Your free May wallpaper has arrived! We thought it extra fitting to continue celebrating our 5th Birthday celebrations by using this month’s free design and contest freebie as our wallpaper design. You can also win this design on a limited edition Urban Threads T-shirt!

So, lots of ways to get your hands on this baby for free. As a design, as a tee, and now as a chic wallpaper available in the usual formats for your computer desktop, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, or Android phone.  Just click the buttons below to download and load onto your device. Don’t fret if you have a different kind of phone or device, one of these is sure to work 

Enjoy, and be sure to help us celebrate 5 wonderful years of alternative embroidery by shopping the STOREWIDE sale!

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In case you haven’t noticed, it’s our birthday month around here, and we’re giving you a chance to not only celebrate with a BIG storewide sale (OMG go shop now!), but a chance to win one of these limited edition Urban Threads tees!  We had our first giveaway Monday, this is chance number two!

This rocking tee features a grungy graphic print of our new coloring contest freebie design, with the Urban Threads URL on the back. It’s bold and crafty and just a little bit punk, kinda like Urban Threads. So, how do you enter to win a chance at your tee today?

Today you can enter to win one of these rad shirts by leaving a comment on this post telling us what your favorite Tutorial is on Urban Threads. In love with those sweater boots? Maybe you’re a big fan of upcycling things.  Leave it in the comments for this post by tonight at 11:59 p.m., Central time (that’s basically before midnight tonight) to enter for a second chance to win your own UT shirt! Please leave just ONE comment per person, thanks.

Ready? GO! And be sure to celebrate 5 awesome years of alternative embroidery by shopping the ENTIRE collection on SALE for a limited time!

Woo birthdays!

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s our birthday month around here, and to celebrate turning the big 5 we’ve kicked off not only a storewide sale (OMG go shop now!), but 5 chances to win one of these limited edition Urban Threads tees!  Three this week with Monday (today) Wednesday and Friday, and two next week on Tuesday (our actual birthday!) and Thursday.

This rocking tee features a grungy graphic print of our new coloring contest freebie design, with the Urban Threads URL on the back. It’s bold and crafty and just a little bit punk, kinda like Urban Threads. So, how do you enter to win a chance at your tee today?

Today you can enter to win one of these rad shirts by leaving a comment on this post telling us what your favorite Category is on Urban Threads. This could be anything from a giant category like Art Styles, or something more specific like the Steampunk & Victorian section. What’s the place you find yourself visiting most? Leave it in the comments for this post by tonight at 11:59 p.m., Central time (that’s basically before midnight tonight) to enter for a chance to win your own UT shirt!

Ready? GO! And be sure to celebrate 5 awesome years of alternative embroidery by shopping the ENTIRE collection on SALE for a limited time!

Want even more? Check out this flickr gallery of all the entries thus far, then go grab the contest freebie, check out the details, and get stitching for a chance to win a $100 UT gift certificate! Remember this contest closes  Friday, May 31, 2013, so get a move on.

That’s right, Spring is finally here! Lets party with the May flickr roundup…

Time Wrinker has posted some really sweet zipper pouches on the UT flickr group recently. She rocked out this crazy dog lady pouch so fast! I love the cute bone zipper pull.

This is phenomenal! I love the style of the bag, paired with the sweet hanging bats. Shefightslikeagirl did an amazing job with this piece.

Wowza! Pooka employed many beautiful hand stitching techniques to create this skeleton girl cameo. Her smart teenage daughter commandeered it for her room!

Very cute monster key chain. Marylou has many more fun creations posted on the flickr pool. Check her out!

Becca made custom shopping bags to take to her local wool festival! I bet these knitting skully bags will look great filled to the brim with new yarn and other woolly delights.

I love this veggie collage  pouch by Brandy. It would be such a great place to keep veggie seeds for gardening. Yay spring!

There is a lot of awesome happening here. Jennifer hand dyed her threads! I love the metallic accents at the top also. Stunning work!

I love this black on white leather clutch by MiaSpider. The lace accents pair nicely with the Victorian quilting designs.

Another great Don’t Panic design, turned pincushion! I’m digging the amazing fuchsia baroque frame Meagan found for her piece.

This gorgeous piece of jewelry was crafted by Anik! The asymmetrical way the lace lays across her collar bones is really stellar.

What a great embroidery party! A big thanks to everyone who posted their amazing creations to the UT flickr pool. Keep the creative magic coming, we love it.

Do you want to see your stuff featured in a roundup? Upload it to our flickr pool or e-mail it to blog@urbanthreads.com, and you could see your stuff on StitchPunk

]]> http://www.urbanthreads.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=8612 3 http://www.urbanthreads.com/blog/?p=8638 http://www.urbanthreads.com/blog/?p=8638#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 17:30:17 +0000 Niamh http://www.urbanthreads.com/blog/?p=8638

Craft up some magical garments with the new Elven Court collection of embroidery designs! Vines and leaves intertwine with dragonflies, gems, knotwork, and enchanting emblems in these gorgeous new designs, on sale through May 19, 2013. These light-stitching designs are sure to inspire some charming new projects!

Wear pretty dragonfly wings on the back of a jacket, shirt, or dress…

Combine the versatile shapes to perfectly suit sleeves and other uniquely shaped areas…

Mix natural elements with enchanting knotwork…

Wear antlers as a delicate neckline embellishment…

…and combine your choice of designs to create a perfectly magical outfit!

These new Elven Court designs are on sale only through May 19, 2013 — just $1.33 per machine embroidery design, only $0.50 for each hand embroidery pattern, and an even better deal on the design packs. Grab these gorgeous designs today, and start stitching up your own magical creations!

