Free Designs for Embroidery from The Antique Pattern Library

These lovely designs are from the book The Drew Portfolio in the Antique Pattern Library

For fabric painting, epoxy painting, stump work

Spanish Black work

IDEAL FOR LAID WORK

For Applique and Embellishment with Beads etc.

The entire book -  about 18 pages is filled with such designs.

There are no stitch descriptions - all the better. It would be interesting to see how different people interpret these designs. 

Anyone out there ready for the challenge?

Here's what you should do.

1. Choose any one of the 4 designs above - you may choose more than 1 design if you have the time for it.
2. While the basic design should be retained,  slight variations are allowed.
3. Use it to design an accessory - say cushion cover, a runner, a bag, a purse...
4. You can use anything for embellishing the embroidery - ribbons, beads, buttons, shells...
5. You have a month - the challenge ends on 3rd March.
6. You can blog the steps involved and the decision making process if you wish.

The challenge will be open even if there is going to be only 1 participant.

If you want to take it up, leave a comment .

This is not a competition - as I've already mentioned, it would be interesting to see all the variations diffferent people come up with.

DMC Motifs for Embroidery Vth Series is a book you'll find on 'Free Domain' - meaning - you can download it for free.
This post is a brief review of this lovely book.
Before I procede, please understand that though these books are copyright freed, they come from the private collection of generous people who have taken the time to painstaking scan and edit and digitize these books. The aim of The Antique Pattern Library is to make these books freely available so the wonderful art of needlework does not die.
What I am trying to say here is don't be crude enough to download and sell these on e-bay etc or pass them off as your own designs. It has happened before and will happen again... just let it not be you who is doing it.

Here are a few designs from the book - to help you decide if or not you want to download it.

As you can see, the designs are simple but the stitches employed gives them an exotic look.

What you will find:
1. A description of all the stitches used with diagrams.
2. 15 colour plates
3. The designs for tracing

The design on the left is my favourite - I just can't stop appreciating how the simple can also be exotic

Free Kutchwork Motifs

Heart Series II

These are my own designs.
You are welcome to use or share these designs.
But please don't sell them or copy and paste them on your site - if you copy and paste please mention where you found them.
Please do not redraw them and pass them off as your own either.
That's what put me off sharing for nearly 2 years.

Free Kutchwork Morifs

HEART SERIES I
Here are a couple of free Kutch motifs.
While you are at it, take a look at this

These designs are my own.
You may use or share them.
But please don't sell them.
Please do not copy and paste on your site - if you do please mention where you found them.
Please do not redraw them and pass them off as your own either.
That's what put me off sharing for nearly 2 years.

Online Tatting Classes - Free

Search Amazon.com for tatting books

Georgia Seitz's Online Tatting Class has been around since 2004.

Its a credit to Georgia and her team that the classes are still around.

If you are an absolute beginner, don't sweat - your classes are this way.

You'll find links to copyright freed tatting books - the terms/abbreviations used in these books however are not always the terms/abbreviations currently in use. But with pictures of projects, deciphering these shouldn't be difficult.

The class actually meets once a week - Online of course!
All you need is enthusiasm, tatting shuttles and thread - the classes are free.

Crochet Edging on Kurtha

Another one of my  kutras got a new look with this crochet edging and the stones sewed onto the white petals.

Right now I am working on a Delta Crochet turorial. The flowers in this edging somewhat resemble the flowers in Delta Crochet - that's what made me want to try out this pattern in the first place - and I just happened to have yarn of almost the same shade...

I found it in the book, "CROCHETED EDGINGS & INSERTIONS" downloaded from Antique pattern library. There are plenty of other lovely edgings in the book. Do pop over and take a peek.  Here's a picture of the edging and the instructions.  You'll find that it involves fastening off every time you complete the first row.

