Bee's Knees Industries

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Tutorial: Embroidering with Sequins

A few years back, I started making new felt ornaments for my tree every holiday season. Last year, I discovered sequins, and now I'm hooked. They just add so much fun holiday sparkle and cheer! Making felt ornaments with them is easy as pie.

I have a tutorial for using sequins over at the &Stitches blog. This month's theme is Shiny, so be sure to check out some of the other posts, too. There are so many fun ideas for holiday crafting!

Embroidery Pattern: Stumpwork Ghost & Tombstone

This month, the crew over at &Stitches have been working with the theme of stumpwork. If you're not familiar, stumpwork is a collection of embroidery techniques that produce some really fun three-dimensional results.

Since my project is for the end of the month, I figured it was late enough to get started on Halloween-themed crafting, so I created this wired ghost popping out of a tombstone. The PDF has a tutorial for the stumpwork technique you'll need, but you can also check the stumpwork tag on &Stitches to see more great tutorials. Head over to the blog to get the pattern to create your own!

Files:
• Download the Stumpwork Ghost at the &Stitches blog (PDF) - prints on 8.5" x 11" paper

Shop Update: Facebroidery Kit

I just added a new embroidery kit to my shop: a facebroidery! This is one of my most popular (and favorite!) embroidery patterns, and I'm excited to offer it as a kit.

I wrote a little post about how I prepare my images to print onto fabric for my kits over at &Stitches. It's part of a series where we're each sharing a bit of the personal projects we're working on this summer. All the other contributors are working on some pretty great stitching, so you should take a look!

Piranha Plant

Remember a little while back, when I mentioned that &Stitches was hosting a Freaky Flowers swap? This is what I created for my swap partner. I saw a couple of Love and a Sandwich pieces on her Pinterest board and couldn't get the piranha plant out of my head.

I created a little pattern for this piece, as well, since I figure everyone needs a Nintendo-based stitch sampler.

File:
•  Download the Piranha Plant pattern here (PDF) - prints on 8.5" x 11" paper

Enjoy!

&Stitches: Stitching with Human Hair

Over at &Stitches, we have chosen a different theme for each month this year. In June, the theme was No Floss Allowed, where we each chose a non-embroidery-floss medium to stitch. The gals that write the blog with me were kind enough to let me try out a strange medium I've wanted to work with for a while: my own hair. You can read about my experience over here!

Shop Update: Embroidery Kits

I'm so excited to share a new item in my shop: embroidery kits. I've long wanted to find a way to offer my embroidery patterns in brick & mortar stores, and I love anything that helps bring more people over the dark side of embroidery. (Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh!)

Each kit comes with pre-printed fabric, embroidery floss, an embroidery needle, a wooden hoop, and a booklet of instructions to get you started.

I'm hard at work on a few more designs, but I'm all ears if anyone has any special requests. I'm hoping these kits will allow people to try embroidery with more confidence since they eliminate the need to trace the design and allow you to dive right into the stitches.

You can find these kits here in my shop.

Tutorial: Blending Colors with Seed Stitch

I have a new tutorial up today on &Stitches on blending colors with small stitches. I had never really tried this sort of technique until I was commissioned to create a piece with embroidered gradients in text. After playing around with it a little bit, I got the hang of it, and I wanted to share what I learned with the &Stitches crew.

Check out the tutorial here.

Such Shiba

Before a very dear friend added a Shiba Inu to her family, I had never heard of the doge meme. Now it's one of my favorite sources of internet humor. So when that friend asked me to do a portrait of her sweet pooch, an embroidered image of her puppy surrounded by Comic Sans immediately popped into my head. I finally got around to finishing the embroidery just before the holidays last year, and I figured it was time to share it here.

In case you need a doge embroidery of your very own, I created an embroidery pattern, too!

Ugly Xmas Sweater Cat

I had a mostly failed attempt this year to dress the entire family (me, Tony, and our three furbabies) in ugly Christmas sweaters for a fun holiday card. Turns out, putting a sweater on a bunny is tough!

Instead, I created this embroidery pattern of an ugly Christmas sweater, using nine of my favorite stitches, to share on the &Stitches blog. You can find the free pattern and links to tutorials for each of the stitches at &Stitches today!

Tutorial: Duplicate Stitch

I'd like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving! This time of year, I'm always so thankful for all the opportunities for creative endeavors I've been able to find through this blog.

This year, I have a special creative endeavor that actually just began today. I'm now one of the contributing writers for the &Stitches blog, and I'm very excited to present a tutorial I wrote for them on the duplicate stitch. This is a great technique for knitters and non-knitters alike and is a fun way to add some personal touches to your clothing.

Have a great time today eating too much and being thankful!

Working Wednesdays: Embroidery Kits

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm trying to get some of my work into shops around the country (and world!) again. I used to sell my work in a lot of handmade boutiques, but it is something that seemed to fall by the wayside when other parts of my life got too busy.

Since I have so many embroidery patterns now (and I can't really sell PDFs in stores), I decided to try making embroidery kits. I had some of my favorite designs printed at Spoonflower and am now working on putting them together as full kits. I have to say, even though I have expanded my horizons on transfer methods, just being able to dive into an embroidery without worrying about transferring the design is pretty nice.

I'll be sure to post again once I have some of these kits ready. Does anyone have any special requests as I work on this project?

&Stitches Summer Bloggin': Transfer Methods

I was invited by the lovely folks of the &Stitches blog to be one of the guest writers for their Summer Bloggin' series. I decided to do a couple of posts about some image transfer methods for embroidery that I have been experimenting with. The first post covers some of the specialty pens and pencils available for embroiderers, and the second post goes over transfer methods that can be done with household items.

I hope you enjoy the posts, and be sure to take a look at the rest of the blog. It's always full of amazing inspiration and information.

Don't Leave Home Without It

I've mentioned a few times here how nice it is finally to have time to catch up on all the projects I had started over the past few years. This is one of those projects. I completed this embroidery years ago, but I waited until I finished the embroidery pattern to show it to anyone. I'm not sure why it took me two entire years to make the embroidery pattern for it, but there are some mysteries in life that will simply never be understood.

It's such a wonderful feeling to finish an old project, and I really like the way this one turned out. If you'd like to stitch an umbrella gal of your own, you can find the pattern in my shop.

Dia de los Muertos Embroidery

The best thing about having a bit more free time these days is the ability to catch up on unfinished projects. I created this embroidery almost a year ago for a show at Redux here in Portland, but I only got around to finishing the embroidery pattern for it this afternoon. It's always so lovely checking off a rather aged item from the list, and this one certainly fits the bill.

You can find the embroidery pattern for this piece in my shop, or, if you prefer, the original is still available as well. I tried a new method for framing this piece that I really enjoyed and I think I will use more often in the future. Perhaps a tutorial is in order...