August Freebie and a chat------

 And here it goes again........ another problem appliance. This time it's the starters on the gas stove. I mean what's next? Oh yeah it was the facet on the basement sink leaking for days and no one noticed. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't touch stuff just in case I break it. Then there were the 3 times my car was almost hit. It was like I look and no one is around then a car comes going WAY too fast for the road and I'm screaming and moving as fast as I can to get out of the way. 

It's been just too crazy this year. I got a Fitbit so I can work on all the anxiety I'm getting from life. There are videos to listen too to help get calm. It's also helping me keep track of exercising and how little sleep I get.

So let's just move on and I'll list the freebie.

If you want to do other free embroidery designs you'll find one for each month.

Here are the directions for August's freebie. 

1. Cut a square of your background fabric 4 1/4" x 4 1/4". If you aren't adding borders like I did you should cut the fabric larger so it will fit in your embroidery hoop.

2. Using a permanent fine tip marker like a Pigma pen, trace the designs. For the flowers just make a dot for the french knots on the end. Only mark the tips. You can also skip the leaves and just stitch them where you want them.

3. Add ribbon, lace, or a piece of fabric on the right side. Notice that my ribbon is pinned in place. I'm still deciding what I'll do on it, I may just add beads and not the embroidery.

4. Add the borders following the directions in the freebie posted in February.

5. Starting with the stems use 2 strands of floss (I used DMC 701) to stem stitch along each stem line.

6. Next I did the leaves, though you can do them later. I used 4 strands of floss to do chain stitches in 2 shades of green floss (I used DMC 701 and 703). Make as many leaves as you want.

7. Fill in the flower ovals with french knots make with 3 strands of floss (I used DMC 807) and did 3 wraps.

- Use 2 strands of floss (I used DMC 598) to make lazy daisy stitches at the bottom of the ovals. Do 2 -3 rows following the photo for placement.

8. At the bottom make the X's with 3 strands of floss (I used DMC 807).

Right click the pattern to save it to your hard drive. 

©Billie Jo Heisler 2022

All rights reserved

 Disclaimer:

I drew this design by hand then used a software program to edit it.

Please consider the drawing copyrighted. You have my permission to print copies of the drawing in any size for your own use but not to share or sell. If you want to share the pattern please link to the blog pages.

The embroidery design is my own. I have not knowingly copied anyone else's work.

I'm late but I've got a really good reason...

 and here it is, the puppy ate the cord for my laptop. Sounds like the old school lie of the dog ate my homework doesn't it?  It was down to 35 percent before I realized that it wasn't charging. How the little guy didn't zap himself I don't know. I have an old Lenovo running win7, it was the DHs so he insisted on finding an original cord. I now know I should have bought one of those chargers I see on HSN all the time so I wouldn't have had to wait for the one I found on ebay to come.

I've had it for about 2 weeks but more stuff got in the way. The fridge broke and I couldn't find a repair person to come out for 3 weeks. I finally found a guy but he seems lost about fixing it. We are ready to give up and buy a new one. If he does fix it then we'll have a full size extra instead of the mini fridge I've been using.

Then there's the problem with the 1 year 2 months old  washer that has decided it will only work correctly in one setting. Of course it's not covered in the warranty so I'm making due. I hated the thing after we bought it but it was on floor model sale and not returnable. Get this, we paid $650 for it and now the repair guy wants $450 to repair/replace the computer board.

Oh, and I can't forget the UTI, though I wish I could. While dealing with all of this some friends went on vacation and I had agreed to watch their dogs before life decided to ____ on me. (You fill it in.)  Luc ky for me the meds worked so I could walk the dogs 6 times a day along with feeding them 2 times a day. Talk about extreme anxiety and panic attacks.

So anyway all of this is why I'm very late with July's free embroidery. I'll be posting it next. I thought I'd put it in another post so if you print the directions you don't have all this to deal with.

As always I have too many projects going and I'm taking too many art classes so of course not much gets finished. I do have the August freebie embroidered but have to do the pattern. Fingers and toes crossed nothing else goes wrong. Jeeze louise did I just jinx myself?

Second free embroidery finally

 

This is actually February's embroidery. I was all ready to put it up a week ago but the war in Ukraine happened and I just felt like it was too frivolous to even think about it. Now after reading how other artists are saying we need our art and crafts to help with dealing with all this emotional stress. I do hope it does help you a bit with any stress you may be having.

