Time to get sewing new clothes!

Like to sew, or know someone who does?

Here's a cute sewing-themed pattern I created in StitchPainter for your personal non-commercial stitching fun out of the freebie Microsoft graphic MC900233820. Thanks, Microsoft, as usual!

Enjoy

September's just around the corner...give me a ring!

Phones will be ringing once again...summer's almost over--boo hoo!--and it's back to work and school for us.

Here's a chipper red telephone I found on a Facebook page then imported into StitchPainter for your personal non-commercial stitching fun.

Enjoy!

It's still summer, but are you thinking of all you have to do in the fall?

If you're already making "To Do" lists for the fall, here's just what you need!

A pencil and paper note set to needlepoint or cross-stitch.

I imported the freebie MC900232958 image into StitchPainter, then turned it into a bmp to share with you for your personal, non-commercial stitching pleasure.

Enjoy!

Want to give someone a gold star?

Want to give someone a gold star? Well, here is a great one from aaa.com imported into StitchPainter and created for your personal, non-commercial stitching fun.

Enjoy!

More summer time stitching fun...balloons!

Images created with simple strong graphics are more easily translated into needlepoint designs, even with the marvelous "StitchPainter" program, which I used to create this happy bunch of balloons out of an unknown balloon image (but it looks like one of the Microsoft freebies) for your personal, non-commercial stitching pleasure.

Enjoy!

Want to needlepoint or cross-stitch on the beach? How about doing a beach chair?!

Summer's here, already, and it's sooooooo hot.

...More...... I'm not much of a sunbathing fan, but the cool breezes coming off the ocean sure do sound enticing.

If you're at the sea, or a lake, and want to do some needlepoint or cross-stitch, what could be better than a beach chair?

I captured this image from the freebies on the Microsoft web site, n. 900335754 (thanks, Microsoft!), and uploaded it into StitchPainter to create this free design for your personal, non-commercial stitching pleasure.

Enjoy!

Owen Jones' principles: n. 37, the last

Owen Jones' last principle, n. 37, sounds a bit self-serving, but no less true for it:

PROPOSITION 37: No improvement can take place in the Art of the present generation until all classes, Artists, Manufacturers, and the Public, are better educated in Art, and the existence of general principles is more fully recognized.

Ponder the profound truth of that comment coming out strong and clear for manufacturers to be cultured, for the buying public to learn what good taste is and for artists to be production-wise. Each side has to take the other into account, if products are to be of good design.

Think this isn't still necessary?...More...... Think, again...each time my towel or bathrobe falls to the floor because of the beautiful, modern, but highly unpractical so-called hook, I curse designers who pay more attention to what the product looks like than making sure it actually does what it's supposed to do. Ditto for when I lived in a house without any closet space...literally...and not even a place to hide a broom, though there would have been, had the architect been thinking practically instead of about how nice that door looked centered on the wall.

It also makes me think, positively, of the work of Susan Lazear, a teacher of textiles and clothing in San Diego and the inventor of my favorite embroidery program, StitchPainter, whom I had the privilege and fun of meeting during her trip with students to Milan a few months back. Interested in her work? Here's her blog about creativity: http://susanlazear.blogspot.it/.

Susan's computer program company, Cochenille, has not just StitchPainter, but also a very popular program called Garment Designer, for designing your own clothes and accessories patterns, as well as a stock of patterns available. (As usual, I get no kickbacks of any kinds from talking about my favorite products!)

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to me! (to my blog, anyway)

Hello there! Were you wondering where I was? I'm here, just workin' like a dawg, but couldn't miss sharing the joy of my blog's second anniversary with you.

To celebrate, here's an adorable little gargoyle-like stone decoration on Via Boscovich in Milan.

Want to know more about it? See my blog dedicated to Milan, "My Milan (Italy)": http://mymilanitaly.blogspot.it/2012/02/neo-romanesque-fun-on-via-boscovich.html

Enjoy! (confetti thrown here!)

Happy Birthday, Rome! (April 21)

Happy Birthday, Rome! Legend has it that Rome was founded by Romulus (one of these two cute twins) on the 21st of April in 753 B.C. The origin of the little twins in this sculpture is indisputed: they were added in the Renaissance. The origin of the wolf is another story...More......

It traditionally was dated to the Etruscan period (some Etruscans perhaps were the last kings of Rome before the Republic was founded in 510 B.C.), but long boiling disputes burst into fairly recent carbon-dating (probably on remnants of the sculpture's core left after the bronze was poured into the mold) that seems to date it to the Middle Ages, perhaps from the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. (that's the Carolingian period, she said ponderously). Interested in the diatribe? You can see a few words from 2008 (!) about the dating of the sculpture on: http://english.sina.com/technology/1/2008/0711/171023.html.

Just who were Romulus and Remus? For starters, here's a snippet from the Encyclopedia Britannica online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509038/Romulus-and-Remus.

Why did I say "Carolingian" so ponderously? For more info about the importance of ancient Rome to Charlemagne, try http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03610c.htm. (Though dating to the beginning of the 20th century, this encyclopedia is considered by many scholars to be more thorough and accurate than the more recent version. Though its Catholic origins tend to peep through, forewarned is forearmed.)

For the rest of us, it's just an occasion to celebrate Rome and to share a fun needlepoint design, which I created uploading a freely available Wikipedia image into my StitchPainter program, then turning it into a BMP for your personal non-commercial pleasure on my blog.

If the design is too complicated for you, just simplify it by picking out at least three major groups (dark, medium, light) for the shapes and proportions. Print out the design, and have at it with a felt-tipped pen! You'll do just fine!

Enjoy!

A(nother) baby gift

What's been happenin' needle-wise around these parts?

Had promised a new mother-to-be friend a keepsake for her first baby.

Promising's the easy and quick part....More......

Deciding what to do, making a gazillion sketches, being enamored of the latest when done, but somehow dissatisfied the day after, going through the cycle again and again, finding the perfect frame, having to reduce the design even more because the aperture is quite small, and so it went for months.

Thank goodness a baby is in gestation for 9 months because, I swear, that's almost as long as it took me to do this project, as little as it is (the diameter is no more than about 3 inches across).

I started out with something much more elaborate and flowery, though shied away from designs too baby-ish in nature...I wanted this to be a keepsake she could keep out and enjoy forever (nothing pretentious about me, nope! nope!). Settled on a monogram: GM.

The small space available for the stitching helped me focus on making the design ever more clean, especially since I wanted a good balance between the more elaborate frame and it. (Keep the frame/final form in mind when designing your projects!)

The mom and baby (Hi! I. and G.!) are coming into the office, tomorrow, to say "hello," so I finally can spill the beans.

That's what I've been up to, amidst this whirlwind of work.

How about you?