Initials

I love letters. As a design student back in the day, our earliest exercises involved working with letter forms, and for good reason. They are beautiful and iconic shapes in and of themselves.

So I've enjoyed working with them over the last few days on a couple different projects. The first is the Crumb Pillow top...I cross stitched my husband's and my initials in those two central patches--feeling sentimental as our 30th anniversary approaches. Then I made some fabric postcards for a swap that used some of my own flower letters from a few summers ago.

First, the letters on the pillow....I used waste canvas. (You can get it at JoAnn's.)

Here they are underway. I've drawn the letter onto the canvas with a gel pen but I also refer to the chart in the book that I have while I stitch. (Another great source for cross stitch letter charts is this blog, where you can find a plethora of vintage alphabets and cross stitch patterns for free.)

Here are the letters with the canvas removed. I went with the blue and green threads just to provide some contrast with the rest of the colors in the pillow top, so the letters would stand out in all that craziness. That's why I chose the wide-bodied font as well.

And then to my very first ever fabric postcards! They are part of a swap with some of my Point Bonita friends.

What was fun was using silk ribbon to piece with! On such a small scale as this, their selvages and pretty shine made them a perfect choice for some micro-log cabin action. I made my machine stitch short and just flipped and sewed these Riversilks ribbons....you should try it, it's fun!

Finally, I want to steer you to Lynn Schoeffler's fabulous article in the brand new issue of CQMagOnline. In "L" is for Lynn, she gives some great techniques for creating intricate but easy monograms for your stitching work. The rest of the issue is good reading too, so check it out.. ;-)