Thank you for my Rainbow of Threads!

There aren't seven colours in the rainbow... there's 454!

Hiya!

I hope you're all well and happy!

At last, I have got around to photographing all those lovely, lovely DMC threads and the wonderful Rainbow of Stitches book that I won in the recent Feeling Stitchy Rainbow of Stitches Contest! Thank you to all the kind and generous folks at Feeling Stitchy and DMC threads for giving such gorgeous prizes! Check out my Flickr set for a closer look here.  I asked Little Tiger if he was pleased with the prize; he said it was nice and big, but would have preferred a set of Top Trumps cards, especially ones with monsters on. Bless him!

King of the Thready Castle!

The book is fabulous; I've been taking it around to friends and showing it off who've all "ooh-ed" and "aah-ed" at it. The book contains hundreds and hundreds of sweet embroidery patterns and cross stitch charts and plenty of ideas of what to embroider. The patterns and charts are all monotone, so it's an ideal book for beginner embroiderers. The patterns and the beautifully photographed bags, napkins, samplers and all manner of decorated clothing and other homewares are divided into sections for green, pink, blue, red, and white. The colours used are just suggestions though, so you can choose your favourite colour, or more adventurous stitchers could easily turn the patterns into multi-coloured ones. There's a good variety of styles of patterns too, from cute little children and animals through elegant women and lacy borders, to nine different alphabet and sampler patterns, giving lots of scope for personalising your creations. There's so much choice, that I hardly know where to start!

Then we come to the threads. What can I say about a MASSIVE pile of 454 DMC six-stranded cotton embroidery thread, in all the colours available?? It's WONDERFUL!! DMC thread is a joy to work with, it's colour-fast, has a lovely shine and the colours are very clear. I like how they've given me lots of variegated threads as well, because I love those. There's more shades of green and blue than I will ever need, but I'll give it a good try! I've put together perhaps my favourite 19 (there was meant to be 20 but I seem to have miscounted!) colours from the 454 I now have, pictured below.

My personal rainbow :-)

I'm going to be designing a new Little Tiger embroidery very very soon (this afternoon if I can pull my finger out, but unfortunately my greatest strength is procrastination, so don't hold your breath!) and I'll be using some of the rainbow!

Have a great day, whatever you're doing.

Peace & love

Joey xxx

Sublime Stitching Contest

"Ahhhh..."

That's the sound of me sighing a big sigh of relief, because (thank goodness) it's Friday! :D So what are you going to be doing this weekend? Me, I'll be going to the Craft Candy fair at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield tomorrow morning, a spot of lunch in town and then seeing Alice at the Crucible Theatre in the afternoon. Then a swim at Ponds Forge in the evening!

But if you don't have anything planned, and if it's rainy again like it was today, why not enter the Sublime Stitching Combo Contest?  It's free to enter, and it's a great challenge: combine three themes of motifs together in an embroidery in a imaginative and exciting way, and you could win some great prizes... including my Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration embroidery pattern! 

The top prize is $100 gift voucher for Fred Flare.com... they have lots of lovely goodies, including these little beauties:

Fred Flare Goodies by joeysdreamgarden on Polyvore.com

So I hope you all think about entering the contest!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Joey xx

Put the Flags Out! Freebie and Contest

Flag Day!

Hiya! I hope you're all well and happy. "Long time no blog" I hear you say! I'm sorry for my absence, I've been getting over winning the Feeling Stitchy contest!  Yes it's taken me this long... winning something is rather a shock to my system, you see.  Oh and catching up on things that I've been meaning to do for a long time... like making some little printable flags for sandcastles!

The beautiful Carbis Bay... ahh, what I'd give to be there right now...

A couple of years ago, I made a few little flags for sandcastles on the train down to our holiday destination, the lovely Carbis Bay (pictured above) near to St Ives. If you like Cornwall, I thoroughly recommend a visit as the beach is wonderful, the sea so clear and there's some great walking on the easier bits of the coast path (I'm a real pussy when it gets a bit steep and rocky!). Anyway, here's some pictures of those flags in action:

Since then, I've been meaning to make some for you good folks to download and print out... Finally, I've gotten around to it!  I think this would be a good activity for children to keep them occupied when you're packing for your holiday. Then again, you might want to make yourself a little flag and wrap it around a pencil.  Click on the images or links below to download the flags (you have a choice of ready coloured, or blank for you and/or your little 'un to colour in)

