Star Wars Embroidery - finished!

here it is! rock you like a hurricane!

*bows*

I'm not 100% satisfied with the framing, I just wish I could keep me work in an embroidery frame forever! but in terms of frame jobs I've done so far this is probably the neatest. I have to work harder at getting my grain lines straight in the hoop in the first place, then hopefully it'll keep it's proportions when it's un-hooped (the border is not as straight as I'd like and the top lettering is slightly distorted :-/ )

Anyhow, enough of that, I'm very happy, here's the pattern again:

You're welcome to use it for non-profit/personal use, I'm not giving you the bumble bee because I drew that freehand. Only one thing, if you do use it LET ME KNOW!! I wanna see! Comment on here, e-mail geekysweetheart@gmail.com, post on my facebook page, PM me on craftster

Notes to embroiderers: the lettering was done completely in 2 strands of black embroidery floss with backstitch, the bumble bee is all 2 strands too, satin stitch, backstitch for the outlines and french knots for the antennae. The border is completely 3 stands of embroidery floss, the stalks are 'spoke stitch' (essentially backstitch), the leaves are lazy daisy, which is like a singular loose chain stitch. And the 'flowers' are french knots.

I completely have now made my peace with lettering and french knots, onwards and upwards!

x G

Work in Progress Wednesday - Star Wars Embroidery

So I've been working on this thing, it started out as a thought, wouldn't it be great to have a rustic embroidery piece like this:

 

but with a silly quote from star wars instead... so one afternoon I googled embroidery borders and found this:

(courtesy of tipnut) and with a lot of copying and pasting and use of text boxes on MS word I ended up with this:

which when transferred to fabric using disappearing pen looks like this:

and now looks like this:

I added a bumble bee... because bumble bees live in hives... even wretched ones....

That's actually green gingham... but in this light it looks yellow, stupid energy saving bulbs...

anyhoo... that's what I'm doing at the moment...

x G

Looks like Sh*t, Tastes like Heaven Chocolate Cake.

• Cross posted at Heavy Metal Cooking

 

Hi, I'm Samantha, AKA Geeky Sweetheart/The Geeky Seamstress. I blog about my sewing misadventures over at Geeky Sweetheart, preparing for mine and my husband's first child over at TeensyGeek, and the general crafty-geekiness that the bountiful interwebs provides every Tuesday on geekcrafts.com.

As you can see by the pictures above, I love food...  it's been more difficult for the last 16 weeks as I've been thrust into various states of nausea by my pregnancy, but this is one recipe that even a toilet bowl hugging pregnant woman will appreciate.

The name comes from when I made one of these cakes to take to work one Friday, and while I was off teaching one of my colleagues came came and sneaked a piece. She left me a note, it read
"Sorry Sam, I stole some cake. looks like shit, tastes like hevean, heaven."
The spelling error was even more funny at the time as I'm an RE teacher... but enough about me... lets talk about cake.

Looks like Sh*t Tastes Like Heaven Cake.

You will need:
a cake or loaf tin, greaseproof paper, butter for greasing the tin

160g good quality dark chocolate (60%+ cocoa solids)
160g butter
1tbsp instant coffe granules (or, if you're REALLY heavy metal, I used 1/2 shot espresso! BOOYAH)
68g Self raising flour
68g plain flour
1/4 tsp bicarb of soda
160g dark muscovado sugar
160g caster sugar
25g cocoa powder
3 medium eggs.

This recipe will take about 30 mins to prepare and then around 1hr 30 mins to bake... it's worth it.

I copped out and bought ready made frosting, to be honest, the amount of effort you put into this cake you won't want to be bothered making your own icing. You can buy it in tubs in the home baking isle of the supermarket and to be honest, it's great!

If you're thinking my measurements are a bit strange that's because I had to modify the quantities of the original recipe to fit in the loaf tin, this cake mix is quite sloppy, and if it rises over the top of your cake tin it will drip off the edges and burn all over the bottom of your oven. You will be well advised to put a baking tray in the bottom of the oven just in case... oven cleaning is no one's favourite activity.

