The Capes & Crafts blog is upping sticks and moving! You can now find us here, which will hopefully be more regularly updated and better maintained in general. You should definitely follow the new blog, and sign up for the newsletter while you’re there too, as there’ll be details of a giveaway in the first newsletter (exciting!)
This blog will still exist as an archive, though won’t be updated anymore. Thanks for all your support here, and we hope you’ll check out the new blog!
Not only are we back from holiday but all patterns in our store are now instant download! Which means no more waiting and no more pesky time differences delaying the delivery of your brand new pattern. You can started right away!
We have new patterns in the works and new accessories planned in new interesting, geeky fabrics. So stayed tuned by following us here on the blog, on Twitter or on Facebook to be the first to hear about new items hitting the store!
Just to let you all know, we are temporarily closing to all kinds of custom orders – including both physical items and digital patterns. We have several personal projects to focus on at the moment, but we will be accepting orders again towards the end of April 🙂
A while back we bought a huge amount of vintage handkerchiefs for a personal project, and recently, while cleaning our craft room, I found a handful of plain white ones that were left over and forgotten about. That’s when I had the idea to use waste canvas to cross stitch designs onto them.
The handkerchiefs dated from the 50’s I think, and this one has a pretty lace corner on one side.
We adapted our much larger Stark sigil pattern to create this simplified direwolf motif. We also designed the words ‘winter is coming’ in a pretty cursive script.
With so many people being more eco conscious these days – reusing canvas bags, recycling etc etc, it’s a wonder that more people haven’t embraced the cotton hanky. They can also be used for cleaning glasses or touch screens, for those of us who aren’t keen on the idea of blowing our noses in them. Whatever its use, we think this geeky hanky is pretty cool, and a great gift for any Game of Thrones fan. It’ll be in our Etsy store soon, priced at £4.00, and may well be one of a kind.
Here’s a sneak peek at another hanky I’ve been working on. Ideal for Whovians!
This hanky has a crochet style lace trim all around. It just needs a careful wash and press and should also be in store soon.
Once again, this will be a unique one off piece, so if you like it, don’t hesitate!
A while back, on Twitter, I was despairing over DMC’s metallic threads and how difficult they are to use. Fellow cross stitchers agreed with me, and none of us had found a solution to make them easier to work with. The problem was, that some of our patterns, like this Doctor Who Gallifreyan pattern are simply crying out for some shimmery silver thread to lend it that cosmic, timey wimey look. So, imagine my delight when an alternative was suggested – Kreinik Metallics. I had been told that their braids are more flexible and easier to work with, but I hadn’t ever tried the brand before. I figured I may as well give it a go.
Large Doctor Who Gallifreyan badge – £3.00
Lo and behold! I stitched the Gallifreyan alphabet inspired badge you see before you using Kreinik Metallics Very Fine #4 braid on 22 count aida (which is the count of aida I least enjoy working with) and I was done within an hour! Colour me impressed. The Kreinik braid didn’t unravel the way DMC had, and it felt more like normal floss and less rough than the other metallic threads I’ve tried. It really was so easy to stitch with and I could even use generous lengths as the thread didn’t insist on tangling itself into knots. I am now officially a convert and if you’re planning on stitching one of our patterns that suggests metallics, I highly recommend you try Kreinik if you can get your hands on it – their fine #8 braid works perfect on 14 count aida. And I’ll be whipping up more of these badges for the store, hopefully some on hand dyed aida as well, so be on the look out for that 🙂
Christmas has well and truly arrived in our store! We’ve been busily working away on totally awesome and unique Christmas patterns that capture the spirit of the season in true C&C geeky style! So far we’ve got four new patterns in our Christmas section and we are planning on at least a few more. Our focus is on our favourite TV shows at the minute, including the ever popular Big Bang Theory and our very first Peep Show and Blackadder patterns! We’ll have all our Christmas patterns in store by the end of October, so you’ll have plenty of time to get them stitched up for gifts or to add to your own holiday decor.
