Embroidery Projects

 I hadn't embroidered in a long time, and yet I decided I would do some projects for Christmas gifts.  I had accumulated some really cute patterns and pattern books. First, I was overwhelmed with the thought of trying to buy blouses for some friends, that would fit and they would like. So I asked them to give me either a blouse they already had or buy one. Give it to me to embellish and I would give it back to them as a gift. Sounds a little cheap of me, but it worked.
The above pattern is on the front of a short sleeved summery blouse with eyelet sleeves. It's a modern flower mandala and I thought it went with the blouse and the person.

The second blouse was a long sleeve button down. I couldn't put one big design in the front, so I put these raccoons on the back. I love the raccoons.

Then I put this squirrel on the upper right front area.

And this owl on the lower left area. A cute long sleeve white button down with wildlife on it.

  Then I did some pillow cases. I had some border patterns. This first one had a lot of good luck symbols in it, four leaf clovers, horseshoes, bees.

I loved the bees.

  Then I have 3 friends that I camp with often. I had a camping border. So I made 3 camping pillowcases for them. Each one was slightly different color choices.

I did a couple of canvas'y tote bags. This is another flower mandala. I really liked how it turned out.

  There was a bunny, flower, heart border that I did on another pillow case.

  The next pillow case was a pair of cute squirrels.

I did these songbirds on another pillowcase.

And this paisley mandala was on another tote bag.

  My last pillowcase was a series of four mini mandalas.

  A male friend wanted me to embroider this stylized Medusa on a shirt cuff for him. The shirt was a very dark blue. He wanted dark on dark. I had a lot of trouble trying to transfer a pattern on the fabric. I wasn't able to find anything that worked. Finally, I pinned the paper pattern to the cuff and sewed through it.

I didn't have an exact match for the thread, but it was the best I could do. You can kind of see what it is, if you know what you are looking at. 

Doing all these projects in time for Christmas, was a little stressful. It did, however, ignite in me the enjoyment of embroidery and stimulated my mind for several future projects. Stay tuned!

Giant Pandas at the Calgary Zoo

I was very excited to find out the Calgary zoo had 4 giant pandas, a male and female and two juveniles. Darla and I were both quite excited to go see them. Mostly they were lounging around.

There were lots of jokes about this guy having a hard night.

  I've posted a few pics of some of the other animals. This is a wild boar.

An Asian snow monkey. I thought he looked lonely

  This Asian camel was kind of odd looking.

  Baby Asian camel

  A chameleon

Red river hogs

 

lazing hippos

Lemur

Grizzly bear

Prairie dog

elk

Whooping crane

Musk ox

River otter

Caribou and Reindeer are the same animal

Dall sheep

these guys rammed each other right before this pic

Penguins