The mailing deadline for the Kitty Mini Quilt Swap is almost here (Oct. 14th!), but I felt like I needed to make one more treat for my partner. 

Lately, my own cat, Batman, has been extra obnoxious, even for him. His new favorite thing to do is treat my Wacom tablet like his personal seat cushion...while I'm trying to use it. There's also his usual shtick, like "yodeling" as loudly as possible in the hallway at all hours of the night, eating any plant he can get his mouth on (and subsequently puking it up), and bullying our other cat, Chi, for her dinner in addition to his own. 

As my husband I discussed what a jerk Batman is (who we love with all our hearts for some mysterious reason), I found myself pondering every cat I've ever encountered. And guess what? They're all assholes and one point or another! I figured my partner has thought her cat is an asshole at least once. Actually...probably every cat owner has. Thus, this cute embroidery project was born!

I used some Alexander Henry fabric from my stash, strategically placing the cat with the "deal with it" sunglasses at the top. I used a basic back stitch for the entire piece. I finished my piece using this tutorial, substituting the felt for a piece of batting. 

So many of you on Instagram seemed to get a kick out it, so I wanted to share this simple pattern with you guys! 

In case you don't have cute kitty print fabric, I added a sweet (and smug) cat face to the pattern so you can stitch your own. You can down the PDF pattern here. For a 6" embroidery hoop, print at 100% scale. Happy stitching!

How to Make Cross Stitch Patterns from Pixel Sprites

A couple days before spring break during my freshman year of college (back in 2010), I was lucky enough to be diagnosed with Mononucleosis (AKA "mono"). I say lucky because while it seemed crappy at the time, I found a fun hobby to help me pass a week in couch-locked purgatory: cross stitching!

I had been collecting cute animated pixel sprites from the Korean social media site Cyworld, and they seemed like the perfect designs to use for some cross stitch patterns. In honor of the #DisneyQuiltSwap2015 on IG, here are a few Disney-themed sprites I used. As you can see, they're animated, so I used Photoshop to select the specific frame I wanted to stitch, then saved a copy without any animation, shown below.

I use KG-Chart LE to make all my cross stitch patterns. It's available to download for free and is incredibly easy to use. The PDF user guide can be downloaded here (although I've never needed it). Click File > Import and select your sprite. Note: If you have an animated sprite, KG-Chart LE will just use the first frame by default. For this example, I'll use the cute Winnie the Pooh eating his pot of honey.

When converting a sprite to a pattern, the key is to make sure that 1 pixel = 1 stitch. Select "Aida" or "Linen" for which cloth you plan to use. I use Aida. "Th. Count" is where you should enter your how many stitches per inch or cm you plan on using. Now, check the dimensions of your sprite. If you use Windows, you can find this info by selecting the sprite file. The dimensions will be listed in the info panel, illustrated below. In KG-Chart LE, input these dimensions as your under "Chart Size" for Width (ct) and Height (ct). That tells the program to treat each pixel like a single stitch. 

If you select DMC for "Palette," KG-Chart LE will tell you exactly what colors of DMC floss you will need. In the "Color" field, enter approximately how many colors you will want to limit your pattern to. Hit OK!

Now you'll see something like this. The program uses a symbol key to help tell your colors apart from one another. You can turn on or off by clicking the "Show Mark" button at the top. The "Selected" panel on the right will show you the colors your pattern uses, including the DMC code and number of stitches you will be making with that color. Sometimes I'll further reduce the number of colors I need by repainting them with the "Set Pixel" tool (highlighted in the image below). 

You could also use these patterns for a pixel quilt pattern! 

Stitch Your Cares Away

In the past two weeks, I've been making an effort to get back to my roots by drawing more. My free time has been all but consumed by sewing projects, and I realized it had been a while since I put a pencil to paper. The result was this cute sketch I came up with on Friday evening. I hear a lot of quilters say that sewing is like therapy for them, and I can't disagree.

On Saturday, the sketch evolved into a vector illustration:

And by Saturday evening I had even embroidered it!

Seeing the evolution of the design is always exciting for me. I went ahead and turned this piece of wisdom into a hand embroidery pattern, which is now available in my Craftsy shop for $2. Click here to check it out!

Also available for sale is my Treasure Box Quilt pattern! It's only $5 and includes lots of visual instructions. 

Mendocino Mermaid Embroidery

Since the current seasons of Vikings and Hannibal wrapped up, my husband and I have started watching American Horror Story to fill in the void. Unfortunately I'm a bad TV-watcher who can't sit still for more than five minutes. My mother thought I would outgrow my fidgitiness, but I really think I'm beyond help at this point.

Having no quilts to bind or fabric to iron, and all of AHS season 2 ahead of us, I opted to take on another embroidery project. I wanted to do something by Heather Ross after I saw Aneela Hoey's embroidered Mendocino mermaid on Pinterest. Then I figured, why not do a different Mendocino mermaid? 

tracing the mermaid

To make the pattern, I simply traced an image of the mermaid in Adobe Illustrator, printed out the line art, and traced it onto my fabric with a water soluble marker. Stitching this beauty was quite a relaxing experience!  

mermaid in progress

After I get a few more projects cross off my to-do list, I think I might use some of my Mendocino scraps to turn this into a nice wall hanging for my someday sewing room. Sigh, but right now buying a house seems as realistic as a mermaid.

The Cat's Pajamas

When I got really hardcore into sewing a couple years ago, I dabbled a bit in hand embroidery. I learned it mostly for the purposes of my etsy shop where I was selling handmade My Little Pony hats. I started embroidering each pony's cutie mark on the ear flaps which was a cute touch. When I stopped selling hats due to lack of time (I was finishing up my junior year of college), my interest in embroidery also came to a halt. 

This past week, I picked my embroidery floss back up to make this little guy! The original artwork is by Corrine Alexandra. I plan on sewing a cute border to it and making a wall hanging...once I find some nice fabric to match.

To make it, I printed out this image and traced it onto my fabric with a water-soluble marker, which worked out pretty well.