Doctor Who Christmas pattern – £2.30
In other exciting Christmassy developments, we are heading to our very first craft fair in December! Well, it’s actually being called a Pop-up Shop and is going to be very small (only 10 vendors) with the aim of showcasing local handmade crafts. We were chuffed to bits to be invited to take part! It will be held at Callendar House in Falkirk on December 8th. So if any of you live in Central Scotland, or even as far afield as Edinburgh and Glasgow, we’d love to see you there. Times are yet to be set, but naturally we’ll fill you in on more details as and when we get them, but suffice to say, we’re looking forward to it!
The C&C minions are off on holiday next week (and do we ever need it!) which means we won’t be around for the next two Fridays. We figured this would be a great chance to offer up all of our previous free patterns for anyone who may have missed them the first time around, or any new readers and followers who have only joined us recently. And of course, there’ll be a new pattern too 🙂
So, first up, this week’s new pattern, which is inspired by Game of Thrones (no shock there, really.) A pretty little sampler with a floral border to immortalise the wisdom of one of our favourite characters, Bronn. It does include swearing though, so if you’re of a sensitive nature, I apologise.
Oops, looks like you missed your chance to download all of our free patterns so far! But don’t despair, there’s a new one for this week, which you can find under the ‘free pattern friday’ tag 🙂
We’re getting ready to introduce some new merchandise into the store at the end of August, which isn’t so much cross stitch related, but more fabric and needle and thread based. We toyed with the idea of opening another store for our textile products, but we don’t want to confuse anybody, so you’ll find the new products under the ‘sew geeky‘ tag in our existing store when they’re listed (if you check it out at the minute, there’s a lonely Batman skirt available, and I have enough fabric to make one in a smaller size if you like.) We’ll also be taking custom orders, and while our store will remain heavily geek based, we welcome all sorts of requests. This post is about one of them.
So here at C&C towers we clearly love our superheroes. But, while some kids love comics, and that’s awesome, some kids love princesses, and that’s awesome too. And we’re more than happy to help those kids deck out their bedrooms, pillow forts or cardboard box castles with super awesome decorations too. Check out our most recent custom order. The request was for bunting for a little girl’s bedroom, in pinks and purples. I asked what kind of things she was into, and was told she loved Disney princesses. So I found some suitable fabric and got to work. This was the result.
The little girl in question hasn’t seen it yet, but her mum is certain she’ll love it, and I was able to use the excess fabric to make two matching cushion covers 🙂
So, if you like what we do (and I’ll have more examples of just what we can do in the coming days) feel free to ask us to change up the fabrics or colours. We’re always happy to help!
A few weeks back, I finished a pretty epic custom order. A lovely customer asked me to stitch up two of our patterns – the Lannister house sigil pattern and the Doctor Who ‘the angels have the phone box’ pattern. For both these patterns, it was my first time actually stitching them, and while it took about three weeks worth of evening stitching to finish both, they look pretty awesome. Steve wanted to keep the Lannister one!
Both were sent unframed, but with detailed framing instructions.
All ready for posting!
As we’re headed off on holiday soon (well that’s the plan anyway), we’re not actually taking on any finished custom orders at the moment, but we’re still accepting custom PDF pattern requests. And hopefully, towards the end of August, we’ll have some brand new physical products in the store! Exciting!
It’s been busy busy busy at C&C towers, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some new patterns coming your way very soon, as well as some photos of finished patterns that I’m currently working on. In the pipeline at the moment is a Ghostbusters sampler, a Fantastic Four pattern and another Doctor Who themed pattern. Further down the line is another Studio Ghibli pattern featuring Jiji the cat from Kiki’s Delivery Service – well, that’s the plan anyway! Check out some pics of forthcoming patterns and remember to have a look at what we’ve got in store right now.
Almost finished Fantastic Four pattern
Future Foundation pattern in need of a few tweaks 🙂
You’ll be seeing those two patterns in store this week! In the meantime, check out our Facebook page for all the latest news!
capesandcrafts 