In this day and age, children seem to have it all: dolls that speak to them, bears that know their names, crazy cars that do back flips, robots that double as pets….amongst many other amazing toys that my generation didn’t have. You can understand why searching for a birthday gift could be a little frustrating!

Luckily for me, the adorable little lady that is about to turn 3, likes creativity just like her siblings…and her mom hinted at how much her older siblings had loved a gift that I made for them 2 years ago: Crayon rolls!

These rolls are a lot of fun: They’re not too difficult to make and are easy to personalize if you want to spend a little more time thinking of that little person.

First step:

Come on, personalize it!

You’re making something hand made! It doesn’t take that much longer to add a few finishing touches!

I chose to embroider birthday girl’s name onto it along with a teddy that would tie the front to the patterned fabric i’d use in the inside.

Notice I also used simple letters; nothing worse than confusing a 3 year old learning how to read with fancy handwriting! (Save the fancy stuff for the older kids).

Two:

You’ll need five pieces total.

2 large rectangular pieces of of the size you choose the roll to be.

2 small rectangular pieces for the holding of the crayons (these were about 1/2 the width of the large pieces).

1 large 1.5″ wide piece for the ribbon that will hold it together.

You sew the long side of the two small rectangles together and press (trust me, press, it takes a few extra minutes, but makes it so much easier for you!)

Then you put all pieces together: if you’re embroidering,  remember where you’re putting the tie!!

And here is the finished gift! Pair it with a few coloring books and it should be a good entertainment tool for  a three year old when they can’t go out because it’s cold/raining out!

That I was tempted to make another one in the same table runner?

Well, I liked it so much I had to make yet another one…this time the butterfly is going to be in a napkin that will be wrapping bread/tortillas in my table! Aren’t butterflies pretty?

Here is the finished Butterfly bread napkin…

Monarch butterflies are another icon of México, and boy are they amazing little things. A few days later after seeing it, I printed out Will’s picture, and  worked up a little pattern to draw this pretty little lady.

Males of the Monarch butterfly have two spots on the lower wings, on the black “vein” closest to the abdomen, and the black lines in these wings are much thinner than the females, so I knew the picture Will had taken was of a female.

A little more biology: Some of these beauties migrate from the US and Canada to central México; in specific they travel to the border between the states of Michoacán and México to winter on the oyamel trees of these mountains.  That is where where the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve, a world heritage site, is located.

Around winter time the trees get completely covered with the monarchs to the point that branches bend down (think of how pine trees look after a heavy snow storm) and visitors have said that the wings of the butterflies create a soft rain-like sound. I can’t wait to visit this reserve some day!

Back to the embroidery, I went shopping as I had no orange or black thread and started. The idea was to use double threaded stem stitch for the veins and single thread satin stitch for the thicker lines, also the abdomen had to be padded for it to look round.

After the outline was done I was amazed. I liked what i saw so far:

I wanted to add more butterflies everywhere! But not so fast, let’s finish the first one:

So far so good, but now I needed to fill the body! For some reason the color confused me…I had always thought of these butterflies as yellower…but the color in pictures is definitely orange. I chose something in between…My childhood memories must be getting fuzzy huh?

After the body was filled (satin stitch, single thread), the white detail had to be done. I used french knots for the dots and just a straight stitch to create the stripes on the abdomen.

Notice that instead of using stem stitch i used simple satin stitch for the abdomen. In nature, if these abdomen stripes aren’t clear stripes, it means the butterfly is sick! Can’t have sick butterflies on an embroidery right?

I stopped the project at this point (last September/October) for various reasons but I intend to pick it up now that i have a little bit more time. So what do you think?

Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

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If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

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And now we have this:

I still needed to add some stuff to the blank space, so I decided to add another Mexican native: Vainilla! I knew this one was going to be hard, I personally didn’t grow up seeing these orchids…but I love vanilla, so I had to try.

And….this is when, while browsing pictures by my Flickr contacts, I saw this pretty monarch butterfly. Forget about the “flower only” theme…it had to be added!

Let’s focus on the vanilla blossom for now: Sadly the color of the flower is close to the fabric so, in order for the flower to be noticed, I had to add some foliage.

So far I’ve only done one leaf but i intend to add some more at the end, when I will probably fix the first leaf anyway. I’m afraid that instead of appearing like an elongated leaf, it looks more like a blade of grass.

