Vintage Embroidery Freebies for National Embroidery Month

Here are a few vintage embroidery designs that would look great on kitchen towels, quilt blocks, etc. Enjoy!

May Flew Over

I've been away from this blog for a little over a month. Time fly by when keeping busy. Here are a couple of overdue updates. In fact these projects' progress took place few months ago, but I forgot to post the update until now. Above is the vintage bluework bluebird, almost finished. The beginning of the bluework bird project is here.

"Summer Splendor" is almost finished as well. I'm using all DMC floss on this one, love the colors on this design so much! (Showed the materials/supplies towards the end of this post. The beginning here. And a progress update here.)

Finally decided to start a new cross stitch project on Lugana. My very first official project on even weave fabric. Switched some colors from the ones listed in the pattern, and now I don't like them. Plus I was dealing with a mild migraine that day and it got worst after completing a couple of the elements in the chart (should have known better, instead of stitching I needed to rest). 
So later, started it again on Aida in the called for DMC's, but now I feel disappointed in myself for switching to Aida because the whole purpose for doing this pattern was to practice stitching on even weave... sigh... a new cross stitcher's dilemma. When I finally decide which direction I want to go with it, then perhaps I'll write a post on it.

Let see if June proves to be more conducive to hand embroidering and cross stitching. Until next time! Stay safe and help others be safe!

Freebies: Lamb and Strawberries

By now, in one way or another, our lives have been altered by 

Covid-19. We homeschool so in that area we are doing fine. 

My volunteer work needed to be modified, and that is what we are still working on. May not be able to do as much time as I was planning, but I'm not giving up. My stitching projects are on hold until I'm able to at least accomplish a personally satisfactory time for the volunteer work. In the meantime will leave you with these vintage hand embroidery designs that perhaps I've previously shared... but they are springy so here they are for your enjoyment.

Perhaps with more time at home, doing our part to help slow down and bring down that curve, one of you might be able to stitch one or both! Surely it'll turn out lovely!

Homey Stitchy Day and Freebie

So guess what?! Did get out the EPP and Daisychain projects, and today I plan to work a bit on them (inserting a happy dance here). 
The picture above it is not directly related to my projects, however it does portray cottages and needlework (homey and stitchy). 
It'll be an outcast/rainy kind of day, kids will be busy with their online school work, older kid will be making a family size salad for lunch. No major chores today... just a small laundry load of my husband's formal dress shirts to throw in the washer, and we have yesterday's leftovers for today's dinner. All is set. While stitching will most likely listen to spiritually enriching mp3s. 

Might even stay in my pj's,... love being home! Before leaving, here is a vintage embroidery pattern I've previously shared. 

Hoping you are all able to enjoy your day! Until next time!

Birds and Dishes

Sunday was a good day for hand embroidery. Had to take it easy and to distract myself from how I was feeling what better way than stitching. Used a Sublime Stitching's Fine Tip Iron On Pen in green, and ironed it to an Aunt Martha's 18"x28" Flour Sack Dish Towel. Will leave non-affiliated links below just in case you want to check the design, pen, and towels out.

Went the easy route with Bluework. However, choosing which shade of blue thread to use, proved to be a bit more time consuming. After narrowing it down to two, finally decided to go with DMC no.806. Although there are quite a few other projects that require my attention, this cutie cut in line up ahead :-).  An impromptu project that won my heart at present. Surely you know the feeling, right?
Until next time!

Non-affiliated links:
The design was shared by Flickr user: rectangel here. 
Sublime Stitching's Transfer Pens on her Etsy shop.
Aunt Martha's 18"x28" Flour Sack towels on their website and on Amazon.

Snowless Winter

Yes, a snowless winter this one seems to be. January is almost gone and February is projected to start with temperatures in the 50's. My kids are eagerly waiting for some winter fun in the snow, however I don't think it will happen this year. 
The pictures in this post I've blogged about previously (one of them here). Woodland creatures having a blast ice skating! From Vicki Haninger's embroidery book. Such a cute book! Now the patterns are also available individually in her Etsy shop. 

Until next time! Be well!

Non-affiliated links:
Vicki Haninger Etsy shop (link is to the pattern in first picture).

Tea for Two: Vintage Embroidery Freebie

This one is another one in my "Must Stitch" list. Can't wait for things to slow down around here to continue working on my embroidery! Have fun stitching these tea (or coffee if you must) drinking kitties!

Stew Weather (Vintage Embroidery Freebie)

Stew season is in full swing, so why not stitch yourself a fun kitchen towel to make you smile while you wash and chop veggies. 
Be well!
Until next time!

Vintage Embroidery Lap Quilt Project: Bluebird

At last! The lap quilt project is out again ready for me to keep making progress on it. Cute bluebird is almost done, just need to finish its eyes. 

This design is part of a vintage Aunt Martha's embroidery transfer. 
Next block is a.... , well you'll see when I post another lap quilt update ;-) .
Until next time!