Summer Pals' Sandcastle Flags - ready coloured
Summer Pals' Sandcastle Flags - blank for you to colour in


Joey's Dream Garden Sandcastle flags coloured in version_ not for commercial use


Joey's Dream Garden Sandcastle Flags_ outlines version_ not for commercial use

I made them with our little long-term visitors, Little Tiger (who else??), Cotton Carrot and Bunny Giraffe in mind. Of course, the ever modest Little Tiger demanded a flag with his "beautiful" fizzog on it and nothing much else... Cotton Carrot didn't really mind as long as there was a carrot featured somewhere; so I've put lots of carrots coming out a happy sun to reflect her sunny disposish. And Bunny Giraffe, the most musical and rhythmic of the pals, gets a singing bunny in a rainbow of music! Which he's very happy with. :-)

Health and safety note: please ensure young children are accompanied by an adult when using sharp scissors, and please keep craft knives out of their reach. If your youngsters are using bamboo skewers, please cut off the pointed end for them first.

To make the flags, you need:

A print of the flags

Scissors
Glue

Clean lolly sticks (or bamboo skewers, cut in half, or pencils)

Here's how you put them together

1. Download the sheet you want, and print it out. If it's the blank ones, colour them in and decorate if you wish.

2. Cut out along the dotted lines.

3. Get your stick ready. Apply glue to the back of one half of the flag.

4. Place the stick on the centre of the flag.

When I used a lolly stick, I decided to position it halfway up the flag, as it's quite short.

5. Fold the flag over and make sure that both sides line up neatly. You now have a double-sided flag, ready for some sandy constructions!

Unfortunately, I'm not going to the seaside this year... (sob!) But because I still want to see LOTS of sandcastles with these flags in, I'm offering a prize to the most impressive and imaginative sandcastle bearing one of these flags!  If you want to have the chance to win an exclusive Joey's Dream Garden brooch, here's what you need to do:

1. Make at least one of the flags

2. Make a sandcastle (it doesn't have to be on a beach; in a sandpit would do if, like me, you can't get to the seaside)

3. Take a photo of your creation

4. Add your photo to the Flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/sandcastleflags/ - if you've made lots of flags and sandcastles, please add as many photos of them as you wish! 

The closing date is Monday, 13 September 2010, 00:00 on Howland Island (i.e. GMT -12 hrs; click here to find your timezone's equivalent time:  http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html ) and I will contact the winner via Flickr soon after.

UPDATE 14 JULY: Blogger is currently having technical problems, meaning people sometimes cannot leave a comment. If you cannot leave a comment (please try first, I love getting comments!) please e-mail me and tell me what time you tried to comment. My e-mail is jramone@toucansurf.com.  Thanks!

Take care in the sun (and the sea, if you're going to the seaside!)

and Have Fun!

Joey x

Little Tiger Embroidery Pattern Launch!

Hi!
I hope you've had a good Friday... and now it's the WEEKEND! Hurrah! :D

You will be pleased to know that due to popular demand, my winning Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration embroidery pattern PDF is now on sale in my Etsy shop, Joey's Dream Garden!  Please click on this to take a closer look!

With the full-size (nearly A4) pattern, I've also included full instructions to making this embroidery, together with photos of my finished embroidery for your reference... And there's no shipping cost as the pattern is delivered right to your inbox!

You will be pleased to know that Little Tiger has now got over the initial excitement and is back to one of his most important tasks: watching his Gogos doing the conga...

Party Time!

Have a great weekend everyone, whatever you're doing!
Best wishes
Joey xx

Guess why I'm HAPPY!

EEEEK!! YES! It's LITTLE TIGER!!

Hiya!
Nope, it's not just the beautiful sunshine we've had all day today and the clear blue sky... but my entry to the Feeling Stitchy Rainbow of Stitches contest WON!!  I know, I'm amazed too!  I never win anything - really!  So it hasn't really sunk in yet, and I think I've gone into denial!

So THANK YOU EVERYONE who supported me in any way, I really appreciate it! :-D Big, big hugs to you all!!

Little Tiger, on the other hand, has taken it all his stride. "I'm used to this kind of thing, you know, lots of attention from my fans".  Goodness me Little Tiger, that's rather modest of you... Not!

I'm thinking about my next project actually!  Do you remember the Little Jumping Joan (skipping bunny) embroidery pattern that I gave as a freebie earlier this year? Well, I think I will FINALLY get around to actually embroidering her myself, for the first time!  If you want to have a go at embroidering Little Jumping Joan, please, be my guest! You can access the downloadable PDF by clicking on the link here: Little Jumping Joan.

