Our first semi-automatic chart program

I've got a little information for you today on a semi-automatic program for the Six-Fat Men chart set from Lizzie*Kate.  I currently have 2 of the 3 designs released so far on the website, one was out of stock with my supplier and 3 are yet to be released.

These charts have been designed so that they can be stitched alone or together to make up a larger picture, using the border on the Lizzie*Kate website.

This semi-automatic program is for those people that would like the whole set of six designs.  It's semi-automatic as I will send PayPal invoices when I have all six in stock, which you will then need to pay.  The advantage to you is that you know I will have your charts in stock so you won't risk me being sold out of any you need.  Please only sign up if you definitely want the charts.

There are two options for this, chart only or chart plus hand dyed fabric

I anticipate that the full set of 6 charts will be in the region of £17.00 when I have them, that's dependant slightly on the exchange rate, it won't be more than £17.50 (plus our standard p&p).

If you would like the charts plus the hand-dyed fabric.  The stitch count is 182 x 147, which equates to a piece of fabric (28 count evenweave or 14 count) of 19" x 16.5", this gives a 3" margin around the stitching for making up.  This works out in price to approximately £26.60, for both the chart and fabric together (final price might vary slightly from the exchange rate), that is a saving of 10% on the separate prices of the fabric plus the charts (the fabric would be £12.55 on its own).  Don't forget to add our standard p&p to this price.  Different counts and types of fabric are available and the 10% off will still apply.  At the bottom of the sign up message for this option please add the colour fabric and the fabric type and count you would like.  The Crafty Kitten recommended fabric is sunset sky.

The links to sign up for this can be found here

Lots of new charts

Well as promised I've managed to get the new charts up on the website.  There were quite a few of them and they can all be found in the charts category.  The charts are either split into theme or by designer.  The designers with separate sections are Lizzie*Kate, Sweetheart Tree, and Ink Circles.  I have also added sections for dragons, Halloween, animals and hardanger. 

The charts are from a mixture of designers and themes and across several price points.  Many of them have chart plus fabric discount offers on them.  Where I've paired a chart with a hand dyed fabric you can get 10% off the price when you purchase both together, you can also chose whether to go with the colour I've suggested (if there is one) or with a different colour of your own choice.

Shown are a selection of my personal favourites, it was hard to get it down to three!

We have an App in the Apple App store!

It's Friday, and looking to be a very wet weekend in the UK.  I do however have something new for any of you that have an iPhone, iPad, or iTouch to play with.  A while ago I was looking for an app for my phone that would calculate fabric sizes for stitched designs.  I couldn't find one available so I had a chat with the lovely guys at Westward IT, who built me one.  It's called Crafty Fabric and will work out the sized piece of fabric you need.  All you have to do is give the app the fabric count, size margin you want and the stitch count and select if you want to stitch over one or two threads of fabric and it will tell you how big a piece of fabric you need.  There are full details on the website, including the App store download links, here.

You might also notice that I've been playing about with the home page for the shop a little, I'm gradually in the background moving fabrics into colour groups so they are easier to browse.  It's going to take a while to do, but watch this space!

Have a great weekend and I hope you get time to stitch.

A lovely mock up

It's another cold wet day here in the UK, definitely stitching weather as it's really feeling autumnal rather than late summer!

There are still a few of the small grab bags left, if you want one let me know.  The 5"x8" is the absolute minimum size cut in any of the bags, most of the pieces are quite a bit larger.  These small bags will be great for ornaments as Christmas is approaching far too rapidly.

I've got a really lovely mock up to share today, this one was sent to me by Johanna earlier.  The design is Chatelaines Small Hamam Oasis, the background is bonfire smoke.  I can't wait to see this one actually stitched on the fabric, I think it's going to look totally stunning.

A finish on Septembers featured colour

I finished the beading Mirabilia's Trick or Treat last night, I'm just on my way to update the picture in the featured fabric advert on the Crafty Kitten homepage but I popped in here quickly first to share the picture with you.  I'm really pleased with how this one turned out, the fabric works wonderfully with the design (ignore the bit of fluff in the top corner!). 

