Dutch Label Shop thought I might be interested in trying their custom woven labels, and they were right! What better way to brand my crochet art and knitwear than with unique PlanetJune labels?

Dutch Label Shop provided me with store credit so I could test out their labels, but, as always, I was not compensated for this review, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Dutch Label Shop offer a wide variety of labels for creative artisans to brand their handmade goods. They offer care and size labels for garments, as well as custom brand labels, with low minimum quantities. All the labels are woven (not embroidered), washable, and available in iron-on or sew-on versions.

I decided to try designing two completely different PlanetJune labels, so I could test many of the different label options: a long black label with end folds that I can sew into my handmade knitwear, and a square white double-sided (folded) label that I can stitch to handmade toys and crochet art pieces.

Here’s a sneak peek of my labels:

Don’t they look good?!

My Experience

Note: If you don’t have your own custom logo, it’s easy to create a Basic Label by typing in your text, choosing a font you like, (and, optionally, adding one of their built-in symbols, e.g. I’d have used one of their cute yarn balls if I didn’t have my PlanetJune yarn planet). The colour choices and sizes are more limited, and they don’t offer folded labels, but the prices are much lower for smaller quantities than for the Logo Label, so I’d recommend you look at this option if you don’t have a brand logo. The rest of my review applies to just the Logo labels, as those are what I tested.

The pricing for Logo labels starts high, at several dollars per label, but quickly drops to very reasonable prices when you buy in bulk. As I wanted to test multiple options, I didn’t take advantage of the best bulk buy pricing. I ordered 50 of my black labels and 16 of my white labels for just under $100. (If I was selling my handiwork I’d probably have bought 300 or more labels of each type, to bring the price down to under 1/3 of my cost per label – they’ll last forever, so it’s a good investment.)

As these labels are completely woven, you can choose any colour for the background and one or more colours for your design. If you’d like to match your logo shade, the listed colours give their Pantone codes after the name. You can use an online converter (like this one) to find the closest match to your brand colours.

You can set up your label to be any size and shape you want. One thing that isn’t immediately clear from the setup page is that the label size you select is the complete size of the label that they create, before any folds. (The size of the end folds isn’t mentioned anywhere, from what I can see, but you can get your questions answered quickly using their Live Chat box – as I found out, you need to allow 1/4″ per end fold, if you choose a label with those.)

I created the graphics for my labels based on my logo, and uploaded them as PDF files:

Then I submitted my order and waited. With a Logo label, their designers make sure the label is going to look good before they print it, and they contact you if you’ve done anything wrong. (You can also pay extra to have a photo proof of a finished label emailed to you for approval before they create the entire batch. I didn’t choose that option, but it’s a good idea, especially if you wanted to lower the label cost by ordering in bulk – you don’t want to end up with 300 wrong labels!)

I was surprised when my labels arrived – I thought I’d have been contacted by their designer before the labels were printed, but apparently I provided all the information they needed without querying me on anything (yay, me!)

I was impressed to see that I was sent a few labels more than I ordered, presumably to insure against the possibility of a couple of them being flawed. (As they are individually woven, there is a little more variability between labels than you may expect.)

My PlanetJune Labels

I think these black labels will make my handmade clothing look so professional! My yarn planet is slightly squashed due to the limitations of the weaving process at such a small scale, but overall I’m very happy with the label.

(The predominantly red side is the back, in case you haven’t seen woven labels before! The unused colour is carried on the back while the other is being woven on the front.)

One thing I hadn’t realised is that, no matter which colours you choose for background and foreground, there are white warp threads running throughout the label. You can just see them as a slight amount of grey speckling in the black around my yarn planet. As my logo is so detailed, if I need to order more of these labels, I’ll choose a white background instead of black, to avoid that speckling, and make the label a bit taller, so I could make my yarn planet slightly larger.

As you can see, with the white background and a slightly larger size, my yarn planet looks really good! I think these little square labels are adorable, and perfect for stitching onto crocheted toys.

