bit carried away.

So cute....

I certainly found stitching in the round easier than the row, and I found myself not quite content with making thousands of the little flowers, I wanted to try something a bit more complicated and would allow me to try different stitches. So back I went to Mollie Makes...I didn't initially just look there, I did a good search for interesting flower crochet patterns and it led me back, and they have a Flower Crochet Coaster pattern which was rather sweet and I tried out. My attempts are far from perfect, and the one on the right in the image below was my first go and it's not only small but it's uneven a wee bit messy. The second go was a bit better, slightly bigger so it's getting closer to being able to actually use it as a coaster, but still it's not quite right, and I hit a stumbling block at one point where I think I counted wrong. So I shall just keep on trying!

Anyone else attempted anything new lately? Got any good tips or patterns or vids I can try out to keep me going?

Before I succumb to the warmth of my couch and quilt, I have been working on an idea of a stitch along, a project of unknown length at this time, which will show you how to work a variety of stitches but not in the manner of a traditional sampler something more modern.

But I have a question are there any stitches out there that people would like to know? I have some ideas such as:

• Trailing
• Chain stitch
• Satin Dots / Padded Satin
• Eyelets / Padded eyelets

I also have an antique stitch sample book which have a number of older style stitches that might be of interest.