#handmade

[sinensis26]

I love all handmade stuff, but before I started knitting, I always wondered why folks poured so much time and energy into making stuff that looks exacly like what youd buy at a store.

It very quickly hit me: store- bought stuff SUCKS. Handmade stuff RULES.

The kinds of stitches used, the thickness/ quality of yarn, even the dimensions of the item itself are just so shitty and cheap on mass- produced clothing. Once you know what youre looking at, you can see that its made to be worn and disposed of within a year. But that handmade brown sweater? That sucker weighs 3x what a store bought sweater weighs. Its softer, it has better stretch and even with messier seams, its STRONGER. It can survive a trathalon, a hop over a barbed- wire fence, and a minor nuclear explosion.

So hats off to all of the more stubtle fiberworks artists out there, your bulletproof crafts are magnificent.

[black-occamy-arts-and-crafts]

I have recently received another ask about my canvas pulling and since I've been thinking about making a serious tutorial for a while now, I took the opportunity to take some pics and vids while finishing the tree. Do please enjoy :3

1. Why pulling out canvas at all?

Primarily, this is a fantastic technique to apply cross stitch patterns directly to the item you want OR to make patches from old jeans, like this one:

With small patterns I usually don't bother to sew the canvas prior to embroidering, like with the pupper above. In case of the bigger patterns, I usually sew it lightly on the edges just to keep the canvas in one place. The more stretchy the material type is, the more important it's going to be to keep it in place.

2. Why not use a soluble canvas?

I'm sure you can and that they'll be as successful as the regular one 😁 However, as I mentioned in my previous posts here and here, I prefer to err on the side of cheaper, hence the tutorial.

3. Okay. I'm convinced - I even have a pattern embroidered on! What's next?

With small patterns (like the doggo earlier) it's going to be pretty easy. You just pull the threads one by one - preferably starting on the thinnest part of the pattern - and you may not even need the pliers. The fun (?) is with the large pieces, because the canvas has on average quite fragile threads and they like to break. Note - the canvas I'm using and I suppose most of the existing canvas types, will have four threads per one embroidery row. It's usually easier to pull one first and then the other three, bit that may vary when, for example, you managed to pierce the thread during stitching phase earlier 😉

If you were already careful during the stitching, you paid extra attention to embroider EXACTLY between the canvas threads and avoid piercing them at all. There are two benefits to that being extra careful: one, it's easier to pull it out later; two, the stitching gains an extra precision to it (and it looks great!). I recently discover that the round tip needle is making it much easier and if you're interested, there's a separate post about it as well!

On to the process! You can see from the pictures how I started with cutting out a piece of canvas that I can later reuse for something small (recycling is my hobby 🤷🏻‍♀️). I also pulled loose threads from around the tree:

Next part was to clean up the trunk and the grass on the right:

I then cut off the excess to avoid the threads tangling and slowly moved to the sides of the leaves on right and left:

You'll notice that the last photo has the thread pulled halfway through the pattern. That's because on this stage it's usually impossible to simply pull the thread out - even with the pliers it is just going to break off. I use a needle to pluck it from between the embroidery like this:

If you're more of the visual learner, I made this vid that I hope explains the process in more detail. You'll notice that I'm using my fingers and not the pliers here, because it's faster than to switch between tools.

And finally, when you're left with single direction threads like these, it's just a matter of pulling them out one by one.

And that's it! The final product looks clean and neat, AND you will notice that without the canvas beneath it's also getting a bit of volume that looks cool (and helps even out small mistakes you may have made along the way).

Thanks for reading this far! Let me know if there's something else I forgot to explain 😊

[archerinventive]

And just like that, all orders scheduled to be out before Christmas are off to their new adventurers!

A huge thank you to everyone for your patience this year as the holiday season for the shop started off with a week long blackout caused by the bomb cyclone that rocked our neck of the woods.

I'll be playing a bit of catchup with posts over the next week or so while in Canada visiting my family for the holidays, but in the meantime, I hope you're all enjoying your holiday season. :)

Wishing you all the best!

Stay safe and warm out there, especially to those traveling to see loved ones this week.

[fatmasc]

oct 22 is the day we got married! photos came back so i can finally show off the suit i spent months making. based on this pattern that i altered to have a more traditional suiting front. The pants are based off the chinos pattern from freesewing.org. despite what my family assumed, i did not make my husband's vest. he got it from Innova Corsetry, who were able to match material

[transmutationdice]

Hyper Jump

A galaxy themed dice set, with iridescent linework, inspired by interstellar space travel.

[purenonsens]

Stuff I've been doing to destress lately

[knithacker]

Knit Your Own Miffy Magic: Cute Tabi Mitts Pattern From Shrimple Stitches: 👉 https://buff.ly/4fyRRfR

[delusioniste]

[sinnamonrolldice]

Nebula Dice Set

[koalanokosuke]

[johnthestitcher]

Exquisite embroidery!

[kt-creates]

My second Homestead Star quilt. This was created for a lovely lady I know who suffered a house fire just before Thanksgiving. She adores dragonflies so I chose the Dragonfly Illusions fabric line and a black background. I love how the colors popped. I tried to use the quilting to extend the star into all that empty space. It was my second time using a quilting ruler and I must say, it’s harder than you think! I actually enjoyed the pebbling the most. The backing was donated by Stitch! Quilt shop in Reardan WA and the batting is 6mm bamboo.

[onlytiktoks]

[flowerandblood]

Princess Aurora as Sleeping Beauty — my original illustration for this fairytale. ✨

[furiouskingunknown]