Tons of Tiny and D.E.S.I.G.N. for July

Good morning crafters,

I'm getting worse about updating the blog and I do apologize for it. There's a lot of events going on right now and my days just get surprisingly busy despite not much finished work to show for it! My current work pile is as follows, and then below there will be some pictures:
- Butterfly Xstitch with beads for Stitchingpirates's contest
- Apprenticeship work for seamstress training (once a week right now)
- Birds Xstitch (for future sale)
- Star Trek Bead Dress
- Princess Daisy Bead Dress
- Glasmond's Between Day and Night Xstitch (to be mailed to her finished)
- Xstitch Pattern Re-Make for Mattsma
- Xstitch Pattern for Miskumi
- Xstitch [surprise gift] MLP
- Real Person sized robe-dress
- Two Wedding Samplers Xstitch
- One Baby Sampler Xstitch
- Beaded Cake Kit from Katie Dean
- Barbie, Monster High, and Ever After High Bead Dress Prototypes
- Kitchen Xstitch (for future sale)
- HAED Storykeep Xstitch (my first HAED)
As you can see, my plate is full! Even though only two of these events have technical due dates I find myself shuffling between everything rather frequently and the end result is, well, less submissions for large projects. And on top of all of that I still have to thank 1,513 people from April for the big front-page boom that was Hannah Alexander's Mucha Princesses.

[On deviantART]

So let's get this show on the road. First up is my motivation for continuing to post blog posts every month: Tons of Tiny and D.E.S.I.G.N.
  
What project are you working on this month? Halloween Kitties, a freebie pattern from Kreinik.  

Have you stitched a project by this designer before? I don't believe so.

Would you buy/stitch a design by this designer again? Why/Why not? Yes! Kreinik is awesome, their patterns are cute, and their threads are to die for.

What made you choose this particular design/designer? A time rush, honestly. It was meant to be for my contribution to Mattsma's Halloween Stitch-A-Long but with everything going on I ran out of time for a Tons of Tiny and... there you go.

Did you notice anything that distinguished this designer from others? All their patterns are geared towards using their threads, obviously, but I found it very easy to interchange and do my own thing. Even though it wasn't Kreinik's intention it really called me back to when I was first learning to stitch and didn't understand color codes, so if a pattern called for shades of green I just grabbed whatever I thought would work. I used that same freestyle method here (except with some tact) to just make the cats look how I wanted them to look.

Fobs [on deviantART]

Here's another thing: I said this month would feature Magical525's Mucha fobs, but I did it at the very beginning of the month and so I totally forgot I even did them, despite them sitting right next to me on the desk! That's just how scattered I am lately.

You may have noticed up above that I'm now officially a seamstress's apprentice! Yes! I'm working with a super nice lady named JoAnn. She's 75 and been sewing since she was 6, has written books, and even has college degrees in tailoring. She knows how to tailor a man's suit from top to bottom and she's teaching me!! Project #1 was essentially "how to make a straight line" and I can't really blame her for making that the first lesson. She gave me a bunch of denim and instructed me on how to cut it all up into squares, turn it, and make my first quilted pieces. I had to make two 24x24 inch squares from lots of little squares and yeek! Yeah, I can make a pretty decent line now. The good piece was turned into a cover for my sewing machine (and let me tell you... making that hole for the handle was the hardest thing yet) and the scrap piece is now a little cat blanket for Dax.

Well, it could be worse.

The next project is a dress for me, in sweet lavenders. It's much more than expected. I can make a dress in miniature with nothing but beads and thread yet figuring out how to cut fabric properly is still difficult. I learned how to take measurements and astonishingly despite my short, round figure, I am indeed an hourglass. This ended up aiding me as my figure is non-standard and so lesson "reading patterns" became lesson "modifying patterns". Also, as a side observation, I'm aware pattern paper is so thin to save on cost etc but really... having a bit more than tissue paper would be nice in Arizona with all the fans going.

Here's a pile of things I'm working on!

 

Phew... so much left to do,

Pinky

Ashley Mae