Witching You A Happy Halloween

Greetings Ghoulfriends~

Are you all ready for little trick or treaters? Only one more day til the hordes ascend your doorstep!

I have a little seasonal witchery-stitchery to share with you today! This is the very last of my Swap-bot swaps for the season. As much as I love them, I gots to get to work on "C" gifts... I can't bring myself to say the word just yet, but y'all know what I mean...

Do you guys remember the Pin Up Swap I did a while back? (refresher link here) That was a good bit of fun, so when I saw that Snifferooski was hosting a Round 2, I signed up straight away. Seeing as how the send to date was coming close to Halloween, I knew immediately that I wanted to do a witch. A sexy, pin up witch, meow!

I loved seeing all the pin up girls that were swapped during the first round, and there was one that I was especially smitten with. It was given to Katy at Sew Lovely Embroidery and it was made by Carrie, who makes LOTS of cute stuff, and is one heck of an embroideress! You can see her Flickr Photostream here, and her blog here. I mean seriously, look at the detail! It's amazing! Very inspiring indeed, so I set off looking for the perfect witch to stitch!

As luck would have it... guess who my "send to" partner was for this swap? That's right, Carrie!! Ack, the pressure was on! This had to be good, after all, it was her piece that inspired mine - in a round about way.

My witch had to have stockings, not the orange & black striped kind (which are remarkable similar to those on my feet right this very instant), she needed some va-va-va-voom stockings!

Let's get to it, shall we?

Firstly, I gave her some seriously hot shoes, then I added the stockings. I used sheer ribbon.

Stitched down, then carefully snipped away with very sharp, very pointy scissors.

Next, I did the broom.

I padded the broom with a lot of different length stitches to get it to look like a real straw broom.

Moving on to her dress...

I cut the dress shape from velvet ribbon and stitched down. I love the result, but I'd use a different fabric next time. Velvet sheds so much once it's cut into that it almost melts away at the edges. It had me nervous, the piece of ribbon that comprised the dress was so small it wouldn't have taken much for it to shed enough around the edges to loose its shape.

Then I started her hair

I used two colors of brown, a light and a dark. I started with the light, the "highlights", then filled in all over the place with tiny stem stitches, two strands of floss.

Seems to me that I remember the hair taking a looong time.

Lastly I stitched on her hat and the bright swath of orange under the brim of that pointy hat. And lastly, I stitched her face.

Oy-vey, that face! Sure it looks nice now. What you don't see is the 3 or 4 times I snipped it out, blotted the water pen off of the fabric, let it dry, then tried again. These two little eyes, a nose and lips took an entire evening... ugh. Faces aren't my strong suit.

Almost ready to ship!  But first, I needed to finish the back.

I stitched my name, and the year on the back of some left over black fabric.

After carefully removing the extra fabric from the hoop (with an Exacto knife), I hot glued orange ribbon down over the back of the hoop.

I added some ribbon to hang the piece from, and viola!

She's ready to fly away to her new home in Oregon.

Carrie sent me a very sweet email when she received it. Apparently her boss thought it ought to become an "office" decoration, even had the perfect spot to hang her so "everyone could enjoy it" but Carrie is fast on her feet, and she snatched this little witch up and took her home... good for you, Carrie!! I would have too!

Carrie was also, very sweet and patient about getting her piece. I'm embarrassed to say that I was shockingly late on getting this piece in the mail... like almost 3 weeks late. (Eee-gads, talk about scary!)

So there you are my friends, a sexy, Pin Up, witchy-pooh!

Have you guys done any Halloween or fall sewing or embroidery? This is the time that weather cools down and I feel more like sitting down and stitching... good times!

Wishing you all 

A VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

oxo,

Lisa