I have my own instructions for this pattern.
Chain 9
Row 1: 1 dc into the 2nd chain from hook. 1 dc into each of the next 7 dc, 1 ch Turn.
Row 2: 8 dc into each of the 8 dc below, 3 ch, turn
Row 3: 2 tr cluster into the same space as 3 ch, 3 tr cluster into the last dc, 3 ch turn.
Row 4: 2 tr cluster in the same space as 3 chains, 7 chains join to the base of the 2nd cluster made, 3 dc, 3 ch, 2 dc, 3 ch, 2 dc, 3 ch, 3 dc into the 7 chain space, 8 ch, 3 tr cluster into the same space as theprevious cluster, 1 ch turn.
Row 5: 1 dc into each of 8 ch below, 1 ch turn.
Row 6 – 7: 1 dc into each of the 8 dc below, 1 ch turn
Rep from row 2 for the required length.
Heading: Join yarn to 1st dc of row 1, 1 dc into next stitch, *chain 7, 1 dc in each of the next 4 stitches rep from *

This is the rough copy of my instructions written as I was working the edging. There are likely to be mistakes, which I'll correct as I work the pattern once again. when I do that I'll as edit these instructions.
In the meantime, please feel free to point out any mistakes in the instructions.

ICICI Bank- Updating your Address and Mobile Numbers

Moving lock, stock & barrel from State to State is no longer a rarity. This undoubtedly poses a lot of hassles - what with the packing moving, change of schools, change of address, paying for utilities, closing bank accounts...

The list is endless.

ICICI  bank claims that banking with them is hassle free for the constantly moving client.

Is it really?

Here are a few problems I faced.

CASE I

1. My son had a young star account with ICICI Trichy - opened when he was 15yrs old.  He was in class X then. When he completed his class XII, we moved to Trivandrum in Kerala. My son joined Amrita School of Engineering Coimbatore.  I updated our change of address online. 
2. In Sep  my son turned 18 and there was a letter from the bank asking him to go to the nearest bank at the earliest with proof of id and age and upgrade his account.
3. Please note that nowhere in the letter was there any mention of a deadline. Since he was in hostel we could not do anything about it immediately. A week or so later, my son called me at work to tell me that he needed cash immediately to pay for purchases he had made  that his debit card had been blocked. I asked him to borrow some money from his classmates and make the payment. Luckily he had an account with Dhanalakshmi bank. I deposited some money that weekend in his Dhanalaxhmi account- I could not get a weekday off as I was working in a school then. He could repay his classmates only during the weekend. Needless to say, it was a very embarassing situation for him!
4. When he came home for his Semester vacation in Dec we went to the ICICI branch in Trivandrum and stated our case. I am sorry to say that nobody there knew what to do.  After 3-4 fruitless visits to the bank, they finally asked us to open a fresh account and take up the issue with the branch at which the account was originally opened.
5. We did go there during his next vacation and the people there did not know what to do either.  They asked us to take up the issue with customer care.  Anyone who has approached customer care with a real problem would know what an absolute nightmare that is! Finally after running from pillar to post for nearly a year, we had to approach a relative working with ICICI bank. He had to go there personally.   Finally they suggested that we close the account and withdraw the cash.
6. SO MUCH FOR HASSLE FREE BANKING!

CASE II

1.  After 3 years in Trivandrum, my husband was transferred to Kurnool in A.P.  As I had updated the mobile numbers and address online before, I did the same once again. The options are there - under the view/change contact details - the picture above.

2.  Notice that you can't view your mobile number so you have no way of knowing whether it has been updated or not. I updated my new mobile number on this page.  After a few days when I went to the funds transfer page to add a payee, I found that the last 4 digits listed were those of my old mobile number!

You don't know that if your mobile number has been updated, you will get an SMS - unless it is mentioned somewhere that you will.

It never occurred to me to view the mobile banking tab.

 Hey, I am trying to change my contact details here!

Now view this - the page that opens under the mobile banking tab.

3.  I just happened to click on mobile banking and got the information above. Why then, the view/change contact information in the first place?

4.  Now, which tab do you think a busy lay person would open when he/she wants to change his mobile number?

The view/change contact details or the mobile banking tab?

5.  Don't ever make the mistake of applying for internet banking and giving the bank your new address at the same time. The password would naturally be sent to your old address as it would probably take about 7 working days to update your address.  And they talk about phising!!! 


Opt for getting the net banking password in person unless you are absolutely sure your address has been updated.

6. Then again, why is there no option in the view/change contact details for a new address? - not that the tab is of much use anyway.

