Ellen from The Long Thread created this charming car mat mini quilt from her daughter's drawing on a magnetic doodle board. Ellen scanned the image in to the computer, traced it in Illustrator and digitized it for machine embroidery. The same could be done to create a pattern for hand embroidery. I've always loved the ideas of using children's illustrations for stitching, and this fun little mat for driving cars is just fantastic!

I love this ingenious project for stitching with your kids from This Little Project. Using recycled materials from an "invention junk box" kids are able to practice the motions of stitching and creating their own projects. Brilliant!

Kristin from Craft Leftovers recently shared a great story about uncovering some crafty treasures of her grandmother's, including a small sewing box made from plastic canvas. Inspired by her findings, she's developed a pattern for a mini plastic canvas sewing box based on her grandmother's design. The pattern is available for download through her web site.

Halloween is around the corner, and it's never to early to start thinking about spooky decor. One of the spookiest memories from my childhood was touring the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. I love this depiction of the three ghosts at the end of the ride, because it's seasonal art that isn't overly obivous. This work "screams" Halloween without being too Halloween.
Haunted Mansion Embroidery by Giddie Girlie on Etsy is the kind of holiday decoration that never has to come down! She custom stitches each piece, to your specifications, when you order it, with a super fast turnaround of only about 1 week. All for $25- now that's scary!

I took two years of Russian in high school, and another two years in college, and was lucky enough to visit Russia back in 1992. Among the many things I love about the Russian language is the beautiful Cyrillic alphabet. These vintage Cyrillic cross-stitch alphabets are making me swoon with inspiration. Russian isn't the only language to use the Cyrillic alphabet, though, and it looks like these alphabets might actually be Macedonian (Cyrillic experts, let us know in the comments). They are still gorgeous, though, and remind me how much fun it was to learn to write and understand letters like Ж (zhe) and Ф (ef).

They were featured on the Free Historic Old Pattern Books blog run by a gentleman named Ramzi who collects, scans and posts old cross-stitch patterns. He's featured Russian books before, but most have consisted of more imagery than lettering. It's these gorgeous letterforms that have me very excited. There are several in this collection, and the cover of the book is over-the-top gorgeous in its design and lettering, and literally makes me weak in the knees. Enjoy!

Katherine Shaughnessy is one of my favorite people on the craft scene. She runs the online shop Wool & Hoop, which is one of the main online suppliers for crewelwork kits and fine supplies. She is also the author of The New Crewel. A few years ago, she moved from Chicago to the very small Texas town of Marfa (population 2,000), where she now has ten chickens and two kids, and she recently opened a little craft store on the town square. Katherine is a trained artist with an interesting story and I really wanted her to tell it in her own words.

Katherine is pictured above wearing an outfit created by her shopmate, Lorna Leedy.

The Tennessee Sampler Survey is a project founded to "document and preserve Tennessee's needlework heritage."

For many years, textile scholars assumed that sampler making was not practiced in the South. Our research has shown that Tennessee girls made samplers from the era of settlement through the end of the 19th century.

Their collection of samplers is available through their web site with zoom-in features and history with each piece. It's fascinating to look through them and imagine young folks diligently stitching so many years ago. It's a brilliant way to learn about our past, and great inspiration for future crafting!

[ via Pin Tangle ]

MAKE's photo editor Sam Murphy sent us this great photo she recently took in Vienna. She writes:

I was on a lightning trip with my fiance and his parents in Germany for my soon-to-be family reunion. We were in Germany mostly, but we hopped on the train to Prague and Vienna. These were the horse and carriage rides you see all over Vienna. Not all of them where crochet like this one, but I saw maybe one or two more. (I like the silver details on the ends, the yarn seem to be faded, but it may be the yarn is dyed.) Pretty much all of them had their ears covered like this with a hat, usually of cotton. Too much to see, and too much great food to eat!

The photo -- taken in front of Vienna's famous St. Stephens Cathedral -- got us excited about what other horse projects might be out there for us to crochet. These ear or fly bonnets, used to protect the horses' ears from flies, seem to be the most common crochet project. Here's a short list of related websites we found; feel free to post other resources or photos of projects you've done in the Comments!

• Crochet Horse Ear Bonnet
• St. Patrick's Day Parade
• Crochet for the Horse
• Bonnet Chasse-Mouche
• Pattern: Goose - Horse Hat

From the pattern:

Embroidered all in one color of embroidery floss, this simple design uses only three stitches -- stem stitch, satin stitch, and French knot -- for a modern take on a very old-fashioned flower.

