NEW Ryan Berkley!

It's a New Year, so that means: NEW PATTERNS! I couldn't be more thrilled to add Ryan Berkley Embroidery Patterns to the Sublime Stitching Artist Series to kick off 2011. Ryan is not just an incredibly talented artist, but he's also an incredibly nice guy. I've known Ryan's work from many Renegade Craft Fairs over the years and can't resist his prints. Then, Ryan showed up for one of my embroidery workshops a couple of years ago in California -so doing this collab made perfect sense! I had to do the hard part: turn paintings into embroider-able designs. (Is that a word?) This is what I do. I try to turn everything into embroidery. 

Ryan's catalog of dandy-fied animals is so extensive, it was really tough to choose which four to turn into designs (I can only fit four heads on a sheet. Mrrpf!) These four paintings above are the ones that I picked. Do you like? Would you have picked the same ones? I know you love the owl. I do too. (I said it was hard to choose!)

After: Sublime-ly stitched!

Now, if you're thinking these patterns look intimidating to embroider: don't sweat it. Just separate your floss down to 3 or 4 strands (maybe 2 in some tight places) and you'll be juuuust fine. I know you can do it. The iron-on transfers are the easiest method to follow, and the PDF version gives you color guides. 

BONUS: Ryan was super generous and even made some extra designs in the PDF version. One of them is a decorative frame that fits around the animal heads (genius)!

SO WHAT'S NEXT? I'm going to show you a stitching trick you can do with the decorative frame design that comes in the PDF. You will wow and impress all your friends. So, get ready for a tutorial! You go get the patterns. I'll meet you back here, dear.