For the center of the flower I went with a hint of darker yellow to show some “shading”. I am afraid the orchid did not come out as well as I wanted, but hey, maybe in the future I’ll try and do another project and do a better drawing of one…didn’t I mention this was going to be hard?

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And this is what we have so far:

Next up: the butterfly! (that will be in a couple of days!)

*No, I did not misspell vanilla. I just chose to spell it in Spanish!

First Dahlia finished

So the first bunch of bougainvilleas was finished…i moved onto the dahlias. First Dahlia was done with satin stitch only.

As you can see, the edges were done in a darker pink than the middle…at some point i tried blending it in, but voted against it…I can’t remember why.

For the second Dahlia I wanted to try something different: I wanted hints of color rather than a bold edge. It had to be one of those cream/white ones, with a hint of pink (you can tell that pink is one of my favorite colors in flowers can’t you?)

This was done by using button hole stitch on the already satin-stitch filled second dahlia.

perhaps bouillons might have also worked here.

I could not decide on what to do for the middle in the second dahlia. Should I do bouillons? Should I just fill in with satin stitch? Should I use button hole? I felt like the Wordpress spell check, which right know must be in Spanish mode, as it is highlighting basic words in the English language.

After realizing that perhaps buttonhole might get lost if placed in the middle (as it did on the first bougainvillea bunch, which was re-done) so i went for satin, just made sure they were not on top of each other as that might make them look quite messy….

And here is the second update!

so this is what it looks like after the dahlias!

Bougainvillea in parents backyard

Early in May of this year, we took a small vacation to México. Boombadeus got to meet some of my first cousins in Guadalajara, we went to one of the youngest volcanoes in the world and to a national park located in Uruapan (Uruapan is know as “the place of eternal Spring” and for their avocado orchards!), a beautiful city close to where I grew up. We also went to Guanajuato, a beautiful colonial mining city.

Besides learning lots about Mexico’s history, he also got to finally see where I grew up and the garden that was my playground.

In this garden, to me the place of eternal spring, he discovered Bougainvilleas (known as bugambilias in Mexico). Well, I am very sure that he saw it in Spain and southern France (as there are pictures) and he definitely saw it in San Diego…but this time he found out the name: Bougainvillea. The name stuck.

In order to celebrate this fact, to remember my childhood, and Mexico in general I started a project. We needed a table runner for the coffee table…so how about embroidering some bougainvillea into it? Well, this is how it all got started….

Bugambilia roja

as you can see, there are plenty of bougainvilleas, and I added some Dahlias (also native of Mexico)…but that’s just how it got started…in the next couple of posts, i’ll post the progress

The yellowish fabric scraps are from a Purl Soho order placed a few months back. It is yuwa’s tiny daisies (i managed to grab the last yard I think! I wish i had been able to grab more like 4 yards, it’s a very cute fabric!).

Most of this fabric became a blouse, and some of the remainder became this pincushion that I am now using for my embroidery stuff…isn’t it cute?

The pink leafy fabric is from some fat quarters I bought in Lancaster a couple of years back. I don’t even know where I got the ribbon from, but i’m guessing it was from the wedding planning…

Anyway, I think my sewing projects need another pin cushion like this. What do you think?

Well, my aunt’s birthday was coming up and I was about to send her copies of our wedding pictures when I though, why not make  something special? maybe something like the album that I made for Windi? I called mom and she liked the idea so it was a go.

I had ran out of linen, that meant a having to get fabric. Not wanting to wait until Saturday to go to Fabric Row, I ran to Karlin’s after work and bought some gabardine which matched closely our “wedding color”. It also would be easier to work with than linen.

I also decided to make my life easier, sewing wise, this time around. Remember how I had used two bands of cream colored fabric? Well, it was quite difficult to make them match, so this time I decided to use the cream fabric for an embroidery applique instead.

Another change I made was to make the cover flaps longer; so that they would go all the way to the binding/spine of the album instead of half way. This would allow me to “hide” extra photo pages that didn’t have pictures and would make the album look neater. The embroidery was the same as before, inspired by the LOVE statue by Robert Indiana; as this was also part of our wedding invitations, but this time centered and with a border.

