Saturday, April 29, 2006

 

Pincushion Challenge


Booga J started the first monthly pincushion challenge on tuesday. She explains:
Every month you make a pincushion that somehow relates to the monthly theme. When it's finished email me a picture! It's that easy!
This challenge ends on May 31st. The theme for your pincushion is fruit. So you could embroider a fruit on the pincushion. You can read all details in the Pincushion Challenge blog.
If you don't know how to make a pincushion the blog links to tutorials. On the right side below the challenge button is a list of different tutorials. One of the best is the tutorial at whip up.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

 

Small cross stitch motifs

A french blog publishs every week one or two cross stitch charts. The author Anne want to create a dictionary of symbols. Every symbol has its own page with the chart, an explanation and room for the completed cross stitch motif. This pages can be downloaded from her blog or her homepage (see links at the bottom). An illustrated tutorial shows how to make a page of the dictionary.
Until today there are 18 small animal cross stitch charts available. The latest motifs are the crab and swan charts.
The pages are for download as PDF-file in red or blue thread color. A lot of the embroidery motifs fit on the 5 cm /2 inches wide Aida Band. The motifs can be as wide as 26 stitches. Larger motifs up to 29 stitches fit on the Aida Band with decorative edge where you can adapt the thread color to the color of the pattern.

Monday, April 24, 2006

 

New craft magazine announced

O'Reilly starts a new craft magazine in fall, it was announced at the Maker Faire and in the MAKE Blog.
From the creators of MAKE Magazine, a new magazine devoted to crafts! Look for it on the newsstands in Fall 2006.
The cover looks and the announcement sounds promising. But it is still half a year till fall.

 

What is Aida Band


Aida fabric is a fabric widely used for counted cross stitch. The name Aida comes not from the opera by Guiseppe Verdi but from the weaving method. The characteristic of this weaving method is the resulting gap after every fourth thread lenghtwise and across creating small holes in the fabric. This makes cross stitching easy. You don't have to count the single threads but simply stitch from one hole to the other.
Aida Band is this kind of fabric in shape of a band. Usual widths range from less than 1 inch up to 12 inches. Aida Band comes endless from the loom and is sold either by the length or precut in length of one meter or yard.
The main advantage of Aida Band is the time and work saving because you don't have to sew the open edge. But there are not only simple straight or slightly scalloped edges. Although these edges can have a different color than the band, there are a lot more design alternatives. Edges can have a pattern (e.g. stars or roses), be scalloped or different on both sides of the band.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

 

Blog opened

Together with my online shop for Aida Band starts this blog. My german online shop is open for all orders from Germany.