I chose the ‘double white’ option for a small additional fee, which helps the colours to not show through the white background – as you can see from the back of my label (back right in the above photo), all the white areas are covered with red on the back, but that doesn’t show through at all from the front, so I’m very happy I chose this option.

For the label at the front right of my photo, I’ve folded in the label ends, and finger-pressed them to make a crease. This is how I plan to attach these labels neatly to amigurumi, by sewing the crease lines down to the ami. For sewn pieces, I could leave the ends unfolded and trap them in a seam as I stitch it.

Specifications

For reference, if you like the look of my labels and want to make similarly-sized ones, I made Logo Labels with the following options:

• My black labels are 2.55″ by 0.5″ end fold labels
• My white labels are 2″ by 0.75″ center fold labels with double white

Labels in Action!

And now for the moment of truth – how do they look and function in use?

It only took a couple of hidden stitches on each side to stitch labels into my handknit sweaters, and they look so good:

I conducted an important test by wearing one of these sweaters after I’d stitched the label in. It wasn’t at all itchy or irritating next to my skin, which was a potential concern for me – I couldn’t even feel that the label was there, so it passed my test with flying colours.

And do you see what Mega Bun is now sporting near her tail?

No? Look more closely:

How cool is that?! A perfect way to brand a one-of-a-kind creation.

Verdict

I’m very happy with my order from Dutch Label Shop. Woven labels look so professional compared with printed labels. They make a great finishing touch to handmade pieces, and I’ll be sewing mine into all my handknits and crochet art pieces from now on, to prove they are PlanetJune originals. 😉

Although I found the wealth of options available when designing my labels a bit overwhelming, the online Live Chat service was very helpful for answering all my questions. And, when my labels arrived and I found a problem with some of my long labels (the weave had somehow been stretched and my logo was almost falling off the end of the label), Dutch Label Shop’s customer support was excellent and they re-sent the incorrectly woven labels with no problems, so I’m happy to recommend them for both their products and service!

Based on my experience, I have a few recommendations to give you the best chance of being delighted with your labels:

1. Choose a white background if you have a very detailed logo, to avoid tiny dots of white showing in the areas with the finest detail.
2. For the most versatile option, choose a label shape without end folds, but choose a long enough label size to add folds yourself beyond the edges of your design – you can fold and iron or finger-press them yourself to make sure your logo ends up centred on the finished label.
3. If you want to reduce the cost, unless you have a graphical logo or want to order hundreds of labels, you could use their Basic option and design a text label with a nice font (and a generic icon from their selection, if you want) to make high quality woven labels at a lower price.

UPDATE: Dutch Label Shop have kindly offered PlanetJune readers a 15% discount for the next 60 days! To order, go to Dutch Label Shop and enter the code planetjune15 at checkout.

I’m so excited to share my latest designs with you – I’ve been working on them for months and they’re finally ready. Announcing: Succulent Collections 3 & 4!

Since I published my Cactus Collections 1 & 2 (in 2010) and Succulent Collections 1 & 2 (in 2012) they’ve never dropped out of my bestseller lists. My potted plants are unique and popular – they’ve been featured in home decor magazines as well as crochet publications – and make a wonderful gift or desk decoration because they’re lifesize and realistic, plus they never need watering, never stop blooming, and never die!

I’ve had the idea for a few years now to develop more succulent patterns and, at the start of 2018, while I was living in an empty house waiting for my furniture (and yarn) to rejoin me from Africa, I took the opportunity to delve into succulent research.

