You may think that a lady-like craft blog isn’t the place for blatant hockey partisanship buuuuuuuut…
You thought wrong.
A pillowcase embroidered with Johnny Canuck the original Vancouver superhero. (Honestly… have you people seen this bullshit??) This made a perfect handmade add-in to Mr. wollstoneCRAFT’s gift. It’s also the perfect post material for the week of a 7 – 1 Canuck slaying of the Dallas Stars, who are only 3rd in the West, and a 2-1 win vs. Nashville. Not to mention it’s the day we find out whether the Sedin twins will actually play against each other in the All Star game! That would be. hilarious.
Okay, full disclosure: complete disappointment in the Leafs sometime in elementary school (last time I remember them in the playoffs) and a BC boyfriend were sufficient to make a Nucks fan out of me in the past three years. I wouldn’t sell short the coolness and depth of so many of the current players either. BUT I DIGRESS (or do I? Leave your hate in the comments please, I revel in your under-performing ire.)
Johnny looks really sharp in all navy blue on the crisp white, especially with a bit of satin embroidery floss thrown in for shininess. However, I have some warnings for you from my experiences with this piece!
Beware the satin. Make sure you beat off any left over bits of it from your working fabric, because upon ironing that stuff will melt right into your cotton, leaving it all speckled.
I traced the image from an online logo, to make the pattern myself. I used one of those widely available but ultimately disappointing red iron-transfer pencils. Beware these pencils. If you can’t find anything anywhere else, and you’re desperate to start your project… they work. For most of the transfers I have used them on, however, they also leave noticeable tinges of pink in parts of the fabric where there shouldn’t be any! I blame this on the pencil medium being inherently dusty. To avoid this the best you can, make sure you only press down with your iron, and don’t ‘wipe’ with it. After this project, I did my research, visited my local sewing shop/Sulky product dealer and invested $5 in one of their transfer markers, an online favourite in tools for this job. I have yet to use it, but apparently it stays in place and does the job well, so I can dig it.
It was my first time using metallic floss. It is sort of a nuisance. It will never ever stay together in an eight-ply thread at its ends. It was constantly fraying on me. I may use it again… sparingly. I still think it looks sharp on the skates.
I’ll leave you with a detail of Johnny’s flannel shirt, which I think I did a pretty good job on. I used alternating 8-ply and separated 4-ply strands of floss to great effect.
Hope you can look past your own hockey fandom and dig this pillowcase!
While school has truly picked up once again, I still have another pretty cool scarf on the go and hope to keep up on a few more posts. I still need to do a food one!
Happy crafting for now!
-m.
wollstoneCRAFT 