Floral arrangements and designs by Agnes Stillfried

Agnes was born in Germany and worked as a Master florist in Hamburg. While living in Germany Agnes had 2 flower stores and a thriving floral arrangements and designs business.



20 years ago Agnes moved to a farm in Virginia where she resides now. That's when she started her US floral arrangements business. At her beautiful Travelers Rest Farm Agnes grows all sorts of flowers, herbs, beautiful flowering bushes and trees. She makes frequent trips to the ocean to collect sea shells for her wreaths and flower arrangements.



Agnes gets inspired by amazing nature of Virginia, old wooden barn structures, ocean shells and aquatic life. She is a huge fan or recycling, upcycling and sustainable living. She turns old wood, last year's flowers, walnuts and pine cones into unique and beautiful wreaths and home decoration pieces.

Embroidery and stitching on unconventional materials by STEDI

So many wonderful artists work in traditional techniques of embroidery and stitching. Some of the best items were inspired by folk ornaments and designs, others by pieces by great artists of the past and present. Yet it's not often we come across an artist who creates her embroidery and stitches on unconventional materials like wall racks, shelf key holders, bed headboards. I've recently got to know Lena of STEDI who does just that.



Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I was born and raised in Russia. For the past 13 years I've been living in Utrecht, Netherlands. I'm a fashion designer by training and spent many years working for different fashion labels. These days fashion design is all about computers and I love being able to actually make things with my hands. As a designer I like to combine different styles, fibers and objects. I like to try out new ways of decorating every day objects we are so used to.
Traditionally embroidery is applied on different fabrics. However, if one has necessary tools he or she can embroider pretty much anything.



How did you start?

We started adding embroidery to simple items everyone has in his or her household. When I add embroidery to coat-hangers, small shelves, racks they turn into different objects with their own style. Such objects radiate new energy and add style and coziness to every home.
Our first ever embroidered item was our bed. My husband came up with a design and I embroidered its headboard. The idea was to create a country style bed with embroidery made of raw wool threads of different colors. Although the original ornament was pretty simple, the bed turned out to be a great addition to our bedroom. Since then we worked on numerous objects using different stitching and embroidery techniques.



What are you sources of inspiration?

My family helps me a lot in creating my embroidered objects. My husband who has some technical background helps me with his knowledge of different types of materials and textures. My children inspire me to create my designs. The name STEDI is actually a combination of my children's names: Stefan and Diana.
I get a lot of inspiration from just looking at old embroidery patterns.



What are your plans for the future?

I constantly come up with new ideas. Small embroidery holes I make to let thread through gave me an idea of a new design. I enlarged those holes and started wrapping them in bright threads. Such bright holes look very contemporary and stylish. I'm currently making a few items embroidered in that way.
I plan on developing my metal embroidery techniques. The combination of metals and fiber threads looks very unique and fresh. This process is extremely difficult and time consuming but the result is always fantastic!
I try to recycle and upcycle as much of my materials as possible. There is no need to by new wood panels when one can always use pieces of old furniture or scraps from large furniture producing companies.



While hand making my unique embroidered pieces I get very happy and inspired. I believe that my clients get much of that happiness and inspiration from my objects incorporating them in their everyday life.

DIY How to make Halloween black cat felted coasters

It is so much fun to decorate your home for Halloween. If you have children it is even more fun as they usually love Halloween and craft projects that go with it. I have come up with an idea of making Halloween themed glass coasters. I already tried scary pumpkins. This time around I'll put a black cat on my coasters.



To make felted wool coasters we will need white, black and orange felting wool, water, soap and bubble wrap plastic paper.

On a piece of bubble wrap plastic paper arrange pieces of white felting wool so that they form a circle. You can put one layer of wool for future coasters to be thin or a few layers for them to be thicker. Don't forget that wool will shrink by about 30%. Depending on the size of future coasters add 30% to their original size.



Once the white circle is there start working on a black cat. Let one piece of black wool be the cat's tail, another - its back. Form a circle out of black wool and make the cat's head. Decorate your cat with additional features like orange eyes, whiskers made of black thread, etc. Use your imagination to make your cat funny, scary or cute! It's important you arrange all the details carefully so that they don't mix up later on.



Once the cat is ready start felting. To felt add soapy water and cover the wool with another layer of bubbled wrap paper. Make sure the original image of the black cat stays as much intact as possible. Start carefully rubbing the plastic paper. Felting shouldn't take long. Once all the wool fibers attach to each other the coaster is ready.



Rinse your coasters well and let them dry overnight. If you wish to make more that one coaster keep in mind that it's almost impossible to completely replicate your original image. You can more or less follow the steps of replicating your original design but at the end all cats will look different. If you love handmade and are ready for all your cats to look special and different go for it!