Time For tea

Mary uses strong outlines in her traditional illustrations, which makes them
a natural fit for embroidery. This particular design applies one of Mary's trademark
themes to a project that's perfect for a cozy kitchen display.

As you can see in the illustration above, the original artwork was simplified
for the single-color embroidery project. The text area was isolated from the rest
of the illustration and scaled to size. Then, the designers removed the flowers
and polka dots from the background and added a few flowers to accent the border.

Floral Pillowcases

This project is a great example of how to dress up a "plain" store-bought item.
It also shows how you can work Mary's designs into a room that may not include other
ME items. This is how Mary decorates her own home! She might take a piece or two
of her own work and incorporate it with other designers and artists whose work she
admires to get just the right style without feeling overwhelmed by any one particular
design or theme.

The flowers for this project were adapted from the above illustration, which Mary originally
created for a wall calendar. Mary and the ME Studios artists liked the floral border so much
that what started as a seemingly small side detail has since transformed into inspiration
for a variety of borders, designs and finished products. The designers isolated the floral
border and adapted it for various sizes and formats, such as the above greeting card,
and of course, the pillowcase embroidery projects.

You can get the full details on these projects, as well as 19 more,
including arts and crafts-styled pillows, a throw and more
in "The Art of Embroidery" - in stores and online now!

Coming in January 2008:

A new booklet, "Artistic Needle Felting," with more exciting projects and ideas!