I searched through over 500 succulent species to find different, interesting, and crochetable ideas. Once I had my crochet supplies back, I developed prototypes for 15 species, which I finally narrowed down to these two gorgeous new collections of four:

Succulent Collection 3, L-R: Conophytum Burgeri ‘Burger’s Onion’; Peperomia ‘Trailing Jade’; Crassula Capitella ‘Red Pagoda’; Aloe Vera ‘Medicine Plant’

Succulent Collection 4, L-R: Monilaria Moniliformis ‘Bunny Succulent’; Callisia Navicularis ‘Chain Plant’; Sedum Burrito ‘Burro’s Tail’; Echeveria ‘Mauna Loa’

I’ve developed some clever new techniques for you to enjoy with these patterns, and I’ve come up with some easy construction methods to minimise the sewing and finishing. I think you’ll have fun making these!

Here’s a gallery so you can click in and see each of the new succulents in more detail:

One of my challenges, now I have so many potted plant patterns, is to come up with an original design for the pot each time, and I’m delighted with the new pot for these collections. I made it to resemble stoneware pottery, with a striking textured zigzag decoration that you crochet as you go (it’s easier than it looks, and I’ve included bonus right- and left-handed step-by-step tutorials for it as appendices to both the new patterns) and I think it’s one of my favourite pots to date. I hope you’ll love it too.

Mix and Match

And here’s the best part: all the new designs are completely interchangeable with all my other Cactus and Succulent Collection patterns!

Now you can choose between 24 different plants for your next cactus/succulent garden, and you know they’ll all look good together! Just grab a few shades of green (or red, orange, purple, grey… google ‘succulents’ to look for colour inspiration!) and a hook and you’ll be ready to get started.

Crochet-Along (and Save!)

As with my other plant collections, you can save several dollars when you buy both collections in the set together. But you can save even more if you join the BotaniCAL crochet-along (CAL) in my PlanetJune group on Ravelry: just leave a message in the BotaniCAL thread saying you’d like to join the CAL, and I’ll private message you with an exclusive discount code that you can use against either or both of the new Succulent Collection patterns!

Find out more about the BotaniCAL here. I hope you’ll join us in crocheting PlanetJune plant, flower and fruit patterns over the next couple of months 🙂

Handy Links to the Patterns

Don’t forget to join the CAL and get your discount for the new patterns!

• Succulent Collections 3 & 4 (best value!)
• Succulent Collection 3
• Succulent Collection 4

Heart and queue them on Ravelry:

• Succulent Collection 3:
• Succulent Collection 4:

And you can find all my other cactus and succulent patterns here!

Back, L-R: Cactus Collection 2, Cactus Collection 1, Succulent Collection 1
Front, L-R: Succulent Collection 3, Succulent Collection 4, Succulent Collection 2

It’s been a long process to get to this point, but I’m so happy with the new additions to my collection of crocheted cacti and succulents, and I hope you will be too!

Please leave me a comment if you love them, and I hope to see you in the BotaniCAL soon 🙂

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be launching two beautiful new plant designs coming soon, to add to my potted plant crochet pattern collection! What are they? You’ll have to wait until next week to find out… 😉

I need a new crocheted plant display – there’s no room to add the new pots here!

And what better way to celebrate the new designs than with a crochet-along (CAL)? You’ve probably seen my cactus patterns being shared over social media lately – my crochet plants are more popular than ever, and this is a great time to try making your first PlanetJune potted plant, or to add to your collection!

As an added bonus, register for the CAL now (in the PlanetJune Ravelry group) and I’ll private message you with an exclusive discount code that you can use against either (or both!) of my two new plant pattern collections when they launch next week!

The BotaniCAL crochet-along is suitable for all levels of crocheter – if you’re intimidated to make a whole potted plant, you can get your feet wet first by trying a smaller project: one of my 13 popular flower and fruit designs. These are available online for free (or pay-what-you-want for the PDF version) so everyone can join in, no matter your skill level or financial situation. Just look at all your options:

Which would you like to make first?!

The goal of this CAL is to build a virtual collection of as many PlanetJune plants, flowers and fruits as we can, and brighten the world with cheerful, colourful crochet projects. The BotaniCAL runs all the way through to the end of June, so you’ll have plenty of time to complete your project – or even make several lovely new plants!

