The Sweatshop of Love Blog

Needlepoint isn’t too foreign around here – I tackled a DIY Charley Harper needlepoint as a present and made cute fruit to hang in my kitchen. These projects were needlepoint on cross stitch fabric which I use to do a lot of when I was a kid. New to me? Following an embroidery pattern!

The Princess and the Pea!

I found this embroidery pattern by Follow the White Bunny and just had to have it. I love The Princess and the Pea and I’ve been wanting to try an embroidery project like this, so it was a match made in heaven.

Lots of Stitches!

I started this pattern when I was in Michigan last month. It was a great project to have around all the babies and dogs because it was small and there was no yarn anyone could grab and rip apart when I wasn’t looking. It’s also super light and was great for working on in the hot weather.

LOTS of Mattresses!

It also really helped that my mom has a bunch of crafty books with embroidery stitches in them, with pictures and instructions, so when I ran across something I didn’t know, I looked it up in the book and figured it out. I love how every mattress is a different stitch. It was a great way to practice my needlepoint and work on stitches without getting bored.

A LITTLE Messy

One thing I need to work on when I pick another pattern is the back. I was just knotting and pulling and wrapping things around like crazy. By the end I was having a hard time keeping my floss free and not pulling up ends of other colors to the front of my work.

Framed and Looking Awesome!

I put it in a frame and it’s looking adorable, hanging on the wall. I can’t wait to find more patterns to add to my budding collection! Follow the White Bunny has lots of adorable patterns in her etsy shop – I’ve just got to wait patiently for her to get back from vacation so I can pick out my next project!

I’m a workaholic. It’s less noticeable because most of what I do is a hobby to everyone else, and because I love it so much I don’t constantly complain about my 16 hour days. But I wake up early, I work all day, and then I go to sleep. I get excited for the weekends because that means I get to work even more.

Scrap Map!

It’s important to have hobbies, and as ridiculous as it is for me to say, I need to take a break from the knitting a spend some time doing other things I love.

Pretty Print Fabric Belts

It’s not like I don’t have a million crafty project lined up, like I’m sure all of you do! I bookmark crafty projects till my heart content. But just like if I were a lawyer or doctor or salesman, I can’t stop working long enough to pick up any of these projects.

Tap Pants!

But I recognize that I need a break. As I’m sitting here typing I’m wearing wrist supports because not only am I having wrist pain from knitting, I’m having wrist pain from typing.

The Sweatshop of Love has been too much sweatshop and not enough love lately, and I’m using crafts to fix that.

Girly Embroidery

So I hereby declare next week HOBBY WEEK! No knitting. No work. Just crafts. Sewing and embroidery; playing with fabric and floss and hot glue guns. It’s going to be glorious.

I’ll be documenting my hobby-ing daily. Short posts with little typing and lots of fun, crafty pictures.

HOBBIES! What a revolutionary idea!

Yes it’s Tuesday and yes, for the past four weeks I’ve been debuting how to videos on Tuesdays, but my director got a new job! It’s terrible exciting because he hasn’t worked in three months, but it sure puts a damper on my demanding production schedule.

More on PT’s new job later, and more how to videos later, too.

How to Make Needlepoint Art

Friday I told you I had big crafty plans for the weekend, and big crafting surely happened!

Needlepoint Fruits and Veggies

I needlepointed 5 fruits and veggies on 6″x6″ pieces of counted cross stitch fabric I picked up at Michael’s. My beet kinda looks like the Star Ship Enterprise, right?

Grapes! Graphed out and Completed

I did google image searches for fruits and veggies (like, cartoon grape), and then drew them in Xs on graph paper, just like I did for my Charley Harper needlepoint last year.

Turning needlepointings like these into hang-able artwork is pretty simple, actually!

Embroidery Hoops

I bought a few cheep embroidery hoops at Michael’s. These were about $1.29 a piece and I don’t see how they could be used to actually embroider. They are so flimsy! I’ve got a nice embroidery hoop that I use for actual embroidering and was worth the $4ish I paid for it. But these cheep ones will do for hanging!

Let's Paint!

And that light colored wood can be stained darker with wood stain or painted to give your art a little kick. I chose this fun purple acrylic paint and painted the outside of the hoop and both edges.

Drying and LOTR

I let my outside hoops dry on their inside hoops to a little Two Towers. The inside hoops and the inside of the outside hoops won’t be visible once they are around your needlepoint.

Give Each Piece a Quick Ironing!

Be sure to give each piece a quick ironing to get rid of any creases left by your working embroidery hoop.

Ready to Set!

With your inside embroidery hoop on the bottom, your embroidery fabric in the middle, and your painted hoop on the top, you are ready to set your piece! Make sure it is lined up with the hardware at the top, since you will use this for hanging.

