Welcome


Welcome to my blog. You can read about my adventures in different types of needlework, and I also offer some free
cross stitch patterns. Please, come back often. :)

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PLEASE NOTE:


PLEASE, NOTE: The designs on this site are copyrighted to Agnes Palko. They are for your personal use only. They may not be distributed or reproduced without permission.
If you wish to use my patterns to stitch for charity, please, let me know.

25/02/2013

Irish at heart - St. Patrick's is coming


I have just come up with a new St. Patrick's day pattern.

I went to Ireland twice, in 1992 and 1993, if I remember well. I worked as an interpreter for some delegations. It is such a wonderful country, I fell in love, and have been in love with it Her ever since. :)

So it is only natural that I try to celebrate March 17th.

Celebrate with me! Happy stitching!




Edit:

If you are interested in St. Patrick's Day patterns, why not take a look at my other freebies here, here and here?

24/02/2013

Alphabet biscornu

I have designed a little alphabet square that I am planning to stitch for a biscornu. Of course, it can be used for other things, such as a bookcover, a top for a box etc.

I hope you like it. :)

Happy stitching.




Click on picture for a downloadable pdf.

20/02/2013

Craft Show in Stockholm and an Easter freebie cross stitch pattern

Warning: lots of photos today :D :D


Last Saturday I went to Stockholm to visit Syfestivalen - which is, although it is modestly called a "sewing festival" - the biggest craft event in Sweden. There was everything: sewing machines, lots and lots of yarn, scrapbooking, jewellery-making etc. However, there wasn´t too much embroidery, only at a few stands and those only had a limited range of patterns.
Anyway, I cannot say I was disappointed, I was there at 11 a.m. and came out at 4.30 - just because I was too tired.

Here are a few photos of the show:


This was the queue before entering.


The crowd.



Some embroidery...



...and some lovely yarn. In Sweden there is a huge variety of wool and knitting seems to be the most popular craft.



I took part in different workshops. I wanted to try some sewing machines, so I went to the Janome stand where they had a workshop making this cute little bag. It is covered with plastic. I think they wanted to make a point how well the machine copes with all kinds of materials - and it certainly did. Because of the plastic it is difficult to see that there is some lovely machine embroidery on the fabric. They had a clever little tool with a pin that held the fabric in one place and as I was sewing, the fabric rotated around the pin, thus sewing a perfect circle using decorative stitches. It was great fun.



Later I tried other machines, too: a Brother and a Pfaff.

I wanted to learn some new embroidery. I checked out Bunka Broderi first. Here we were taught how to work with a tool that looked like a mini punchneedle and some polyester thread - it is supposed to have come from Japan. I made this Easter egg. It was fun but I don´t think I want to do this again - I am not a big fan of polyester :D



I also visited Skapande Broderi, and they were doing some tulle embroidery. Here is my work: a portrait in the style of Picasso - I think I do like this :)



Finally, I also learnt a crochet stitch that looks similar to nålbildning (needle binding?). I have always wanted to learn nålbindning, and I will, sooner or later, but this crochet was really easy, too. I don´t have a photo, unfortunately but will do some of this crochet later and then will take photos.


I did some shopping. I didn´t have much money, so I couldn´t buy the most beautiful yarns, but I enjoyed drooling over them, anyway LOL. I did find some affordable yarn, though, that I really loved: some 100 % silk, and some 100 % wool. Guess which is softer? Yes, the wool. The silk actually feels a bit coarse-ish. Who would have thought?



The wool is on the left, in skeins, the silk is on the right, in balls. Both are off-white.

The brown and red smaller skeins are plant-dyed wool embroidery thread, a gift for a friend.

In the back you can also see my lovely new knitting needles from KnitPro. I saw these in the knitting cafe where I sometimes go, and was so happy to find them here. The cables and the needles are interchangeable, and the cables don´t twist. Here is a closer picture:



I have already tried knitting with them, so here is a small sample of the silk yarn. I tried different stitches and different size needles. The smallest looks the best, but I doubt I will have that much patience to knit with those :D :D




As I came home, I was so excited about all the lovely sewing machines I saw and tried, that I spent hours browsing the webshops. I have been planning to buy one for long. So on Sunday night I took a deep breath and plunged in: bought one. And I decided to go for a really good one: a Pfaff Ambition. Tuesday afternoon it was already here. Oh, I am so happy. It has so many functions, it will take me ages to learn everything - but we have already become friends. :)



To practice, I decided to make a holder for my circular knitting needles - since I was thinking of twisting cables :D.
So I made this - it is really simple, two squares sewn together, with horizontal lines sewn all the way across, creating tubes for the cables. It was good practice for starting and ending the sewing, since it works a bit differently from what I was used to.



I also started to sew a peasant blouse for myself but got a bit tired so it is not done yet.


And now, for my newest cross stitch pattern. I am already thinking of spring, so I came up with a little easter pattern. I made two versions in different colour schemes. I hope lots of people will like it.





Happy stitching, everyone.



13/02/2013

Granny square cross stitched

Granny squares are everywhere these days. So I thought why not stitch them, too.
I imagined a granny in soft colours - but you can change the them to more vibrant ones, feel free to experiment. You can also make this smaller by simply leaving out one or two "rounds".

Could be used as a biscornu, perhaps in different colours on the two sides.

Happy crochet-stitching. :)



Click on the picture for the downloadable pdf.

10/02/2013

Small Valentines




Hello, everyone,

I haven´t been blogging for a while. Life has just been busy... well, not much busier than usual, but I am having a little cold and it makes me so tired every day. You know, the type when you have no high temperature, you are able to work, but you feel sick all day, having headaches and drop down by the time you are home from work. And it is just not getting any better. :(

Anyway, I have been playing around with MacStitch - my new cross stitch program. To be honest, I am not very happy with it. It has lots of nice features, I just miss the things I was so used to in my old PCStitch. Like the drag-and-drop function. Anyway, I am sure I will be all right with this after a bit of more practice.

Another strange thing is, it doesn´t let you save in jpg format - only a small, thumbnail version. So I had to learn how to publish pdfs on the blog. Let´s see if it works. :) I am using the thumbnail jpg files to link to the pdfs but they look a bit strange, I am sorry about it, will try to fix this for next time.


Some small Valentine Day´s patterns - click on the picture to go to the pdf and download it.






Oh, and I have bought a huge pile of wonderful books again - I will be back with some photos soon.

Until then, please, let me know how you like this new way of posting patterns. Does it work for you?

Happy stitching
Agi