(1) Preheat the oven to - fan 140c - conventional 160c and gas mark 3. Remember to put a baking tray in the bottom in case your cake mix rises over the tin.
(2) Butter and line your cake tin/loaf tin.
(3) Melt the chocolate and butter in a bain marie. Half fill a pan full of water and place a (heatproof!) dish on top, bring the water up to a boil then simmer, and while simmering stir the chocolate and butter in the bowl until it melts. Don't get water into the chocolate dumb ass! when it's melted add in the espresso or coffee granules dissolved in a tiny bit of water.
(4)  In another bowl, mix the 2 flours, bicarb of soda, sugars and cocoa. I would use a sieve to sift these dry ingredients. You might find the muscovado sugar doesn't sift too well... just do your best... it'll be right.
(5) beat your eggs, then add the egg and chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients (it's probably a good idea to turn off the chocolate-melting-pan a couple of minutes before you do this, just in case you accidentally cook the egg :-) ) Stir until you have a runny but smooth consistency (told you it was runny)
(6) whack it in the cake tin and chuck it in the oven. Bake for 1hr 25/1hr 30 mins. As always with cakes, if you stab it with a knife your knife should come out clean, the top should be firm, don't open the oven door if you can help it, but after the first hour or so it's probably a good idea to have a quick check to make sure it's not burning.

My cake sank like a battleship, don't worry, who the hell cares, even if it looks like sh*t it'll taste like hevean heaven. Leave it to cool then add some pre-made chocolate frosting. Eat within a week... it won't last that long.

 x G

Space Raiders Fused Plastic Tote

there are lots of tutorials for this technique, and I suggest you look at many different ones, and experiment before trying to make anything aesthetically pleasing. This can go all sorts of wrong, over ironed plastic is not good:

 

the monster on the right has a bad case of 'plastic pox' on his nose.... it didn't photograph well but its GLARINGLY ugly in real life... anyhow...

Here's a good tutorial from KittyKill, one of the craftster Goddesses

So, no excuses, don't be blaming me if you melt plastic to your iron or pass out from plastic burning fumes, you have been warned!!

The great thing about fused plastic is that once you've done all the ironing you can sew it very much like you would sew fabric, with no worries about fraying edges or grainlines. Just let the fun printed designs do the hard work for you, see exhibit A:

I could have used binbags to fuse to the underside of the plastic and hidden the carrier bags, but I like the 'recycled' look. Also when I'm explaining how it was made it's much easier if I show them the carrier bags on the inside.

My new favourite bag!

x G

Sunday Squee!!

cross posted at teensygeek:

You can get this super cute baby onsie from HutchMe’s Etsy shop. In my household the little jedi jokes have already begun, Mr T half suggested that he would like to consider Luke as a name. I dont think I could deal with that.

But I have developed a good stock answer for questions about the baby’s gender.
“are you going to find out if it’s a girl or a boy?”
“nah, no point, wether it’s a girl or a boy it’s still going to be dressed up as yoda”

Dr Who Knitting Needle Roll (Dr Who Swap Round 4)

this is the Dr Who knitting needle holder I made for the Craftster Dr Who Swap (round 4) here's the other side:

all wrapped up:

and a close up of the embroidery detail on the hoop:

It was really simple, I kinda looked at this tutorial by lupinbunny, decided I wanted to use some tardis coloured binding strip instead of hemming everything and  I just sort of filled in the gaps.

Have some in-progress shots:

 

these are my materials, I ended up having to use 2 skeins of embroidery floss because it was such a big design (if I recall correctly I used 3 strands) - and that's HOMEMADE binding strip :-) hell yea!

The measurements here are 18" wide for everything, all those numbers are the height's in inches, the last 4 inch one is what I used for the little pouch in the first picture.

This is the pieces put together, as you can see I intended to use the 4" tall length as a final pocket but I decided it was redundant partway through the project.

 This is me transferring the embroidery design onto the black fabric using white carbon paper

 and there's the transferred design, ready for stitching! I did the whole thing in backstitch, using a 12" embroidery hoop mounted on the embroidery stand I was so lucky to find in the charity shop.

This is where I did a lot of the work :-)

I also sent my lovely partner this very tiny embroidery hoop:

(I just noticed the big 'ole CHINA mark on the bottom of the hoop... hmmm... should have put that to the back... *rollseyes* )

Anyhow, hopefully you've managed to follow what I did there... hope you like it!

x G

Christmas Secrets REVEALED!!

So, here's one thing I've been keeping from you, my adoring public:

This is an embroidery that I did for my mam for Christmas *waves at mam*. My mother knows the ways of the Internet so I couldn't show you for rear of ruining the surprise :-)
The pattern is from Tipnut's library of free downloadable embroidery patterns... seriously you should go on there! there's loads'a stuff! fair enough, the site is basically a collection of links to other sites, but it's a good set of links, and if you're looking for pincushion patterns, apron patterns or things to embroider on your tea towels (??) then this site is really useful.

Of course, the text was added by me... this is the original pattern:

So many more things to tell you! make sure you check back soon, make sure you 'like' my facebook page to get real time updates on my crafty adventures!

x G