Pressed and Set

Press down on the hoop so that it slides over the bottom hoop, securing your embroidery between the two hoops. Tighten your fabric and make sure both hoops are flush with each other.

Excess Fabric

Flip your work over and, with a tiny pair of scissors, cut off the excess fabric close to the hoops.

Hot Glue!

Use a hot glue gun to glue together the hoops with the fabric between it. Let it cool and dry completely before beholding your beautiful needlepoint art!

Needlepoint Kitchen Art

My kitchen was in desperate need for some color on the walls, and since we have no idea how long we are going to be here I didn’t want to actually paint the walls.

Sprucing up the Kitchen!

I love needlepoint art in kitchens and bathrooms, and I’ve wanted little fruit and veggie needlepoints to hang in my house forever.

And the best part? I can add more whenever I want! I can make two every weekend until I run out of fruits and veggies and have an entire wall dedicated to needlepoint art.

Apple!

And then I would have the most amazing kitchen in the entire world.

OOHHhhhhh PIECE OF SHIT WEEKEND! Why?! WHY?!

It comes every year, and every year I try to prepare for it but I know. I KNOW! It will suck, and my heart will be empty, and there will be no light or joy in the world on THIS WEEKEND, no matter what I do.

When baseball season ends you fill the void with football. The seasons overlap, so while you don’t have a football game every day like you have with baseball, you have fantasy football to plan, so it’s ok.

But when football ends YOU HAVE NOTHING. You have cold, cold winter and no football to be excited about. And while, yes, I have taken more of an interest in basketball this year than I have in previous years, it’s no replacement.

Spring training starts in 17 days. It’s a month till March Madness.

And so, the weekend between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl is the worst weekend of the year. The first weekend you have nothing.

LOTR - EXTENDED EDITION!

Nothing except Lord of the Rings Extended Versions! I save these for this weekend. That is a solid 10 hours of quality entertainment, much like a day with 3 football games.

HORATIO!

And Horatio Hornblower as a back up! There are 8 parts to this miniseries and that has bound to keep my mind off my broken, empty heart.

I’ve also got craft projects!

Tshirt Painting Supplies

I finally made it the nearly 6 miles to Michael’s yesterday to pick up a few things for projects I’ve been wanting to tackle. My friend Miss Jeanna pointed me in this direction a few weeks ago and I haven’t been able to get them out of my mind, so tshirts need to happen!

Needlepoint Supplies

And y’all know my love/hate relationship with needlepoint, but I got the cutest idea for some food needlepoint art for my kitchen and just need to make it happen. And I haven’t needlepointed in 8 months so I can’t remember how much I hate it.

Beatnik and Pudge

I’ve also got about an inch left to knit on my Beatnik to get to this week’s goal of getting to the sleeve separation.

PUDGE GET OUT OF THE SHOT!

How sweet is this sweater looking so far?!

So, worst weekend of the year, I’m ready for you with all I’ve got: Crafts, LOTR, and Horatio Hornblower.

Yes, that is all I’ve got to fight you with. Nerdery.

Remember a few months ago when I tackled the making the super cute Charley Harper needlepoint canvas myself? I graphed it myself, marked it out, got my own floss and dug in, saving myself about 50 bucks.

With Colleen’s wedding on Saturday already I thought it was high time I finished her present!

I ended up giving it a little background color. I took Julie’s advice and just did a half stitch around the little birds.

Charley Harper Needlepoint, Ready for Framing!

I thought it added a lot! I went to JoAnn and got some framing supplies.

Charley Harper Needlepoint, Framed?

Lackluster, right?

Charley Harper+Water Color

So I decided I would try to give it a water color wash. I dug around and found some old paints with a yellow and orange I thought would work. I was a little scared!

Testing... testing...

I tested the colors in the corner of the fabric to see how much running there was and what the colors would really look like. Then I just dug in! The half stitches made it easy to not get the paint on the birds and I could play with actually painting the stitches and including those colors in the wash.

Water Color Drying in the Sun

I let the wash dry in the sun when I was finished. The water color adds a fun dimension to the piece! I’ve never seen water color and needlepoint and I love the look of it.

Voila! Charley Harper Needlepoint Finished!

Quite a difference! I love these little birds, I love the half stitch outline, and I love the water color wash. The green frame mat adds focus and the dark brown frame isn’t too harsh for the colors in the needlepoint. I hope Colleen feels the same way!

Total cost of project? Less than $15. Of course this project wasn’t about saving money, and lord knows I spent HOURS AND HOURS needle-pointing that damn thing. I might as well have knit her a damn plane they can use to fly to Italy for their honeymoon.

Never. Again.

But I love how it turned out and I hope Colleen does, too!