I'm going to be posting work-in-progress pictures, so please watch this space!

And due to popular demand, I will be selling the Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration as a PDF pattern in my Etsy shop in the next couple of days, so you can have a go at making your own version, and do your bit to help Little Tiger's struggle to world domination!

Lots of Love
Joey & Little Tiger xx

Feeling Stitchy Rainbow Contest - Voting Time!

Which is your favourite?

Hiya!
Well, I switched on the pc this morning to find that the voting has already begun! How exciting! If you've been reading the last few posts in this blog, you'll know what this is all about, but if not, just scroll down.

My entry, Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration, is one of the ten finalists... so please vote for whichever is your favourite!  Here's the link: http://www.feelingstitchy.com/2010/06/cast-your-votes.html

Little Tiger and his "mini-me"!

I asked Little Tiger himself for his thoughts on this momentous occasion, and here's what he said:

"VOTE FOR ME!! DO IT! DO IT NOW! VOTE LITTLE TIGER!!!"

Oh, Little Tiger! Calm yourself! You're getting much too excited and it'll all end in tears.  Now go and wash your paws, you've been playing in the dust with those naughty sparrows again...

Best wishes
Joey xx

EEK! Guess What?

Orange Category Winner - Rainbow of Stitches Contest

YIPPEE!!! My embroidery won the orange category of the Feeling Stitchy Rainbow of Stitches competition!  They asked me to write up a little interview thingy, which you can read on there, if you wish...

So, if you want to know how the contest pans out, just visit the Feeling Stitchy blog over the next five days to find out which other embroideries have become finalists... Red was revealed earlier today... and there will be another two announced tomorrow... I'm guessing it'll be yellow and green... How exciting!

I'm sorry if all this self-centredness is a bit much, but don't worry, it will pass! :-) It's just made my day! :D

Best wishes
Joey xx

Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration embroidery for Feeling Stitchy Rainbow Competition

Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration

Hiya!
Well now, I'm a bit of a stranger to this blog, aren't I? My excuse is that I've been busy with one thing or another... the one thing was another project for Making Gifts magazine, which I can't reveal for another month when it's published (sorry!), and the other thing is this embroidery!

This is my entry for the Feeling Stitchy blog Rainbow Competition. If you like embroidery or sewing, and haven't seen Feeling Stitchy before, then why?? It's brill!  Go visit now! :-)

The rules of the competion were to simply embroider a design using only one colour of the rainbow (although black and white were also included).  I chose to design an embroidery in shades of orange, not only because orange is my favourite colour, but also because it would give me the opportunity to put Little Tiger into it! I based the Little Tiger you see here on a brooch that I made some time ago now. Which in turn is based on our own Little Tiger...

I also wanted to put in a representation of one of my favourite flowers, the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). I love this flower for it's simple cupped shape, it's satiny petals and its beautiful bright golden orange colour which seems to glow in the sun. I think of them as "cups of sunshine"!

California poppy, not in California but Sheffield.

After I had sketched my design, I had to think about what fabric I'd use to embroider on. I decided that a plain background was a bit boring, so I hand tie-dyed a piece of calico to use, using Dylon "sunflower yellow" - hence the off-white circles of the background. The circles were created by gathering a bunch of fabric and tying a piece of string around it, so the dye doesn't reach the fabric under the string, and repeating this all over the fabric so make a pattern. I like this effect because for me, it makes me think of sun-drenched, relaxed summer festivals.

Preparing the tie-dyed calico for embroidering

I chose to include lots of different types of stitches - and I used eight - because for me, that's what embroidery is all about! Showing the amazing variety of textures and shapes which can be created with just a needle, a bit of thread and some fabric. I love trying out new stitches, so I dived in (after a bit of practise first) and used long and short stitch (for the poppy petals) and ribbed spider's web (for the flower-like shapes in the "grass"). I also used straight stitch in a pattern I've never used before, shown to me by my good friend Claire (thanks Claire! bet you didn't expect that, did you! hahaha!) I also used stem stitch (the sun's rays), french knots (the sun and Little Tiger's eye "twinkles"), satin stitch (his eyes and nose), chain stitch worked in close rows as a filling stitch (Little Tiger's fur) and back stitch (the poppies' stems).

The poppies being embroidered in long and short stitch...

The finished poppies!

