Make Your Own Sugar Skull Embroidery Patterns

This time of year isn't just for Halloween. For all those of you who celebrate Dia De Los Muertos, here is a great tutorial with templates to create your own sugar skull embroidery patterns.

Materials needed:

Pencil
paper
Printed out templates. Or you can use your favorite photo editing software to make patterns on your computer.

Start with a skull outline from the template below and you will be well on your way to creating your pattern:

Next, add in your eyes, nose mouth and any additional decoration. Here are some templates you can use, but feel free to draw extra embellishments yourself:

Many times sugar skulls have floral eyes, so there are several here to choose from, add in any extra swirls, etc you want, just try to keep your pattern from being too difficult with tiny details. Here is my finished pattern:

Then, start stitching! I will be working on this later this week and sharing it on the blog when I am finished. Happy Stitching :)

I will be using these neat Glow in The Dark Threads I found to add some extra wow factor to mine, you can sew with them on their own or blend them into other threads :)

DIY Cloud + Lightning Brooch

The rain is back here in Portland, and I am LOVING the Fall weather. We've even had some thunderstorms so far this year (which is very rare here). It inspired me to make this cute little felt brooch (a perfect craft for a rainy afternoon!).

To make this felt brooch you will need:

Grey felt
Yellow felt
scissors
needle
pin back
cotton ball or small amount of polyester fiber fill
thread (colors of your choice)
cloud template (I used the one from my rain cloud brooch)
fabric glue or hot glue (optional)

I started by cutting out my shapes and choosing some thread. I made some templates out of index cards, you can use my cloud template or easily make your own. I free handed my lightning bolt pattern onto my felt (its basically a zigzag line that comes to a point). I like a really bright yellow with matching thread for the contrast it gave my final project, you can definitely use lighter colors if you prefer.

I wanted my lightning bolt to have a little more heft so I doubled the layers and used a blanket stitch to sew them together. Blanket stitch is great because it seems to smooth out the edges of your final shape (which is really useful with felt pieces that can be quite fuzzy around the edge).

Next, I placed my lightning bolt onto one of my clouds and moved it around to decide just where I wanted it placed. Once you decide, you can sandwich the other piece of grey felt on top and get your needle threaded to sew your clouds together.

I decided to give my cloud a silver lining (ha! I do in fact, love this weather!) and thought a backstitch would look cute all the way around. You can do another blanket stitch, or get even fancier with something else if you like, I'm not the boss of you and your crafts :)

Once you get a little over halfway around your cloud, I usually start adding some stuffing in to make sure I can get all the way into the ends. For this I just used a cotton ball, but if you have polyester fiber fill laying around you can use that instead. Continue sewing and adding cotton until your cloud is fully stuffed and you have stitched the entire way around. Tie off your string and weave in the ends if you feel it necessary. Finish your brooch by attaching a pin back onto the back of your cloud (you can use fabric glue, hot glue, or stitch the pin back onto the back of your cloud).

Above you can see a detail of my silver lining stitching. I used a metallic thread because I like things that are sparkly, but you could easily substitute a plain grey or silver colored thread without the sparkly filaments.

Tada! Has the weather inspired you to make anything super cute lately? I'd love to hear about it!

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Silver Metallic thread for this post was provided by Kreinik Threads. I was not compensated in any other way for this post and all opinions are my own.

Embroidered Line Drawings

With my mini series in embroidery behind us, I think it is time to start showing you some great ideas for creating your own embroidery masterpieces! Many embroidery patterns are nothing more than line drawings, so it's a great place to start if you want to try out some non traditional patterns. For this piece I chose a line drawing of a Pug puppy I found on Deviant Art by Lady Gryph.

If you happen to be good at line drawings, or have a friend that draws up a storm, that is a great way to get your very own original patterns! You can also take photographs and tracing paper and create line drawings if you aren't so artistically inclined. Simply trace around the edges of your subject matter, and any details you want to include. Keep in mind that you will be sewing it later, so less is more. You don't want so many lines that your picture is impossible to embroider, but you want enough details that people know what it is.

For this drawing, I used almost entirely backstitch to embroider my design, I just used a couple French Knots to make pupils.

I think I might turn this little guy into a quilt patch. I am going to be starting some quilting tutorials soon, as I plan on making a quilt for a new little niece or nephew I have on the way!

If any of you try out some line drawing embroidery I'd love to see it, just post it to The Craftinomicon Flickr Group!

Awesome Quilting Website!

I just stumbled upon the most AWESOME website. If you are a quilter, have wanted to try quilting, or know someone that makes quilts this site is a must see! I can see many projects in my future benefitting from this site. Wanna know where it is?

Victoria and Albert Museum! This site let's you quickly upload any of your own photos and turns them into patchwork quilt patterns. Better yet, it allows you to select the level of difficulty (adding more or less detail to your quilt) as well as the number of colors you want (number of fabrics you will need to complete your quilt)!

As you can see, it being so close to Halloween I decided to use an image of my cousin Carli's Zombie makeup:

This is the image before being quiltafied!

Here is a slightly easier (20x20 square pattern) see, all skill levels!

OMG I need to get myself to a fabric store!