A busy weekend … and a new Bustle & Sew Pattern

Magazine publication date is drawing ever closer… so I’ve been really busy finishing off the patterns I am including this month.  I think I mentioned a little while ago that recently I’ve been intrigued by vintage illustration and its potential for embroidery designs, but my latest pattern “Birds of a Feather” (picture above) came about after I read a much more modern book,  Free and Easy Stitch Style by Poppy Treffry.  I love the way she uses machine stitching to outline simple shapes – and wanted to try it for myself – but I’ve also combined machine stitching with hand embroidery to create a very individual look. 

I worked on these two designs – farmyard birds in simple shapes and bold colours, with dark machine stitching framing their bodies.  I didn’t use Poppy Treffry’s free style machine technique though, but stuck to a simple zig zag and straight stitch.  (This was because I couldn’t bear the thought of dismantling my walking foot and reconstructing it later …. it took me ages to work out how it should be attached and I don’t know if I could ever do it again!). 

But I still think my birds look good, and using hand embroidery as well as machine gives them that really unique touch.  The geese were also inspired by my “Animals in Love” series, but being bird-brained (groan) they are not lined up in rows, but have lost concentration and are wandering around the design.  In fact there are only eight so one has wandered off altogether!

I’ve listed the pattern (you get both the geese and the chickens in a single file) in my Etsy shop and there’s 15% off for blog readers – just enter code BLOGREADER2 at the checkout.