As someone who has dealt with anxiety and panic attacks since I was a small child I know how creating something can cause the mind to focus and forget about other things. Sometimes reading will help too, but right now for me, I find my mind tends to wander unless it's a book I'm really interested in. That's why more and more I'm turning to my art. I know I should be working on new patterns but I just can't make decisions when I'm stressed. I've been working on 3 new doll patterns since last year but I just can't make a decision about the clothing fabrics. At least when I'm following an art tutorial I just follow the directions, so much easier. Kinda like when you follow my patterns. :)

Something I didn't include in the first free embroidery was that I'm using a white pattern on white cotton fabric. I found that it's not the easiest fabric to trace a pattern on.

Here are the directions for "February's" freebie. 

1. Cut a square of your background fabric 4 1/4" x 4 1/4". If you aren't adding borders like I did you should cut the fabric larger so it will fit in your embroidery hoop.

2. Using a permanent marker like a Pigma pen, trace the design.

3. Sew a piece of lace or fabric to the bottom of the fabric. I sewed 2 layers of lace.

4. Add the borders following the directions in the freebie posted in February.

5. The hearts and tail can be appliqued like I did or just stitched with your favorite embroidery stitch.

-Trace the 3 hearts and the 3 tail pieces on Heat n Bond by Therm-o-web. This is a product that makes appliqueing small pieces so much easier. TIP: Don't hold the iron on for more than just a few seconds or you will also melt the other side.

-Once it cools peel off the paper.

-Lay the fabric pieces over the tracings and iron in place.

-Do a small blanket stitch with 2 strands of floss. For the 2 hanging hearts I used DMC 604, for the wing heart I used DMC 727, and for the tail I used DMC white.

6. The heart dangle lines are back stitched with 3 strands of floss ( I used DMC 704).

-Since the heart fabric didn't have much of a pattern I added 3 french knots on the left one (I used DMC 727, 3 strands) and a lazy daisy flower on the other ( I used DMC 727, 3 strands).

- the dots can be french knots or beads.

7. The bird's body is stem stitched with 2 strands of DMC 310 black.

- the legs are back stitched

- the beak is straight stitched

-the eye is a 3 wrap french knot or a bead

- inside the chest area make a running stitch with 2 strands of floss ( I used DMC 604)

- on the neck lines do a back stitch using 2 strands of floss (I used DMC 604)

- between the lines do a running stitch with 2 strands of floss (I used DMC 727)

- on the wings do a running stitch at the ends of the blanket stitch using 2 strands of floss (I used DMC 604).

- I used a solid fabric for the heart so I added some lazy daisy flowers and french knots. The 5 lazy daisys for each flower and the french knots are made with 4 strands of floss (I used DMC 604 and 704).

- the tail only has a few 3 wrap french knots using 3 strands of floss (I used DMC 604). Tip: add more flowers here if you used a solid fabric like I did for the heart wing.

8. All the dots can be beads or french knots. I didn't do them yet since I plan on adding beads. I'll also be adding beads and french knots on the lace.

 Right click the pattern to save it to your hard drive. You'll need to print a pattern for tracing.

 

©Billie Jo Heisler 2022

All rights reserved

 Disclaimer:

I drew this design by hand then used a software program to edit it.

Please consider the drawing copyrighted. You have my permission to print copies of the drawing in any size for your own use but not to share or sell. If you want to share the pattern please link to the blog pages.

The embroidery design is my own. I have not knowingly copied anyone else's work.

No more fogged glasses, it worked!

 

It's bad enough to deal with feeling panic when wearing a mask but when my glasses fog it gets really bad. While cleaning out a drawer I found this bottle that my husband had bought years ago when he liked to take waterfowl pics. It stopped his camera lenses from fogging so I thought I'd try it on a pair of Flower glasses (Drew Barrymore at Walmart) I had and it WORKED!!!!!!!!

I don't know if it would work for everyone but it did for me. Wish I would have found this a year ago :( I put a drop on each side and used a clean cloth like it said to dry as I did each drop.

You may wonder why I'm still wearing a mask when my state allows those fully vaccinated to go without unless the place you want to enter still requires it. Well, my allergies are the worst they have ever been so I cough a lot. To avoid grief from others it just seems easier to wear a mask.