Make them to keep, make them to gift, make them to sell – it’s up to you! PlanetJune crocheted plants (and flowers and fruit) are unique and beautiful. The potted plants make a wonderful gift or desk decoration because they’re lifesize and realistic, plus they never need watering, never stop blooming, and never die 😉

It’s easy to join a PlanetJune CAL – just click through to the CAL thread, post a message to say you’re joining, pick a PlanetJune plant, fruit or flower pattern, and get crocheting! Ask questions and share progress photos along the way, enjoy seeing what everyone else is making, and we’ll all cheer you along and admire your project once you finish it.

If you’re new to Ravelry, you’ll also need to create a free Ravelry account first, and join the PlanetJune group. You can find instructions for all of that (plus joining the CAL and posting your projects) in the PlanetJune Crochet-Along FAQ.

I hope you’ll join in this CAL and crochet beautiful BotaniCALs to share with us and brighten your day! Click through to the PJ Ravelry group right now and register for the CAL by leaving a comment, and you’ll get your exclusive discount on my new potted plant collections (in your Ravelry private messages) as soon as they’re released!

This is your last chance to shop from the PlanetJune Crochet Tools shop before it closes forever…

I’m selling off my remaining stock of Detail Stuffing Tools and Stitch Markers for Crochet with deep discounts if you buy multiples of the same item – I recommend you get some spares, as they are so easy to misplace, and the discount will help offset your shipping costs:

• 10% off when you buy 1
• 20% off when you buy 2
• 30% off when you buy 3
• 40% off when you buy 4
• 50% off when you buy 5 or more

The discounts are automatically applied – just select the quantity you’d like and add the item to your cart, and you’ll see the lower prices there.

This is also your last chance to grab a free signed bookmark! Tell me who to sign it to and add it to your tools order at no additional cost.

I’ll be closing the Crochet Tools shop at the end of April, or sooner if everything sells out before then, so please don’t wait if you want to place one last order of Stuffing Tools and Stitch Markers before they’re gone forever. I only have a hundred or so of each item left, and, once I send out my next newsletter, this message will reach many thousands of people, so they may sell out quickly…

Click through to the Crochet Tools shop to place your order now. 🙂
 

As I like to run PlanetJune transparently, I’ll also share the reasons why I made the decision to close my Crochet Tools shop. Keep reading if you want the behind-the-scenes view!

In January, Canada Post eliminated their Light Packet option for international shipping, meaning that the lowest price to ship a small packet out of Canada is now about $6 (USD) to the US, and about $8.50 internationally (and those prices are much higher if you want tracking and insurance).

I investigated alternatives to make that cost more reasonable for my customers, and found that I could cross the border to mail my packages from the US at far lower rates, or pay a reshipping service to do that for me.

If selling my tools was the focus of my business and I had hundreds of orders per week, something along those lines could be a good solution. But the crochet tools are just a tiny sideline for me – the money I make from them only represents a fraction of one percent of my income. I’d lose money if I tried to reship in small quantities, or I’d have to raise my prices to compensate.

So, the only remaining option is to pass the new high Canada Post shipping costs onto my customers. They’re far too high for most of my customers to be happy to pay, so I made some estimates of how many sales I’d lose as a result of the increased shipping cost. Based on these, my best guess is that I’d make only approx 1-2 orders per week in future. The cost of time and fuel to make the trip to the post office every week, just to ship a single low-value order, would leave me making a loss on every order unless I raised my prices significantly, and, again, I don’t want to do that.

The upshot is that there’s no way for me to run my Crochet Tools shop any more without losing money, and so the only sensible business decision is to close it down. But I didn’t want to leave anyone in the lurch, hence the closing-down sale as a last chance for anyone who hasn’t got around to buying their tools from me yet!

I love my crochet tools line. They’re cute and colourful, and so useful. I’m keeping a dozen spare stuffing tools for myself, because I don’t know what I’d do without one – I’ve tested all kinds of alternatives and I’ve found nothing that even comes close for stuffing small amigurumi pieces.