And here is the finished product:

I printed in beige/tan color paper, the description for each photo as she was not able to make it. Here you can’t see it because, for her, I placed a little  birthday card.

So what do you think? I have to make a few more of these…I really like the final product and would like to make one for each of mom’s sisters!

I was in a private elementary in México, and it was tradition in the school that for Mother’s Day you had to make a gift. Yes, I said make; none of this “go buy” stuff. Besides, everyone knows mom always likes it best when it comes from their little angel’s hands…right?

In 3rd grade there had been a découpage hanging plate thing. But, while I do remember having enjoying the being extra careful to give a slightly raised pattern (everyone was just gluing, I wanted to go further!) to the flowers that I glued, I never got into découpage. 4th grade came along and they finally trusted us** with needles.

Before that I had only used a needle to sew things together, make clothes for my dolls, sew a button, maybe even fix the hem on my uniform skirt (which quite often would get caught on something) but this crazy idea of making little flowers using thread was quite new to me.

Just as fast I learned how to embroider, I sadly forgot about it for the next 2 decades, only for the embroidery “devil” in me be reawakened over a year ago. It was a few months before Jess’ wedding and she wanted to add a babushka to her repertoire.

I quickly volunteered, as making a white scarf would be quite easy for me, but then it hit me…how about embroidering it and making it look even more authentic? I HAD to do it. And with a vague idea in my head, I headed onto Fabric Row and bought fabric, embroidery floss -mostly in the yellow that Jess had picked as her color- and headed home to hem myself that scarf.

For the pattern I quickly I researched traditional Polish head scarves and costumes and found that roses was a common pattern…so did the two toned embroidery. I grabbed my blue pencil and drew this on the silk scarf:

I added little bunch of blue flowers was added so that the bride would have her “something blue” and some red french knots just ’cause I wanted to make french knots. Bride liked it and wore it which was quite cool!

While I no longer have the napkins I made for that Mother’s day (hopefully I can find them  next time I go to visit the house in México) every time I embroider nowadays I still remember spending, that April and May, one hour of a day learning a couple of stitches. We would sit by the benches outside the classroom, in the corredor ***….that month, not only did I learn embroidery,  also learned about the perils of embroidery: Sewing in your project onto your skirt!!

*If you do the math you’ll realize that I was an early bloomer. I have two wonderful workaholic parents that taught me how to read and write when I was quite young. I went into kindergarden already reading and writing!

**the teachers, I was trusted with heavy duty scissors at a young age…ok, not really. I just knew where they were in my parent’s workshop.

***hallway, our school had an inner courtyard, and there were covered hallways that lead to the classrooms.

About a decade has passed since we met. We didn’t really hang out much until we became part of the Multicultural Student Network where I also met Clarke.

We’ve kept in touch – her being better than I am- and “Wow, we’re old” is the sentence that immediately comes out every time we realize that we’ve known each other for over a decade now. When I got engaged, she was the first person I talked to after calling my immediate family.

For the wedding she not only made time from her extremely busy schedule, but she also came early to help out; and she did amazing things with the little time we had. My bouquet? She made it. My sister’s? Flowers by Windi ™ too. Flower girl basket? Distribution of boutonnieres and corsages? Church decoration (the pomander balls/pom poms) setup? Yup, that too.

She was also there, surrounded by Mexican women catching up and gossiping, when we were setting up the reception hall.

So you can see that when we received the photos I knew I wouldn’t just send them loose, on an envelope to her. I had to make them look special! The pressure was on!

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• The base:

While at Pearl on South Street (with Thad’s mom) I had found one of these useful little albums:

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• The Materials:

I had some really pretty linen left from a courtain and some of my favorite natural (unbleached) calico.

I also used the embossing stamp I used for the invitations (handmade) and embroidery thread in the color of the linen piece.

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• Cutting the fabric:

First I cut bands of the white fabric, I wanted them to be about 2 inches wide, so I cut them to be 2.75 inches, to allow for 3/8 seams.

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• Sewing:

Next I figured how big I wanted the red center piece so that the white band would be more or less at the very center of both front and back page. I think it was about 4 inches. I cut the remaining pieces so it would allow for a 2 inch flap approximately.

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• Embroidery:

Once the basic sewing was done, I first traced and then embroidered the LOVE stamp used for our wedding invitations.

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• Finished product: