Elephants & Spiders

Ages ago I attended a Kantha class, my samples of printed fabric lay untouched in a box. Until I realised that the elephant would be a great thank you card for my friends. So I started stitching.
I had a great idea to outline the elephant in a golden thread. This thread split, hurt my fingers and generally was a pain in the arse! Remind me to never sew anything in gold again!
Still feeling in a creative mood (but with sore fingers!) I decided to attempt free motion embroidery. Inspired by my current reading The encyclopedia of Machine Embroidery by Val Holmes. I had been putting this off, as I knew if meant getting out my sewing machine manual! Surprisingly it was super easy to switch my machine to free motion embroidery, all I had to do was take off the foot & put a cover plate on the feed dog. I used felt, so that I didn't have to use an embroidery hoop to stretch the fabric. Firstly an ode to this blog...
The blue at the start of 'gets' is the bobbin thread coming through - shhhh! Then getting excited by learning to write with the sewing machine, I decided to write the title of this song by Billie Jo Spears.

I like the spidery stitching! Great fun to do, just mind your fingers on the exposed needle!