But nothing lasts forever, and my crochet tool shop has had a good run. This decision will be a good thing for PlanetJune in the long term – further simplifying and streamlining the business will leave me with more time to concentrate on innovating with new designs, and creating new tutorials to help you perfect your crochet technique.

So, please click through to my Crochet Tools shop now and grab any tools you need before it’s too late! I don’t want you to miss out…

This is going to be a bit of an epic post, because I’ve had a lot of questions about Mega Bun and I want to answer them all and explain exactly how I made her. I encountered several unexpected problems along the way, and I’ll show you my solutions in case you want to try making an extreme amigurumi of your own!

Okay, now onto the Mega Bun details!

Making an Extreme Amigurumi

I had a few false starts – this Susan Bates Xtreme wood crochet hook is a massive 25mm (1 inch) in diameter, and every yarn I tried was far too thin, even doubled or tripled. I ruled out three strands of bulky yarn because the holes between the stitches were still so large that I was crocheting a mesh of holes instead of a sturdy fabric! 

I eventually discovered that the thickest fuzzy yarns in my stash, tripled, would just about work, thanks to the fuzz obscuring the holes between the stitches. I found that I had 6 pre-wound balls of this unlabelled yarn in my eyelash stash:

I have no idea what it is (I picked up a lot of second-hand fuzzy yarn when the eyelash craze of 2009 was dying down!) but it looks and feels similar to Patons Allure (except it has 80g per ball instead of 50g):

Top: unknown fuzzy yarn; Bottom: Patons Allure (discontinued)

I held three strands of yarn together as I crocheted. Working with such a large hook is very different – you have to move your whole arm to make each stitch, not just your wrist, so it’s quite a workout – but the hook isn’t heavy and it wasn’t difficult or painful to use.

Making a single crochet stitch with an extreme hook and three strands of fuzzy yarn

Overcoming Challenges

Adapting the Pattern
I used the Lop pattern from my Baby Bunnies, but Mega Bun is many times larger than my original Lop:

I intended to follow my pattern exactly, but I discovered that her back feet completely disappeared into the mass of her body, so I added one extra round to the back feet. Changing the scale by this much may start to affect the proportions slightly, so you may need to tweak a pattern if you’re upscaling it to extreme size.

Running Out of Yarn
I had no idea how quickly I’d get through my yarn, so I just got started and hoped for the best! After making most of the body, I could see that I wouldn’t have anywhere near enough to make all the other pieces – argh! I briefly debated turning my amigurumi into a different animal with smaller ears, but in the end I decided to make the tail in white (a good bunny colour) and the ears in light brown Patons Allure (which matches the variegated body colour nicely). Problem solved!

…Or not. I got most of the way through one ear and ran out of yarn again. Luckily, my friend Monica came to my rescue and sold me some of her precious Allure from her stash so I could complete my bunny. Working with discontinued yarns can be pretty stressful!

Yarn Thickness
Although the yarn I chose for the tail (Bernat Baby Lash, also discontinued), looked nice and bulky and fairly similar to my other yarns, when I started to crochet with 3 strands, it left huge gaping holes between each stitch – not a good look for a bunny tail! So I decided to double it yet again and crocheted with 6 strands at once to give me a nice full bunny tail. Finding sufficiently bulky yarn is definitely a major problem for a hook of this size!

Holey Fabric
As I hadn’t used the correct yarn thickness for amigurumi making, I had a problem. Although the crocheted fabric doesn’t look holey (thanks to all the lovely soft fluff in my yarn), that’s not really the case: I can stick a fingertip through any of the gaps between stitches! This would be a problem when it comes to stuffing…

To get around this, I bought some tulle fabric (the fine netting used for wedding veils and ballet tutus) to contain the stuffing. For the head and body, I flattened the crochet and laid it on 2 layers of tulle to act as a template for cutting the tulle. I cut the tulle around the edge of my ‘template’ with fabric scissors, leaving a few inches of extra length at the back to make stuffing easier.