Enabling Embroidery On Small Business Saturday ;-)

Charlotte Lyons

There are lots of sales out there, including hand embroidery related sales! I'm not affiliated with any of these Etsy Shops, but only glad to have found a few nice stitchy goodies on sale... and because of that I'll pass the info on to you ;-). (Don't know how long these sales will last.)
First one above: Charlotte Lyons (Etsy shop). Her store is full of beautiful original designs, in pre-printed sampler form and some original patterns on PDF's. The coupon code is found on her shop's Announcements section. The coupon code must be entered in order to get a 20% off discount of your entire order and before clicking "Proceed to check out".  In your cart you will see, near the box for optional comments, a sentence that says: "Apply shop coupon codes" you click on that and a box will appear where you may type the coupon code. 

IntaVint

Then: InstaVint (Etsy shop) has a 30% off all her vintage embroidery PDF's patterns reproductions! Discount is already applied to all the patterns in her shop. She has some that are hard to find. Have fun peeking around!

There are many other shops running sales, so if you are looking for hand embroidery related designs you should be able to find quite a few. Have fun browsing, and/or shopping! ;-)

Vintage Aunt Martha's Embroidery Transfer Designs

Warm thoughts of all these previous hand embroideries are resurfacing.

Aunt Martha's embroidery transfers are the best! Have not work on any of my in progress AM's designs in some time. Cross stitching took over for awhile. 
For the past couple of days, a sudden mass of cold air have cause temperatures to drop dramatically around here. That sudden weather change must have brought the cozy warm memories of working on these mostly vintage designs to mind (the rooster is not a vintage design, but part of a Stitcher's Revolutions pattern also by the makers of AM's... the Colonial Pattern Inc.). 

Some of these were hand embroidered onto kitchen towels / tea towels / dish towels . Some on my personal lap quilt project.
May have to bring that one out and keep working on it!
Until next time!

Non-affiliated notes:
All these patterns are from various designs found at
Colonial Patterns Inc. Their website is:
colonialpatterns.com .

Another One Done!

Finally done with the Aster, part of the Aunt Martha's Flower of the Month embroidery transfer no.3813. 

Progress shot above, just because I love seeing pictures of work-in-progress hand embroidery work.

April will prove to be another busy month for my family. Leaving you with one more vintage embroidery pattern, enjoy!

Anniversary!

My husband took me for Afternoon Tea as an early wedding anniversary celebration. Becoming his wife has been one of the best decisions I've made in my life, my husband is my best friend! We were actually supposed to go for an anniversary dinner on the actual date, but I wasn't feeling good so it was nice to have made it to Tea a couple of days earlier. Picture below was of the last course... desserts! I drank Oolong my husband choice was Darjeeling.
My older daughter gifted us a few things, she made me the embroidered squirrel in the picture above (pattern by Kathy Schmitz), gave my husband wine glasses, wrote us an original poem that made me shed a few tears, gifted us with a home cook dinner and a couple individual size cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes... they were so good! We are so proud of her!

Our younger gave us some hand made cards, flowers, and coffee mug for my husband.  We are also proud of her ;-), we loved her drawings! Below is my card. On my husband's card she drew my husband taking me to a picnic.

Everything is in bloom around here, but we are getting a blast of arctic air these days.... (sigh). Perhaps some of you are starting your gardens, what are you planting this year? We add peppers to quite a few of our recipes. I do not have a green thumb so maybe will grow mine with needle and thread ;-). Here is vintage transfer in case you like to give it a go! Adding a few extra daisies around the peppers will give them a nice touch, I think.

Our family will have a busy month for volunteer work, we enjoy it so much! May y'all have a great week ahead!

Until next time!

New and Vintage Embroidery Transfer / Patterns Haul

Things didn't turn out as I was expecting these past few days... kids appointments were put on hold do to myself having to do an unexpected medical visit. A couple test pending. With all that anxiety, besides prayers, I did some retail therapy. One of my purchases was from Wings of the Morning on Etsy. Nothing better than super cute vintage embroidery transfers that evoke nostalgia and sweet memories of long ago. I had great customer service from Amy! Perhaps you may want to go check her shop out, there are still a few treasures to be found!

She even included this lovely gift! I tell you, around here it is so hard to find vintage embroidery transfers. So I'm grateful to have these on my stash now! My mom was the one who introduced me to embroidery (as I posted on a previous blog entry), vintage transfers remind me of her. Hand embroidery is therapeutic in so many ways for me!

So I will go thru the box little by little to distract myself while awaiting my upcoming tests, and of course take care of my kids appointments. Maybe I can find a few vintage designs I could share here. 

Kathy Schmitz released this pattern today! It is a PDF available in her Etsy shop, and her website. It'll be used for a stitch-along starting March 16th, not sure if I'm going to be able to wait to start mine, LOL. I'll be transferring it soon and have it ready... will try to wait.