I first came across Mimi Kirchner's work about two years ago through the Flickr Embroidery Group. I was blown away by her Tiki soft sculptures, her tattooed men dolls and her delicate female and male dolls. I've followed her work closely ever since, and am continuously amazed by her artful skill and brilliant attention to detail, not to mention, her warm and generous personality. The Storque at Etsy features Kirchner in a pieced in their Handmade Portrait series that gives wonderful insight into her background in art, lifelong love of dolls and how her habitual collecting lends specials details to all her work. It's given me a whole new love and appreciation for her artistry!

Natalie at Cinderberry Stitches shares instructions and and a free embroidery pattern for making a sweet needle wallet.

I am blown away by the work of artist, Summer Wheat, who incorporates stitching techniques into her oil paintings. More information from The Constant Gatherer.

Karin of Orange Flower shares how to make this cute multi-purpose pouch (think pencils, makeup, feminine needs) with reverse applique of an embroidered patch. The pen and pencil motif that she used comes from the Sexy Librarian set of embroidery patterns from Sublime Stitching, and have been made available as a free PDF to go along with Karin's project!

Melissa from Checkout Girl shares how to make a simple and lovely embroidered, lavender-filled sachet, perfect for gift-giving.

Cindy in Gainesville, Florida makes these embroidered profile portraits that pop off of the fabric with 3D arms. (Thanks, Katie Wilson!)

From the CRAFT Flickr pool, user funnypolynomial writes:

Quite a while ago I came up with the idea of creating an ASCII chart done as an old-school cross-stitched Sampler, I liked the juxtaposition of the modern and the old. I started the project (stitching the grid) but became discouraged by the slow progress. So I left if there for ages. Recently I got keen to start again, but decided to simplify and shrink the design a little. More importantly I spread my progress over the grid and some of its contents so I was always "making progress". 60+ hours stitching, 5k+ "stitches"

I'm still giddy over Sew, Mama, Sew!'s hand-sewing month, and today's tutorial just adds to the fun. Melissa from Checkout Girl and Little Pink House shows how to create this sweet wool felt applique house and flowers in an embroidery hoop frame.

This "messy" tablecloth features pre-spilled wine and other evidenced of a raucous dinner party. Via MAKE on Twitter.

Jenny Hart has a tutorial up over on the Chronicle Books blog about her tricks for giving dimension to stitching by blending embroidery floss colors. The technique is simple, and the result can be quite dramatic!

In celebration of 2009 as International Year of Astronomy, Miniature Rhino made these embroidered constellations. I think they make a really nice set!

I am in awe of these cross-stitched spats from Emma of aprons and hammers. She created the leather shoes and the spats.

White leather, multicoloured thread, hand-embroidered spat panels, navy blue waxed heels and soles: I love them I love them I really love them!

I really love them, too!

[ via Meet Me at Mikes ]

Your Friendly Neighborhood Organ Grinder is an Etsy shop filled with crafty organs of all sorts. Brains, eyeballs and more all mashed up with keychains, hair clips, in jars, on walls, you name it. Via Street Anatomy.

It's hand sewing month over at Sew, Mama, Sew! and I love today's post about age-appropriate hand sewing projects for kids. They've details various projects for ages 1 to 4 and up, and it's great proof that it's almost never too early to start kids hand sewing!

A few years ago, Monster Crochet shared a skeleton antimacassar she made for Halloween. She's just released the charts for creating your own skeleton antimacassar in knit, crochet or cross stitch. This would be a fun project to tackle to count down to Halloween, but I imagine you'd need to get started right away!

Via Mr. X Stitch, I love Ben Conrad's anatomical embroideries!

Here in Austin, we've been suffering through one of the hottest summers on record, with well over 40 days of temperatures of 100 degrees or higher. Now, even our friends in the Pacific Northwest who usually experience mild summers, are dealing with abnormally high temperatures. Last month, I talked with Jen McGuire for a story in Snippets Zine from Cut Out + Keep about my favorite warm weather craft: embroidery. See why it's my craft of choice - not only for the hot summer months, but all year 'round!

Gretchen of Muddlepud created this charming "memory catcher" pouch for her daughter. As though the idea for the project wasn't sweet enough, she adorned the pouch with embroidery based on a photograph of wildflowers she picked while she and her daughter were taking a walk. It's such a beautiful translation of a photograph, and a really dear project!

This surveillance camera cross stitch pattern is subtle, you might not even notice it in overall design. I'd like to see this on Cory Doctorow's next book cover.