Giveaway Winner and Gollum Embroidery

Thank you to all of you who participated in my little Sew Grateful week giveaway! The winner of the fab Simplicity 9333 pattern is The Seek Speak, so I'll be emailing you shortly for mailing information. Also, let's have a round of applause for the intrepid Debi, who was such a gracious hostess of the whole Sew Grateful week!

Something like this?

Nothing sewing-related to show here, though, as I've been suffering from what-to-sew-next ADHD. I originally wanted to make something for the next Sew Weekly challenge, which is use any movie that's ever won an Oscar for inspiration. I had in mind a grand The Duchess-inspired gown made out of a vaguely chintzy bedsheet I found at Goodwill, but after some research I've concluded that one does not simply whip up such a costume in two weeks. At least not if you want to do it some justice. Especially since I don't actually know anything about historical fashion, and I haven't any proper stays, and my pattern is this sadly inaccurate Simplicity 4092 costume pattern. I know anything I make won't be anywhere near accurate, as my fabric is much too brightly colored, has polyester in it, and I'm not interested in hand-sewing, but I want it to at least look somewhat respectable. So here's to more research, and possibly dipping my foot into making a corset. Although what I really want to do is make a Victorian-era corset, not a  conical one.

Love this dress. From here.

So since that's obviously not happening anytime soon, I need to decide if I want to churn out something red, or pick a different film to be inspired by. There's the obvious Lord of the Rings trilogy, but that almost definitely involves slinky fabric and an untested pattern. I fell in love with all the blue dresses in both Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and (500) Days of Summer, but the former is embroidery-heavy and the latter didn't win anything. And then there's all the great yardage sitting in my fabric stash that could turn into something, but nothing concrete yet. Goodness, I am all over the place.

I still don't have pictures of my UFO dress, as it's been too gloomy and gray for pictures. But! Just to show that it can be done, here's my embroidered version of my Gollum+The One Ring valentine. Gollum is in dark gray, the ring is in the same gold as my Rohan horse, and the hearts are red, obviously. I wasn't particularly careful with my stitches, but I can report that I have gotten much, much better at the split stitch. I haven't done the words yet, and I'm not sure if I want to. I'm afraid anything I stitch won't look as good as the actual calligraphed version. But hey, it actually works as an embroidery pattern!

So creepy, all stitched up he is, yessss, he is, precioussss...

The mess on the back. Also, I didn't tie off the last thread.

Close-up of the horrible heart-stitching.

It took me all of watching Wall-E with my brother, plus the latest episode of Downton Abbey (without my brother) to finish this. Admittedly, it was pretty sketchy-looking at the end of Wall-E, before his face was filled in...my brother eyed it dubiously and asked, "You're not planning to actually give that to anyone, right?" Well, no, not anymore I'm not...