Also added this book to my stash, a new book from Annela Hoey. Solely iron on transfers from designs on her previous books and a few new ones as well, there are a couple of design elements that are repeated a few times (for example a design of a small pair of embroidery scissors, the same pair of scissors appears in 3 designs). Not a biggie.
This cute birdie was a pattern Aneela use to sell in her shop (not sure now). I always liked it and wanted to stitch it, but I do not use PayPal... 3 times my info was compromised, very bitter experiences. Since canceling my account I've never gone back, not even use the feature of not needing an account to buy. Thereby, so glad to have found that this cutie was part of the patterns in this book purchased from Amazon. Didn't waste time and stitched it right away! Will post a close up later detailing the stitches used.

Here is a 'just for fun shot', organizing work-in-progress projects and getting ready to start new ones... like the cutie birdie that is now all done ;-). I'll expound a bit more on this on a future post.
So, tell me... do you sometimes do retail therapy? ;-)
Have a nice weekend! Until next time!

Time for a Break!

I'll be taking a break for a couple of weeks from updating this blog. We need to wrap up the first homeschooling semester, and get ready for the second semester. It is time for kids' round of visits to the various doctors. Thankfully although in winter, we are having some days in which it will be in the 70's,.... crazy I know, but I'll take it! Easier for me to move around doing all those errands when it is warm.
So I leave you with this little guy that I don't think I've posted about before. It was stitched awhile back on the work-in-progress hand embroidered lap quilt.  

When taking the picture I noticed that I forgot to stitched the edge of the table, oops!
That's all for now, be well! Until next time!

Notes:
Pattern is Aunt Martha's embroidery transfer no.3243 Bruno the Bear.

Baking, Evening Stitches, Vintage Carnation

Yesterday's weather was less cold than previous days, which was nice for a break. We headed out to do groceries, and find materials for a science project for one of my kids. Once back, did some laundry, vacuuming, and fixed a quick dinner. A free evening to do some stitching! Started again where I left on the Aunt Martha's Flower Quilt I was making for my mom. I think this is the Aster bloom.

Made quite a bit of progress while re-watching Emma. I do not get tire of it, enjoy watching all the versions, but my favorite one is the BBC 2009 TV Series, with Romola Garai as Emma and Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley. 
My 2nd favorite will have to be the 1996 movie with Kate Beckinsale as Emma and Mark Strong as Mr. Knightly.
Do you have a favorite period drama movie you don't get tire of?
I also like a few others by Jane Austen, but I prefer Emma.

Did the final stitches of the Bluework kitchen towel, will try to post a picture of it next time. 
This past Thursday was a rainy one. We stayed in and baked gluten free and egg free cookies, nut free banana muffins, and rum cake ;-). We did the semi-homemade approached by using box mixes for the cookies and rum cake. The muffins were from scratch.

Since all these pictures above were taken either on a rainy day, or in the evening, the lighting is not great... but you might be able to get the feel of how things went on my side of the woods.
Leaving you with a vintage embroidery pattern of a carnation... until next time!

Warming Up In Stitches

It's super cold out there, hoping those of you being affected by winter storms are keeping warm and safe! 
Here is a freebie from my collection of vintage embroidery transfers. Perhaps you are able to take some time off, sit with a cup of your favorite hot beverage and stitch this cute pattern on a tea towel for someone you love or for yourself ;-). Or if you rather have an iced tea or lemonade go for it. Have fun stitching!
I enjoy a cup of hot tea or coffee any time of the year, the same goes for iced tea ;-). Might stitch this myself in the near future.
Until next time!
PS: Please let me know if you stitch it so I can take a peek!

A French Knot Away

A couple of evenings ago I almost completed this bunny,... just a French Knot away for it to be all done, and already started the next one! It was a productive evening with my embroidery needle.

It is getting bone-chilling cold, the type of weather that exacerbates achy muscles and joints. Medications do not always work... time for regular needlework therapy. Rearranged and organized all my hand embroidery projects to have them ready to go and within reach. Hope the weather is not bad where you are, and if it is that you are finding ways to cope well!

Thanks for stopping by! Until next time!

Back In The Stitchy Saddle

It definitely was a long unplanned break,... but now is time for a stitchy blog update! 

On the Count Your Blessings cross stitch project not much progress, but progress nonetheless. At least the house is up, now starting to fill it up along with the grass. Just taking my own time with this one. I'm learning a lot on this design, especially learning to keep the stitches tidier in the back, and that stiffed Aida is not my favorite fabric to stitch on. Will definitely use a soft Aida for my next cross stitch project. Cross stitching is not relaxing in my opinion, however I do enjoy seeing the design come to life little by little.

Remember my personal, long term, embroidery project using Aunt Martha's iron on embroidery transfers? (A little refresher here.) I picked it back up few days ago, and it felt so good! Simple and cheery, nostalgic and dreamy, cozy and meditative, choosing whatever patterns, colors and stitches that tickle my fancy. Very relaxing and therapeutic indeed, it definitely puts a smile on my face when I'm working on it... so will be keeping it out and work on it here and there. 
Until next time! Be well!

Notes: 
Count Your Blessings cross stitch design by Country Cottage Needleworks.
Aunt Martha's iron-on hand embroidery transfer no.675 Bunny Rabbit.