7. One last word of caution, if you are applying for a new debit card, make sure you have sufficient cash with you first - or you'll find yourself at a departmental store counter unable to pay for your purchases and the clerk announcing " the payment was declined, maybe you don't have sufficient cash balance"!!! 


(Worse still, imagine that its finally your turn at the railway ticket counter and your card payment is declined...)

8. I faced this embarassment  just last week.  How was I supposed to know that if I apply for a new card my old one will be disabled while processing? You can always use your checkbook to withdraw cash of course.

9. I assumed -as I am sure that anybody else would - unless told otherwise - that on receiving my new card I would either have to surrender my old card to the bank or destroy it myself - that until then my old card would be valid.

10. On changing PIN -
you can change PIN only after you use the card first.
So don't be baffled if on receiving your new ATM card, you go to the ATM to change you PIN and your PIN change is not successful.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS POST:

• when you receive a letter stating at the earliest, it means immediately.
• It is less of a hassle and saves a lot of time to go directly to the bank with change of contact information.
• If you have to give a change of address and apply for net banking, first go directly to the bank with your new address, wait for about 10 days, go back to the bank to check that your address has been updated (there does not seem to be any way to do it online).  Safer to wait until you get a communication from the bank by post at the new address. 

AND THEY CALL THIS NET BANKING!!!


Does the bank really  believe that people read all the literature they are given when they open an account.
Does all that fine print you can only read with a magnifying lens even contain any information a customer really needs?

Re-Sounding R

Mispronouncing 'R' is almost always the norm that most of us don't even know that we are doing it.

One English Language teaching school in Bangalore used to tell its teachers, "The first step is to teach your students when to drop the R"

Here in India, with its diversity in culture and language, you find the same diversity in the pronunciation too.

Then again, there is all that confusion between American & British pronunciations!

These days, I can hardly speak English without one of my kids correcting my pronunciation - not that I always pronounce words correctly!

Now, we have a rule. We let our Chamber's dictionary be the judge.

This interesting Squidoo lens is all about the letter 'R'.

Reaction to this is one of the 2

1. All said and done, language is for communication - if you can do that without the hassle of having to remember all those rules ... then what the heck!
2. Wow! No matter how much you know, there is still a lot lot more that you don't.

Decide for yourself whether you need to re-sound your 'R's.

Embroidery on Kurtha

The machine embroidery around the neck was already there when I bought the kurta.

I added the flower shaped sequins.

I used the same colours in the machine embroidery around to neck to embellish the sleeves.

The stitches used - herringbone and lazy daisy (detached chain) with a white sleeve bead on the straight stitch that anchors down the detached chain.

This is a close-up of a corner of the lower edge of the kurta.

Panagrams?

Panagrams are sentences that use all the letters in the alphabet atleast once. They are also called holoalphabetic sentences.

I suppose everyone who ever attended typewriting classes would be familiar with the famous sentence

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
- the author of this famous sentence is Nevin Nollop.

Ella Minnow Pea is a novel based on this on this panagram promises to be book of
the P.G Wodehouse cadre.

Notice that the title "Ella Minnow Pea" sounds like LMNOP!

You can look up panagram here

For wordplay freaks, Amazing English has more fun on offer

Ideas for Designs

This wonderful blog, Print And Pattern as the name implies is full of wall paper prints and designs on coffee mugs.

The designs I've posted below are just a 10th of what was posted in Dec!

Do pop over and treat your eyes to a well deserved feast!

Most of the designs  in Print and Pattern would lend themselves well to Embroidery, Applique, Patchwork and Painting.

Here are a few of my favourites -

 - a beautiful design that can be used for applique on a cushion. The colour combination too is pleasing.



The 2nd picture too screams Applique but Embroidery too would work.

- very interesting combination of - should I call them textures?

I am a big fan of the monochromatic color scheme.

It would be interesting trying to reproduce this.

- the closed eyes and the upward tilt of the neck lend an endearingly haughty , lofty expression to the birds in the next 3 pictures.

Embellished with typical ethnic stitches, they'd make an interesting series.

Hmm... let me see... maybe on my sofa cushions.

One more project on my steadily growing to do pile...

- cute adorable owls  on baby clothes?
painted appliqued or embroidered?

If you liked this post, Print and Pattern is the spot to be.