On a shop related note, there are still a few of the small grab bags in stock if you wanted one.

A very quick grab bag update

Only the small cut bags are left, the others have sold out really quickly.  These small cut bags are available in both aida, and linen/evenweave options.  They include opalescent fabrics as well as normal fabrics in a mix of counts.  The absolute smallest cut in any of the bags is 5"x8" most of the cuts are larger, some exceeding the 9"x12" size in the bags that have sold out. 

I think these small cut bags are a great buy, they are all large enough for smaller designs such as the small magazine charts, small Lizzie Kate designs such as flip-its, cards and ornaments.  They're also good for adding to your stash with a range of different colours and fabrics.

Have a great evening stitching.

Something to brighten up a wet miserable September day

I hope the weather is better where you are than it is here in North Devon.  It's a cold wet and windy day here, it feels more like late October outside.  Still it's an excuse to dig my boots out and start wearing them again, I went out in sandals earlier and regretted it!

The other good thing is of course that it's nice weather to curl up inside evenings and stitch.  I have been doing quite a lot of that in the last few weeks and as a consequence I should finish beading my Mirabilia Trick or Treat fairy this evening.  There will be pictures tomorrow, and don't forget the fabric colour for her is on offer on the website for the whole of September.

I have also sent in a chart order, which I'm looking forward to receiving.  As soon as I have it I'll get the charts uploaded to the website (and try not to hold onto any for my stash in the process).  In the end I ordered a mixture of designs from assorted designers, including Ink Circles, Firewing, Lizzie Kate plus several others.  There are a mixture of themes, though I will admit that the order is a little heavy on dragons and Halloween designs.  When it comes and they're all uploaded I'd love some feedback on what I ordered, and what you'd like to see more of (themes and designers).

Now I'll stop rambling and get to the point of this post.  The grab bags are back.  There aren't that many of them.  However, this time there are aida only bags (mixture of counts from 14-22) and evenweave/linen bags.  There are also 3 different size options for the bags 9"x12" (linen/evenweave only), small cuts (card and small picture sizes minimum of 5"x8", though most pieces are larger), and medium cuts (10"x15" minimum, again most are larger).  The second two options include a mix of normal and opalescent fabrics.  This is a selection of some of the fabrics that you'll find in the bags.

Once they're gone it'll be next year before the grab bags make return appearance.  These are a great way to expand your fabric stash more economically.  Enjoy!

What's new in September?

 I have just sent this months newsletters out and decided that now is a really good time to update the blog.  September sees the launch of four new colours including this months ltd ed fabric.  This month the Ltd Ed is a blend of greens and blues with some white peeping through.  It's really pretty and should be versatile enough to work for many different designs.


The other three colours released this month are:

• Goldrush, this is a pretty golden sand colour, which will work well for beach and desert scenes along with other designs that need a fairly soft golden background. 
• Summer Garden, a blend of dark pink and purple.
• Mocha Berries, a browny mauve blend.

This month also sees the launch of a new feature on the website, which will throw a different fabric into the spotlight each month.  The first month the feature fabric is Fall Foliage, this is a blend of golds and brown, which works really well for autumnal and Halloween designs, as well as being a soft enough colour to work with many other themes.  The feature fabric is a special offer that runs for the whole month.  For that month the featured fabric colour is reduced by 10% across all fabric types and counts, which makes it a great time to get hold of it.  Here is the current months colour and a WiP stitched on it of Mirabilias Trick or Treat.












The long awaited grab bags will definitely be back next week, the fabric is sitting in a pretty pile waiting to be bagged up and priced.  There will be at least two different fabric sized bags this time, a card sized bag and a small-medium picture bag (9x12 to around 13 x 18 maybe a bit larger, the pieces are variable).  There are a mixture of aidas, evenweaves and linens of assorted counts, including quite a few pieces of opalescent.  I will sort the bags into aidas and evenweave/linen packs.