I wasn’t sure if I could sew tulle with a sewing machine, but my mum advised that it should be fine with a long stitch length, and it was (thanks Mum!), so I sewed my 2 layers of tulle together, leaving the tail area with the excess fabric open for stuffing.

The completed tulle net on top of the flattened body, with excess tulle at the back.

I turned my tulle net inside out and inserted it into the body, turning the excess back outside the opening, and then I stuffed the body by pushing the stuffing into the net.

Once I’d finished stuffing, I overlapped the excess tulle and secured the two sides together with a few stitches by hand with a needle and thread, then crocheted the remaining body stitches and closed the remaining hole in the body as usual (with my Ultimate Finish technique).

Adapting the Stuffing Instructions
With this size of amigurumi, even the tiniest pieces that wouldn’t usually be stuffed are huge and need stuffing to support them. To stuff all the smaller pieces (paws, tail and even the eyes), I tied a blob of stuffing into the middle of a square of tulle, to make a stuffing parcel, and popped it inside the piece as I was stitching it to the body.

Front paws with their parcels of stuffing ready to be inserted

Stuffing Quantity
It took an entire 1lb bag of stuffing to stuff Mega Bun to a soft squishy level – perfect for cuddling – although if I’d been making a proper amigurumi (with nice firm stitches) I’d probably have needed two bags of stuffing to support the bunny shape further. Extreme amigurumi need a lot of stuffing!

Extra-Large Eyes
After measuring Mega Bun against an original Baby Bunny, I realised she’d need about 2 inch diameter eyes! I’m not sure if safety eyes even come that large (well, I’m sure they do, but they probably aren’t easy to find) and I didn’t want big hard lumps of plastic on my cuddly bunny, so I decided to crochet the eyes.

I used bulky yarn and an H hook to get to the right size more quickly, and added a half-stitch colour change to make the all-important glint in her eyes. (Don’t know about the glint? It’s so important to add a lifelike sparkle to non-plastic eyes – see my Glinting Eyes for Amigurumi tutorial for details!)

Adapting the Finishing Instructions
As each stitch is so huge, one sewn stitch per single crochet stitch didn’t feel like enough, so I stitched twice around each open edge to stitch it to the body, and tried to insert my yarn needle into a different part of a stitch on the body on my second time around, to reduce the gaps between my sewn stitches. (Oh, and, just out of interest, I tried using one, two or all three strands of the yarn to stitch with and didn’t see much difference in the result.)

I also used bulky yarn instead of embroidery floss to embroider the nose. Everything needs to be scaled up when you’re making an Extreme Amigurumi!

Loss of Shaping
After stitching everything in place, I realised my last problem: as my crocheted stitches are so floppy and soft, and I couldn’t stuff the body firmly, the clever Baby Bunnies shaping isn’t very apparent: the head and body looked a little too much like one giant blob. But I have a trick to fix exactly this type of disappointment!

I used my Amigurumi Needlesculpting technique to draw the body in, all the way around the neck, to define and shape her neck area. It’s hard to capture in photos because she’s so fluffy, but her shaping looks much better now.

And finally, Mega Bun was complete and ready for big cuddles!

I hope you can see that this was quite an involved project… I have lots more I could say about Extreme Amigurumi in general, but this post has got longer than I expected, so I’ll save my tips and opinions for the next post!

If you have any more general questions about Extreme Amigurumi, please ask them below and I’ll see if I can offer some advice in my final Extreme Amigurumi post. 🙂

When I got this extreme crochet hook a few weeks ago, my first thought was to wonder if it’s possible to make an extreme amigurumi…

That’s my new size 50 (25mm/1 inch) crochet hook, with a standard E US/3.5mm hook for comparison…

I raided my stash for the thickest fuzzy yarns I could find, and held three strands together as I crocheted, following my Baby Bunnies pattern.

