Finished For Friday: Donkey Pillow

For this week's Finished for Friday, I have a little felt pillow to share.

One night, I was looking at this pillow that I made...




...when a song called "I Will Dare" by the Replacements came on my iPod. The line that goes "meet me anywhere...meet me tonight...if you will dare, I will dare" just seemed to fit in with the two little dogs on the pillow. Except it was daytime on the pillow. So I decided to make a night time version.

I went with donkeys instead of dogs this time. I knew I wanted a moon and I knew I wanted the donkeys facing one another. The rest, I kind of made up as I went along.



Did you ever see moonflowers? They only open up at night. Mine look nothing like the real thing but I had to add something in a chain stitch so moonflowers it was.



The pillow top was all finished, except for attaching the bottom and stuffing it, when I got the brilliant idea to cut the piece of blue felt that the donkeys are standing on. Of course, I didn't cut it straight. So the black ribbon was added to hide the uneven edges of the blue felt. The ribbon came with the white stitching but I hand sewed it on and that took forever. Also, black floss on black felt will hide many of your mistakes but boy, is that a pain to sew. I had such a hard time seeing my stitches.

I typed the words out and then traced them on to my fabric. I forget which font I used but I really don't like the Y's.



I'm pretty happy with how my little pillow turned out. By the way, I used the same pattern for the donkeys in the pillow as I did for my blog header. It's originally from a set of vintage stamps and you can find it here.

If you'd like to see who else is sharing their finishes this week, check out this post on Lit and Laundry.

There's Got To Be A Morning After

Earlier today, some guy knocked on the front door and I was ready to jump up from the computer and go answer it when I realized it was after 2:00 in the afternoon and I was still in a robe and pajamas. How did that happen?! I seem to remember coming up with a plan, while I was eating breakfast, to give my bedroom a good spring cleaning -- I was even going to move furniture so I could vacuum everywhere -- and then next thing I know, it's early afternoon and I'm still in my PJs and playing on Facebook. Have you tried the Pick Your 5 application yet? It lets you make lists of your five favorite whatevers -- movies, bands, TV shows, beers, sports teams, books, slopes, dog breeds, etc, and then share them on your page. I love doing that kind of thing, and also seeing what other people put on their lists. And, making fun of people who think Hannah Montana is one of the best shows ever always cheers me up.

And, it wasn't just Facebook that kept me busy today. I also wasted a ridiculous amount of time trying to get a pattern to print. Normally, I'd give up after the second try but it's for this adorable donkey on Etsy's blog and I HAD to have it. Who knows why but I couldn't get the pdf to open no matter how many times I tried, and printing the page only gave me the sidebars -- the entire middle section with the pattern itself was blank. Signing into Etsy didn't make a difference and neither did using Firefox instead of AOL's browser. To make it more fun, my computer kept freezing up when I was trying all these things so I had to keep starting over. The weird thing is I had the same problem a few months ago while trying to print another pattern from The Storque blog. I would love to link to that other pattern now but I just got stuck on Etsy again and had to re-start AOL. Anyway, the donkey is cute and I am sure you will have no issues printing the pattern. I think I'm just special that way.

On to the good stuff . . . You can win a copy of either The Apron Book or The Kitchen Linens Book by EllynAnne Geisel from The Apron Goddess. All the details are on this post. You have until midnight, Saturday, March 28th, to enter.

Kandra & Renee at Sibling Craftery are holding their first giveaway for some great prizes. (fabric! a pincushion! floss!) You have until Sunday, March 29th, to get in on this one. And, I know I've linked to them before but in case you missed it, be sure to check out their fun embroidery patterns too. I heart the Valentine's Day one.

There's another way to win one of EllynAnne's books but it's a little more involved: EllynAnne, along with Colonial Patterns Inc., is giving away six prize packages (full of Aunt Martha embroidery transfers, some towels to stitch them on, and copies of her books), over at Apron Memories, but to enter this not-a-contest giveaway, you need to create something using vintage household goods, (fabric, handkerchiefs, toweling, embroidery, doilies, place mats, napkins), and then post it in their Kitchen Linens Flickr pool. The deadline to enter is April 30th.

I am really in the mood to stitch something now but first I must print out even more patterns. I wouldn't want to get kicked out of Hoarders Anonymous any time soon. They're all are for embroidery except the felt Easter cone, which is now on my to-do list. (I'm considering joining Felt Anonymous as well.)

Bunnies and chicks at Orange Flower: Patterns and Tutorials [via Meet Me At Mikes]

Springy Chicken Day, flower for Spring, and (my favorite) Itty Bitty Circus and (even more favorite) a felt Easter Favor Cone at Tangarang

Henry the Hedgehog and Padraic O'Malley (links are in the right sidebar along with a few more) at Chichiboulie

Bunny pattern for March from Bad Birds (thanks, L&L!)

