After posting a bit ago about hand embroidery on paper – making embroidered greeting cards and so forth – my sister decided to try it out, too.
Using a free embroidery pattern from Stitching Cards, she improvised some tools: for the paper piercing mat, she used a mat she has for bobbin lace, and for the paper piercing tool, she used a crewel needle with the eye stuck in a cork. (Hey, it works!)
For embroidery thread, she used regular stranded cottons, and I like the way it looks!
I like the idea of making these bookmarks – I’ve been planning for my summer embroidery classes for kids, and I think I’ll venture in this direction for one of the projects. Quick and satisfying (kids like that!).
If you wanted to fill up the whole bookmark, you could flip over the design and pierce the blue flower out again below the pink.
Speaking of bookmarks, Nordic Needle has recently introduced this year’s Bookmark Challenge. Each year, together with other stitchery stores throughout the country, they encourage stitchers to stitch a bookmark (or two, or three…), coordinating the turn-in time for the challenge with Children’s Book Week. The bookmarks are donated to local libraries as rewards to encourage children to read. As an incentive to participate in the Bookmark Challenge, Nordic Needle will draw from the participants’ names, and the lucky winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Nordic Needle.
If you’re interested, take a look at the details of the Bookmark Challenge in their most recent newsletter.
Thanks for sending a picture of the bookmark, Susie!
You’re most welcome! I made this to send to my cousin who hosted me and my daughter when we were in Alabama for my Aunt’s 90th birthday, the very same Auntie Mary made the beautiful beaded and embroidered card for. I saw that card in person and I must say, the pictures are lovely but the card itself is absolutely stunning! My work is not near what Mary’s is, but I was inspired and decided that the bookmark would make a nice thank you for my cousin’s hospitality. If you’re inspired too, grab some stuff you already have, print out a free pattern and give it a try!
Thanks for your comment on my blog about the cast on stitch. I’ll have to experiment quite a lot with the whole thing as, being a string (viola) player, I don’t ahve much in the way of nails on my left hand!!! Gonna be tricky, methinks, but should be easier once the calluses have re-built up after my forthcoming 3 week break from playing!!!!!!! Talk about incompatible interests!!
You wrote:
“If you wanted to fill up the whole bookmark, you could flip over the design and pierce the blue flower out again below the pink.”
But doing so would violate the Terms and Conditions set by the owner of the StitchCards Website.
Thanks, Anonymous, but what it says in the terms & conditions is that you cannot “create any derivative works by altering any of the Patterns.” You’re not altering the pattern if you flip it over and use only part of the pattern to make a repeat on the paper you’re embroidering.
You cannot take their designs, alter them, and sell them, calling them your own design (thereby creating a derivative work – a “new” pattern).
While the idea of a derivative work is to take part of something and build another work from it, the conditions set for making derivative works with patterns are based upon making patterns (or derivative works) that one uses for profit. The pattern isn’t changing.
Common sense would dictate that, if you purchase an embroidery pattern, you can use that pattern on the item you’re embroidering in any way you want to use the pattern, as long as you aren’t altering the pattern and reselling the derivative.
So if I want to put the pattern in the left hand corner of my paper and then turn the pattern over and put only half of it in the right hand corner of my paper, the part of the copyright that forbids making a derivative work would not be violated.
But thanks for the comment! It’s an interesting notion, but it’s not a violation of copyright, because another pattern is not being made.