Owl cushion pattern

My sister's birthday is coming up, and she has requested an owl cushion. A fully-formed image appeared in my mind. This morning, I've created the pattern. Download it below and resize to your heart's content.

Coming up, I'll post the finished product to show what it looks like in real life. I'm looking forward to raiding my fabric drawer this weekend...



Here's the Pattern

Make a newspaper art thing.

Time for another paper-based project the whole world can get involved in.



DIRECTIONS

Print the below out onto thick A4 or letter-size paper (make it fill the page in Print Preview). It's OK if it's in colour or black-and-white.

Then grab a potato, cut it in half and paint the slice with red paint. Then print the slice onto the page, kind of in the middle.

Sign it (super important).

Grab a photo frame with a mat, grab the mat and place it on your artwork, getting a nice composition happening. Trim any page left over the sides of the mat, then whack it into the frame.

Done!

Mini furniture.

Hey, make tiny furniture, people.

I got bored on Autocad one evening and made little 1:15 scale furniture templates. This is the first page coloured rather unconventionally and assembled:



And here's links to two pages of furniture fun:

Mini furniture 1 (furniture as above)
Mini furniture 2 (armchair, footstool, screen)

Brief instructions:

I mean, it's all pretty easy. Print onto card and colour in if you want. Cut them all out with a knife and score all the bits you have to fold lightly with a knife (much easier to fold that way). All hatched surfaces should have glue on them. Any bits that have hatching around them should have glue applied to the other side.

Enjoy! Let me know if you did it and post a photo!

Old Tree

Old Tree
Originally uploaded by evilshrub

This tree comes from a freaking awesome sampler by Mary Ann Gorringe (1839-?) who settled in Australia as a baby.

DMC Colours
Dark green 936
Lighter green: 3363
Peachy colour: 945
Brown: 3045

There may in fact be only two colours but some fading makes it look like the greens and browns are different in some places.

Note that some of the tree has to be stitched 1/2 a stitch over to make it more symmetrical. It's pretty self-explanatory on the chart - I've put red around the bits I mean. Let me know if you need help.

I would like to transcribe the entire sampler from which this comes from - see it at http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=191536 - but for now, this was hard enough so I'm going to rest my eyes.

Enjoy!

Bird and baby sitting in a tree....

birdgraph
Originally uploaded by evilshrub

I've never made a proper graph for a cross stitch before.... that is, UNTIL NOW. Duh-dun!

So, here's my first official design. I decided to start humbly. I haven't chosen the exact colours I would like to use yet. Perhaps I will post some on the weekend.

The eyes of the birds are french knots. I think the rest is pretty self-explanatory.

I can't wait to try it! I hope somebody else does try it too!

I will try and find an alternative spot to put this rather than flickr on the weekend. It limits the size I can post, I think.