Lastly for now, there are a few new pictures up on the Flickr gallery, including Karens beautiful WiP of Chatelaines Christmas Market and Kathy's finished Fushsia Fae from Passione Ricamo.

More than time to update this I think!

The summer is drawing to a close, and it's been a lot longer than I meant it to be since I last updated the blog.  It got a bit neglected in the Spring with moving house, and I never got back into the habit of posting on it again over the summer.  I'm planning on keeping it up to date from now on, so it's a good place to see what's coming soon, and what's new.

Coming soon:

• Septembers Ltd Ed fabric and thread, the fabric will be up on the site on Thursday, the thread will follow a few days later.
• Some new colours, it's been a while since I released anything new into the main colour range and I have a nice pile of fabrics to sort out and decide while are going to become permanent additions to the site.  The first of these, Gold Rush, will launch Thursday.
• Grab bags!  I've been busy dying offcuts to make up some more grab bags.  These will be very limited in number, more details will follow in a couple of days, when I've caught up with the orders from the sale weekend.
• An iPhone fabric calculator app, this one is being submitted to the app store in the next few days.  As soon as it's approved I'll give you the full details.  I'm very excited about this one.

Feedback needed:

• I want to extend the range of charts that are available on the website  to include more that are suitable for use with hand dyed fabrics.  I'm  looking for suggestions for designers you would like to be able to get the charts plus a sized piece of fabric to stitch it on (your choice in colour or a suggested colour), and I will see if I can track them down.  I'm also looking at stocking Rainbow Gallery braids and possibly Mill Hill beads.

Right that's it for tonight, I will be updating this later in the week when the new colours are ready, and getting the past monthly ltd colour page back up to date so you can see the full range of colours that have been released over the last year.

Happy stitching.

A mid month new colour

I know I don't normally release things in the middle of the month, but I have something newish that I didn't want to hold onto until March.  So meet Daybreak.  If the names familiar it's because there is a fabric in the gradients range on the site called Daybreak Gradients.  Daybreak is the more normal hand dyed style of those colours.  I was asked to do a custom dyed piece for Nene Thomas Daybreak from HAED, and I was so pleased with how it turned out I had to release it.  The picture is just the section that would fit on the scanner. 

Gift Vouchers!

I hope everyone is having a good week.  I have a couple of small updates today.  The first is I have added gift vouchers to the website.  They're available in assorted values or you can customise them.  If purchasing them on their own please do it via email so that you don't end up getting charged p&p.  You can find them here.

My other update for today is a WiP picture from Cathy, it is her updated picture of HAEDs Terra Fairy Sprite (Brigid Ashwood).  It's being stitched on 18 count aida in Dawnblush.

I've also got 2 completed work pictures from Donna to share.  The first is stitched from some designs by Maria Diaz in Cross Stitcher, the second is a freebie from Helga Mandyl.  Both have been stitched on Strawberry Sorbet in 27 count Linda.  You can find these pictures and more in the Crafty Kitten Galleries linked off the Crafty Kitten homepage.

Pinch Punch....

First of the month, and that means new colours!

I have just updated the website with February's Ltd ed colour.  This is a pretty blend of pinks and violets.  If you're looking for a background fabric for Rachel Anderson's Lavender Moon from HAED this would be perfect (it's the design I had in mind at the time I was dying it!).


I've also released the neutrals range.  These should work really well for designs with a more vintage feeling, or designs which are difficult to background match.  there are two colours available at the moment, but there will over time be more added to the range.

Oatmeal

Vintage Petal

Finally the Crafty Kitten has a few auctions for UK Cross Stitch magazines up on ebay  You can see them here if you're interested.

I'm plotting!