Apart from enjoying this challenge just for the embroidery, it taught me a few things. The main lesson was probably that I always underestimate how long a piece of work is going to take! I spent at least 50 hours on the embroidery part of this piece (excluding the time I spent in sketching the original design). I also learnt that you can do a lot with a very limited colour palette, and something that I am going to explore further.

The stripes going on, dark brown first...

Stitching the orange on, around the dark brown stripes...

The finished Little Tiger!

Well, I enjoyed making this piece, but I hope you enjoy looking at it almost as much!

Best wishes
Joey x

Happy New Year of The (Little) Tiger!

Oi!!!

It's ME, Little Tiger, as IF you didn't know, ya bloomin' idiot!! And because I'm so POPULAR and LOVED by EVERYONE, they've made it MY year starting TODAY, called "YEAR OF THE LITTLE TIGER"!!

So to make you all VERY HAPPY and so you can all CONGRATULATE me on me being WONDERFUL in every aspect, I've taken over Joey's blog, and put up a GOOD post for a change!!

I've seen that lots of very CREATIVE and CLEVER people on Etsy have been celebrating ME, LITTLE TIGER and made lots of things with ME on... which I know they are going to bring to me IN PERSON (as it's Sunday and the postie doesn't work on Sundays – which is SO lazy, the bloomin' IDIOT!!) so I'll be waiting by the back door for all the GIFTS! Form an orderly queue, ya bloomin' idiots!!

Anyway, I've decided that as a treat, I'm going to show you what I'M going to GET!
By the way, the BEAUTEOUS picture at the top of the page is me in the snow. But I'm NOT cold because I'M AS HARD AS NAILS!!

Year of the Tiger Kitty calendar by novarhyme - like me, very cute.

New Year Tiger 2010 - Print by Tavisha - a very handsome and fierce tiger, just like me.

Happy New Year Tiger Patchwork Doll Japanese craft kit by MeMe Craftwork - all the lovely ladies like this little tyke. It's a problem I have as well... something that us SUPERSTARS just have to get used to...


Year of the Tiger archival print by Betsy Thompson Studio - a very handsome tiger, but if it was ME, I'd be getting a PIGGY-BACK from HER!! What a cheek.

year of the tiger by Dutch Door - ME, doing a very skilful dance through some beautiful flowers. I look EXTREMELY HANDSOME, don't you think??!

And if you DIDN'T like this FANTASTIC post (I can't IMAGINE how you couldn't) then you're an IDIOT!!

Best wishes,
Little Tiger xxxxxxxx

NEW! Joey's Dream Garden Badges!

Bowls of Badges!, originally uploaded by Joey 7.

Yippee! My badges came this morning, which only took 2 days for the brilliant Brilliant Badges to make! I recommend them.

I wanted a way to enable more people to own my designs without me having to sew night & day to make enough things & make my fingers bleed... so there are sets of four cute little badges available in my Etsy shop now!

If you are in the Sheffield or Derbyshire area you may be interested to visit the little picturesque village of Tissington on either 8th or 9th August where i'll be doing the Tissington Village Hall craft fair on both days. It's opposite the duck pond, and opening times are from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cheers
Joey x

Finished Brooch - Little Tiger mini!

Little Tiger mini, originally uploaded by Joey 7.

Yippee! I've finished the first of the three amigos! Little Tiger mini here is made in lovely wool-blend felt (I think it's 30% wool, so I can iron it but it still has a nice soft natural feel, not harsh like polyester felt), which i've embroidered with black for the stripes and pink for his piggy nose!

I used Bondaweb to adhere the white and black pieces of felt to the orange base piece, as it makes it easier to stitch if the pieces are stuck on. Bondaweb is an essential material for me, I use it a lot when i'm making brooches. I used to pin the pieces but when you're working with tiny bits of felt, it isn't really the best way. Bondaweb securely bonds one fabric to another so it's like you're working with just one piece of fabric. You could use fabric glue but Bondaweb is so quick to use - after ironing, the fabric is ready to sew!

What's your favourite sewing/crafting material/tool?

Click here to see more pictures of Little Tiger mini on my flickr stream: Joey's Little Tiger Mini brooch

New Brooches Coming Up!

Three Friends in a 'boat' (cardboard box) a year ago, originally uploaded by Joey 7.

I'm starting some new brooches today, so watch this space... they will be based upon three little friends who share our house, pictured here... I'll be posting pictures soon.

Will they be cute? You bet! :D
Joey xx