And the short answer is: yes!

Mega Bun is the softest, cuddliest bunny you can imagine. She’s so squeezably soft and her floppy ears are just adorable.

She measures an astounding 26″ (66cm) from nose to tail – that’s almost 6 times the size of the original Baby Bunnies…

Her puffball tail alone is the size of two Baby Bunnies stacked on top of each other!

The other bunnies and guinea pigs aren’t at all bothered by her size – they’ve accepted her as one of their own and are enjoying playing with (and on) their giant cousin:

Awww! Extreme cuteness!

Now, the long answer to “can you crochet an extreme amigurumi” is more like “yes – with caveats…”, so don’t run out and buy a bunch of fuzzy yarn just yet! If you have any questions about Mega Bun, or want to know more about how I made her, I’ll share all the details of the process of crocheting Mega Bun (and the difficulties I encountered in trying to make an extreme amigurumi) in a separate ‘Making Of’ post, coming soon.

But in the meantime, I hope my photos help you to imagine how squishably soft my adorable giant bunny is!

Oh, and if you’d like to make any baby bunnies or guinea pigs of your own (giant or regular-sized!) you can find all the Baby Bunnies and Guinea Pigs crochet patterns here 🙂

UPDATE: The ‘making of’ post is up! Click through to read Extreme Amigurumi: the Making of Mega Bun!

Search Press, the publisher of Mandalas to Embroider: Kaleidoscope Stitching in a Hoop by Carina Envoldsen-Harris (the beautiful embroidery pattern book I reviewed last week) have kindly offered one PlanetJune reader the chance to win a free copy of this lovely book!

If you’ve already picked up your copy, enter to win a copy to give to a friend – it’d make a lovely gift for anyone crafty 🙂

I’m delighted with the embroidery that I made using the Sakura Clusters pattern from the book (and it was my first time doing a proper embroidery, so you can definitely do this too):

If you haven’t read my review yet, click here to see what I thought of this book – then come back here and enter to win your own copy!

How To Enter

• Simply leave a comment on this blog post (below) this week, i.e. before end of day EST on March 25th, 2018. You can say anything in your comment: why you’d like to win this book, your past experience (if any) with embroidery, or even just ‘Yes please!’
• Make sure you enter a valid email address in the email box, as I’ll need that to contact you if you’re the winner!
• This is open to everyone, worldwide 🙂
• I’ll randomly draw a winner and contact them by email after the closing date to get their address. (I’ll update this post with their name once they’ve replied.) If I get no reply after a week, I’ll draw a new name.

Good luck!

UPDATE: I selected the winner by random draw (for simplicity, I numbered the comments 1-70, and I’d redraw if the winning number was one of my own comment replies) and the winner is Kate! Congratulations Kate, and thanks to everyone else who entered.

If my posts have whetted your appetite for embroidery, you can buy Mandalas to Embroider here on Amazon, or from your local bookshop 🙂

Let’s get this out of the way first: I received a copy of this book to review. But I’m not being compensated for this review in any other way, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Carina and I have been friends since we first met (online) in our early days of craft blogging, over a decade ago! She’s well-known for her distinctive cheerful and colourful embroidery designs and has authored 3 books as well as a shopful of self-published designs (you can find them all at Polka & Bloom).

Ever since Carina mentioned that she was designing a book of mandalas, I’ve been waiting to see what she came up with, and I wasn’t disappointed! Embroidery, like other slow crafts, can be a calm relaxing hobby, and combining that with repeating mandala patterns sounds like a perfect recipe for slowing down and enjoying some crafting time.

Read on for my review, and to see the gorgeous embroidery I’ve made from one of the book patterns…

Overview

Mandalas to Embroider: Kaleidoscope Stitching in a Hoop by Carina Envoldsen-Harris is a book of circular embroidery patterns. As Carina says in her introduction:

Mandala is the Sanskrit word for ‘circle’. These days, it is often used as a generic term for a particular motif, especially in arts and crafts, usually with a concentric design or one which radiates from the centre.