I'm having a fairly quiet day today, and enjoying plotting next months offers and newsletter.  There will be a new colour range launched in the hand dyed section at the beginning of February.  It will be called neutrals, and should contain neutral hand dyeds that will work well with sampler style designs and anything you want a more muted but still hand dyed background for.  Here is one of the new colours as a slight teaser, it's currently named 2601111, so I need to come up with something a little better than that!

Another beautiful WiP picture

This WiP was very kindly sent to me by Karen to share with you.  This is the first part of German Christmas Market (Chatelaine Designs).  Karen is stitching it on 28 count Jazlyn in Evening Magic.  I love the way it's coming out.  I'm really looking forward to seeing part 2!

Reminder and upcoming competition information

Firstly the reminder.  There is less than a week left in January, if you want the LTD edition colour for the month don't forget to order it!

Secondly.  I've got some early warning competition information.  The Crafty Kitten will be celebrating it's first birthday in June.  I know that's quite a way off, but I wanted to give you some pre-warning.  There will be a submitted stitching photos competition.  Basically it'll work like this.

Any photographs that are submitted for the galleries stitched by yourself on a crafty kitten fabric by June 12th 2011 will automatically be entered.  Here are the preliminary categories (these might change a bit, and I will add stitch count info nearer the deadline.

1)  WiPs: you can submit as many WiP pictures as you like before the deadline, only one entry per design you're stitching will be counted (e.g. if you send me weekly updates of a design I'll only count the most recent picture as the entry), if you're stitching multiple designs each will count, as long as there is a reasonable amount of stitching on them (e.g. 10 stitches on a bit of fabric isn't enough!).

2) Completed Small Designs

3) Completed Medium Designs

4) Completed Large Designs

Winners will be selected randomly for each category using a random number generator.  Obviously any WiP pictures from me won't be eligible for the competition!

Prizes will be gift vouchers for the Crafty Kitten, again more details in a few months.

Now for the small print bit!  You MUST only submit pictures of things you have stitched yourself and they MUST be stitched on a Crafty Kitten fabric. 

To make my life a little easier, when you send me a photo of a new WiP please can you let me know who the design is by (saves me hunting about online and acquiring more stash while looking for it!).  What fabric you're stitching it on (colour and count, again my memory is good but it's not perfect!).  Also if you've got a blog I'm more than happy to link to that in the photo album and here on the blog and on FB when I upload your picture.

Links to Finished Work and WiP Galleries

These are hosted on Flickr, and there are links from the front page of the website.  New pictures will still be shared on the blog and through facebook as well. 

Thank you to everyone that has emailed me pictures and made these galleries possible by giving me permission to use them.

Work In Progress Gallery

Finished Work Gallery

These galleries will be updated with new pictures as and when I receive some!

A finish and a WiP picture

Morning! I've had a few pictures sent to me in the last few days so I'm sharing them with you here.  I will sort the gallery out in the next few days, I'm trying to decide the best way to do it at the moment, as soon as I have I'll let you all know.

The first pictures is a finish, this very cute ornament (Blue Ribbon Designs) was stitched by Urszula Pitt on Bonfire Smoke in 22 count Oslo (this was a cut from this months small FOTM pack). You can find her blog here: http://urshsplace.blogspot.com/

I also have some WiP pictures to share.  These are from Nicola Maltby and are of a design called Believe (HAED, Jessica Galbreth artwork).  Nic is stitching the design on 20 count aida in Love in the Mist.  The first picture is of the blank fabric which I took before I mailed it, the other two pictures are of Nics WiP.  You can see more pictures on Nics blog (http://obsessivecrossstitcher.blogspot.com/).

Grab bags are sold out.

They will make another appearance at some point in the future when I have enough odds and ends to put some more together.  I hope everyone who's brought a grab bag enjoys it.  Don't forget to send me pictures of anything you stitch!

Grab bags! (again)

I hope you've all had a nice week.  I had a dig around and found a few more dyed small cuts of fabric.  I've put them together into one more medium grab bag, so those that missed out last week on the grab bags as they sold out rather quickly get another shot if they want one.