Have a great Thursday!

L'ane et le chien

I fell in love with antique embroidery booklets after seeing a bunch of them posted on some French blogs. I was excited to find one that had a cross stitch design with both a dog and donkey in it. I finished stitching it last week. It's way too big to turn into an ornament so I could make it into a pillow but that would involve using a sewing machine and we all know I haven't done that since junior high.


L'ane et al chien
Originally uploaded by PipStitch

Stitched on 18 ct Fiddlers with DMC 931. You can find the chart in Sajou 104 on this page (click the photo for the pdf of the entire booklet).

To see all of the embroidery books on Swappons, go here and then click each cover.

I would love to link to an English translation of the Swappons blog but both Google and Babel Fish are telling me "the requested URLs" are not available on their servers. Whatever. Funny how they have worked every other time I've used them. I'll try again later.

You can find more of these old booklets at les Passe-Temps de Flo (and again Google will not translate it into English). Most of these charts are for cross stitch but I know I've seen some with embroidery patterns. I don't know where they came from since I can't translate the entry but on this post at the same blog are three embroidery patterns with flowers and a pretty alphabet. And, this one has both embroidery and cross stitch flower patterns.

Another site with some of these old charts is Handmade Adelaide. You can find them here and here. (Thanks to Diane for those links!)

There's a new Stitch School post at Primrose Design on Chicken Scratch with some close-up photos of the stitches. And, The Sampler Girl is having a giveaway for a totebag with her Emily Dickinson x-stitch design printed on it.

Donkey News

DMC had a free cross stitch chart of a donkey on one of their websites and I was happy I printed it out when I found it because I couldn't find it again later on. But it's now on the Italian DMC site (or it always was and I was just too lame to figure out how to get to it).

If you click here, you will be taken to the log in page for the Italian version of the DMC Club. If you're a member, your log in and password should work. If you're not a member, go to the USA DMC site and sign up. Then go back here and log in. You should see the donkey chart. Click the picture for a pdf. (This probably seems like way to much trouble for some of you but I like donkeys so I didn't mind.)

I stitched up the donkey last year but didn't do anything with it until the other night.

Donkey cross stitch
Originally uploaded by PipStitch

My original plan was to make a needlecase but I couldn't get it the way I wanted it so I gave up. I did add some brown felt to the back so I can use it to a hold a needle or two. (If I had left on the button, the donkey would not be off-center now.) The chart calls for DMC's Color Variation floss but I just used some of my gray stash, and stitched it on 18ct Fiddler's Cloth.

I also wanted to mention Donkey Dreams: Call for Aprons. (I saw this linked on both tie one on and The Apronista Network.) Artist Katherine Dunn of Apifera Farm (blog: Apifera Farm) is collecting donated aprons to sell for Pino Pie Day on June 28th. (Pino is a cute little donkey.) Katherine is raising funds for her donkey therapy program. How can you resist a donkey wearing an apron and holding a pie?

The Donkey and the Dog

I'm not sure I've linked to the latest embroidery patterns from TipNut. They're a set of six designs with kitchen proverbs and a girl and sometimes with a dog and/or cat. Really cute.

I know I linked to the French cross stitch blog Swappons some time ago but it looks like I missed the main page for all the old embroidery booklets. Start here and then either click each cover or the page numbers at the bottom. I got excited the other night when I came across the chart for "L'ane et le chien." It's No 104 on this page. Sometimes I search French blogs for donkeys so finding a cross stitch chart with both a donkey and a dog was a bonus. I started stitching it the other night. I also made another biscornu and guess what? It's lop-sided. So it's not uneven Aida. It's me. I'm going to leave it as is. That will be my thing: lop-sided biscornu. (biscornus? biscorni?)

That Pink Donkey Up Top

Notice the new header? I was bored last night and that's what I came up with.

The Donkey design is from a set of stamps that were posted on Green Kitchen -- there's a pdf linked in the post or you can get the image on Flickr.

And, the alphabet I used came from an embroidery pattern from Vintage Transfer Finds. I just cross stitched them instead.

The unraveling Aida is a nice touch, huh?

Donkeys Donkeys Donkeys

I don't collect donkeys but I kind of have a thing for them. It's probably due to reading Brighty of The Grand Canyon during my horse phase in junior high. Well, I just saw the cutest donkey stamp on Write, Mama, Write. There was a link there to where the donkey stamp had come from so I went to Green Kitchen expecting to see the stamps for sale but guess what? You can download the pdf (it's linked in the post) or get them on Flickr! All the stamps (originally from a vintage French set) would make great embroidery patterns.

More donkey excitement: Mrs. Stitchy Britches shares an embroidery pattern of a donkey here and here and here too (she has been sharing a whole busload of patterns lately so be sure to go look if you haven't already).