Mandalas to Embroider includes 12 large and 12 small delicate repeating patterns. Nature-based, geometric, or more abstract, the designs are all bold, happy, and – of course! – colourful. The circular nature of the patterns means they fit perfectly in an embroidery hoop, making the finished pieces easy to display.

Such pretty and colourful designs!

The book is split into two halves: the first half includes clearly-illustrated stitch tutorials, instructions for preparing and finishing your work, and all the patterns, with colour palettes and stitching suggestions.

The pages of the second half are actually iron-on transfers for each of the patterns. Each page is perforated so it can be removed neatly, and there’s a handy pocket inside the back cover to store any transfers you’ve already used. I thought this was a really nice touch, as each transfer can be used up to ten times, so you’ll be able to keep the transfer pages together with the book, so they’re ready for the next time you want to use them.

Left: stitch tutorials; Right: iron-on transfer

This book is beautifully styled and photographed, and I couldn’t stop paging through again and again to admire the variety of mandala-inspired patterns.

A couple of the lovely photos

My Experience

Although Mandalas to Embroider includes 12 mini designs, I decided to jump right into one of the 12 full-sized designs. Sakura Clusters was an obvious choice for me, as I love cherry blossoms (I even designed a cherry blossom garland for my first book, Paper Chains and Garlands!) and this design was the first that really caught my eye as I flipped through the book:

I decided to see how the design would look in a colour scheme inspired by real-life cherry blossom instead of Carina’s cheerful bright palette. That’s one of the advantages of embroidery (or crochet!) patterns – it’s so easy to make them your own by simply changing the colours. I shopped for floss colours using the pinks, reds and blue from this beautiful reference photo:

I was unable to find anyone to credit this stunning photo to – if you’re the photographer, let me know!

I raided my fabric stash and the only off-white fabric I could find looked a bit thin, so I used two layers to stop the threads on the back of the piece from showing through on the front. (I wasn’t sure if that was going to work, but my stitches didn’t show through the fabric, so I suppose it did!)

I wanted to make my embroidery a little smaller than the original, so I copied and reduced the pattern page, then traced the design onto my fabric with a pencil. If you use the iron-on transfers, you can skip all that and be ready to start embroidering right away!

I must admit to being a little nervous about starting stitching; although I’ve been cross-stitching for decades, and of course enjoy my punchneedle embroidery, I haven’t actually done any regular embroidery since I learnt the basic stitches in primary school.

I needn’t have worried – the patterns in this book all use fairly simple stitches, which are clearly explained at the start of the book. Although I started slowly, I quickly picked up speed. By the end of the project, I felt very confident with the stitches used in this pattern, and I’m ready to learn some of the other stitches for my next embroidery project!

Look, even the back of the embroidery is quite pretty…

And now for the big reveal:

Isn’t it lovely? In my colour palette, the pattern takes on a more serene look, but Carina’s pretty design still shines through. I’m thrilled with my embroidery, and I’ll be very happy to display this finished piece on the wall of my craft room.

Final Thoughts

Carina’s designs always have a hand-drawn quality to them, and I was impressed to see that she’s managed to maintain that even with the repeating patterns in Mandalas to Embroider. There’s still a free, natural quality to the designs. I noticed while I was stitching the flowers that the petals of each flower aren’t perfectly identical. This is a good thing – the relaxed nature of the design felt like permission to be relaxed in the execution – there’s no need to make every stitch exactly even and perfect to get a beautiful result.

If you’ve never tried embroidery, I’d definitely encourage you to give it a try – I found it very relaxing and satisfying to watch the design come together. And I think Mandalas to Embroider is a perfect introduction to embroidery, as you can build your confidence by practicing your stitching on the smaller patterns, or do as I did and jump right into a large one!