Another WiP picture and some posting news

I'm having one of 'those days'.  I've just had to redye an order I dyed over the weekend which I wasn't happy with.  I'm supposed to be about 250 miles from here at the moment having lunch with a friend.  While I'm going to be very late for lunch, I am going still going to be away for a couple of days.  Any orders placed between now and lunchtime Thursday will be mailed off on Friday morning.

There is just one small grab bag left on the site, if you'd like it you'll need to be fairly quick.  There won't be any more for quite a while.

Finally, I've done a little more to Daybreak Moon (Melissa Dawn artwork, charted by HAED), it's tent stitched on 28 count Jazlyn dyed in Daybreak Gradients.

Speedy shoppers! (grab bag update)

That's the medium grab bags all gone.  Just the small ones left!

Lots of new Ltd amount items on the website

Right, the promised grab bags are finally up on the site.  They're made up from test dyed pieces of fabric, colour experiements and a few slight seconds.  There are two sizes small, which have 4 pieces of 9x12 evenweave/linen in them and medium, which has 7 pieces of 9x12 linen/evenweave.  I took a photo of all the fabrics before I packed them up.

 I have also added 4 oddments, one of which I'm in love with and so nearly didn't make it as far as the website.  They're a mixture of sizes and colours and fabric types.  This is what they look like.

Have a great weekend whatever you're planning on doing :-)

Another WiP

This one is courtesy of Cathy.  It is her WiP of Terra Fairy Sprite charted by HAED from original artwork of Brigid Ashwood.  This design is one of the freebie SAL charts for 2011 from the HAED Yuku forum.  Cathy is stitching it on 18 count aida in Dawnblush. 

Tomorrow I've got a few more oddments to add to the website.  I've been playing about with some odd sized fabric cuts I had.  I'll pop pictures and links up here when they're done.  I should also have the grab bags sorted out tomorrow (hopefully!).

Starburst Fabrics are now available

I've just added 'Starburst' as two colour options in the colour gradients section of the website.  I've added a grey version and a blue one.  Both of which are designed to replace the bleached background of Lavender and Lace's Firefly Fairies.  The effect is different from a bleached fabric, but I like the way that they have come out. 

I will be adding more colour options, a blue/green one will appear at some point for mermaids.  As these fabrics have a focal point they need to be ordered to the design size you want rather than cut down from a standard cut.  So if you're interested in them in any colour combination please email me.

 The two following pictures are photographs (so slightly dark) of the greys showing the full fabric cut (one 18 count aida and 1 22 count hardanger).  The actual colour is the colour of the above scan

20 count aida and 22 count hardanger...

are now available in all hand dyed colours.  I've also added them to the solid colours section if you need undyed cuts for a project.


In the next few days I'm going to be adding a few colour submenus in the hand dyed fabrics section so it should be a little easier to find a specific colour if you don't want to go through the whole range (as it's getting quite large!)

A WIP picture for you to drool over

Karen sent me a lovely email this morning with a picture of her Wisteria Garden (Chatelaine) part 1 WiP attached.  She is stitching it on one of last months ltd ed colours, peppermint cream in 28 count Jazlyn.  I love the way it's looking and I can't wait to see more of it when part 2 is released.

Happy New Year!

A huge lack of posts from me in December, sorry about that.  I had a nice long snowy break in Devon at my parents.  I've got a couple of new fabrics for you to look at today, the first is the new LTD fabric for January.  The second is an addition to the sorbet line, this one is lemon sorbet.

I haven't forgotten the grab bags I was going to add to the site.  Keep an eye out for them this month.  I decided as I was going to be away so much of December to hold off releasing them until this month.

I have a couple of new fabrics that will be available on the site shortly as well.  I have ordered some 22 count hardanger (so that will give two 22 count fabrics available) and some 20 count aida.  Both of these have been requested by customers.   I'll let you know when they're in stock and the grab bags are available.