Embroidery complete! A pillowcase

Behold, a craft that is not knitting! I finished embroidering this pillowcase over the weekend, and while it's not perfect, I'm pretty proud of it.

Let's go back to the beginning: my pillowcase. For years I had my own special pillowcase, a vintage one with a crocheted edging. I think my mum gave it to me when I was a student. We'd moved house a few times in my teenaged years, plus I was going back and forth to university, and as a wise person once said, when you move around a lot, home isn't a place, it's things. My pillowcase was part of 'home'. It was made of thick-yet-soft cotton, and I loved wondering who had made the edging, whether she'd crocheted just this piece or a whole set of bedlinen, and how it ended up on my bed. I loved my pillowcase to bits. Literally. Over the years it got more and more worn in the centre, and Smello Kitty pulled a few tiny holes in it. Then one day I was popping it back on the pillow after washing and rrrrrip! Massive, irreperable, right-angled tear across the middle. I carefully unpicked the crochet edging, ready to put it on a replacement pillowcase.

Wilkos were selling pure cotton pillowcases so I bought a pack. To be honest, they were nowhere near as thick and soft as my original pillowcase. If I hadn't known they were pure cotton, I would have assumed they were polycotton. Then I discovered they were wider than the crochet was long! What to do? I didn't want my poor strip of crochet looking lost in the middle of the edge, so I decided to put it aside until I could make a case that fitted it, from a better-quality cotton at that. That left me with two plain, white Wilkos pillowcases. I decided to embroider one using one of the haul of vintage transfers I bought from Claire at Eternal Magpie. It might not be my pillowcase, but I could still make myself something special – something for the cat to scrag whenever she wants to wake me up!

Transfer... transferred!

I wasn't sure the transfer would still work, but ironed clearly onto the cotton. I used regular embroidery thread to work the design. For someone who doesn't do much embroidery, I sure had a lot of colours to choose from! Most of my threads are discontinued colours that I picked up when the craft department at work had a clear-out; they couldn't commission designs using them but they were fine for people like me who like experimenting. As my bedroom is blue, I wanted to work plenty of flowers in blue, then picked the other colours to work alongside that. The finished work doesn't feel particularly blue or cool toned, but it is pretty so I can live with that.

Choosing colours

I worked all the petals and flower centres in satin stitch, and the stems in stem stitch. Those are both fairly simple stitches and ideal for these small areas. I'm not great at embroidery and my satin stitch is a bit wobbly at the edges in places, but overall I'm pleased with the result. Because the cotton fabric of the pillowcases isn't as substantial as I'd like, I stitched every single petal separately, without carrying the thread from one petal to another. I didn't want threads at the back showing through.

I'm still plugging away at my Fair Isle cardigan, but this little project has made a nice break from knitting. I had a few larger embroidery projects in mind, but I think I'll do a couple more small things first as I really need to practice my stitching techniques. So much vintage embroidery gets vandalised nowadays that it feels good to be creating something new.

A whole bundle of goodies from Kate-Em

On which note, look at what I won in Kate-Em's giveaway! Had I been short of crafting inspiration, this little lot would've perked me up. Some great knitting patterns (I do like those hats), and a copy of Needlewoman and Needlecraft. I have a couple of older issues of that. I love my Stitchcrafts, but Needlewoman and Needlecraft always seems the slightly more serious publication. Stitchcraft had practicality in mind; you were making things you could use when you followed Stitchcraft, but Needlewoman and Needlecraft was all about the ART. Serious stitching for people who knew what they were doing. (Not me, then.) As further inspiration, there's a vintage traycloth in the bundle, and Kate-Em included a gorgeous little sleep mask. I genuinely needed one of those, as my flimsy bedroom curtains let in the sunlight. Not a problem in winter, but in summer I wake up at 4am and usually resort to either wrapping my hair over my eyes or putting my head under the pillow. Now I can blot out the sun in a much more elegant way. Thank you very much, Kate-Em!