Jennifer talked to us a little about the crafty process and how she got into making some of these felted creations…

To a Good Home original design

As this is not an embroidery technique, a lot of folks might be curious about needle felting. Can you explain a little about what it is and how you got into it?

Needle felting is the process of interlocking wool fibers by stabbing it with a barbed needle. The barbs catch the scales on the fiber and cause them to tangle and bind together. I started needle felting at the beginning of this year. I have sort of made an annual “resolution” to learn a new craft. This year it was needle felting, last year was painting and the year before was, of course, hand embroidery.

Mr. Nomster original design

What inspired you to pick certain designs?

Well, I’ve been hand embroidering Urban Threads designs for a good while now. (I just love them!) It’s pretty easy how I pick them. As of now, if I stitched it, I’ll felt it.

Hippity Hop original design

Do you like stitching the design first? Or felting it?
That’s a hard question to answer. I love doing both. But it I had to choose, I think I would stitch the design first!

What’s been your favorite piece so far?
Cupcakes are my absolute fave to felt but my favorite Urban Threads design I have felted would have to be the “Do not feed monster”.

Om Nom Nom original design

Any challenges you’ve faced, or advice for someone who wants to try for the first time?

Oh, of course. There were many challenges I’ve faced and I’m sure there’s many more to come. For those of you who are interested in needle felting, you should definitely give it a go. You can find wool roving in so many different colors on Etsy.

Cutie Patootie Panda original design

There’s absolutely no limit to what you can create with needle felting. There’s a lot of needle felting tutorials out there and books that teach you step by step. The best advice I can give is it just “Go with it.” Don’t get discouraged if your felting is not looking like what it’s supposed to. Either add more roving to fix it or just create an entirely new felting

Over the Moon original design

Any other designs you have in the works, or you’d like to try next?

I have some designs in the works. I’ve started these things called “Pop-Bouquets.” So far I have a star bouquet and a cupcake bouquet. Recently, I started felting characters for video games. So far I’ve felted few from the Super Mario Bros.  Also, these are all available in my Etsy store.

Thanks so much Jennifer for sharing these amazing needle felted creations! It’s always such fun to see how different people bring Urban Threads designs to life, whether it be in stitches or something totally new. Every new craft is a source of inspiration!

Do you want to have your project featured on StitchPunk, stitchy or otherwise? Drop us a line at blog@urbanthreads.com or upload your Urban Threads stuff to our flickr group!

We’ve got a new edition of our “Get the Look” series, and this one is all about the fellas! I feel like sometimes they get a little neglected in the embroidery industry. So today, we have this slick distressed embroidered men’s shirt with contrasting detail from ROAR. I’m loving the slightly tribal and light stitching look of this piece. How to get something similar? Easy!

First, find yourself (or your fella) a similarly fit button down. Take a look at some of the colors already offered on the shirt. This can often be a great place to start in choosing colors. For instance, the deep reddish buttons on this piece inspired the color of the designs, which helps make the whole thing look more cohesive when you stitch it.

To get the look of the previous tribal-y cross-inspired design, you can combine the Lucky 7 Cross with the lighter stitching Tribal Swirl. These designs are perfect for layering, not unlike we did in this tutorial using the same Lucky 7 Collection.

Using a similar placement, open the shirt and hoop up the upper left shoulder. Stitch two mirrored tribal pieces first, then finish it off with the cross design on top. A little bolder, and a little less light stitching than the original, but still doable on a men’s shirt that’s not too light. Worried it’s too dense? Try a smaller version of the cross or go with an applique version. Either way you’ll still get a similar look.

Easy! From a thrift store find to a hip new shirt for him, all it takes are some light stitches and so special hooping techniques. Just remember to keep your colors in harmony with the colors already present on the shirt, and it will look like it came off the rack just like that!

I am a professional costumer, and just completed a youth theater production of Peter Pan. We used the UT logo all over the place- pirate hats, stage crew do rags ,and costume crew bandanas. Parents of the younger kids especially liked it because it was piratey without being too scary.

I also wore the vest emblazoned with my “personal motto”, which you so kindly turned into an embroidery design. It gave many opportunities to plug your website. Keep up the great work!

Check it out… Urban Threads has its very own pirate crew! Well, not exactly, but that’s how I’m going to tell it. All those skulls and crossbones and swarthy looking swashbucklers. Seriously, you helped us take over the world with an army of tiny bunnies, now we have a whole crew of buccaneers to boot! We’ll be unstoppable.

Thanks so much for sharing Nancy, it looks like you guys had a blast!

P.S. We actually already have a pirate captain. I wonder if she’s looking for a new pirate crew?

The month of May is upon us, and that means one very important thing around here at Urban Threads…

It’sOurBirthdayIt’sOurBirthday…yea yea It’sOurBirthday!

Remember this? Oh yeah, we had a coloring contest once before, and it was so much fun, I forget what reasons we possibly had for not doing it again! So here we are. We’re going to be the big 5 this year and we thought it was about darn time to bring it back in a grand way, with all the freebies, contests, voting and BIG prizes you could hope for.

So first, we’re going to give you this awesome “Create” freebie!

You can download it here, and it will be free now through May 31. If this shiny free design wasn’t awesome enough, how about the fact that this free thing that can win you more free things!

This is how: as we’ve learned, most of you take peek at the color sheet to see what each stop does, then toss it out the window and show us how it’s done (often with fantastic results, like last time). So, want to show us those mad color skills again?

Download the design and then stitch up your own fantastic new color scheme, and then email your entry to contest@urbanthreads.com and either:

1. attach a photo of your entry in the email
2. or include a link to your photo’s location in the Urban Embroidery flickr group with the tag utcolorcontest2013

Remember, you can stitch up your coloring contest entry using your embroidery machine or by hand. Entries will be accepted through Friday, May 31, 2013. Machine and hand embroidery will be judged in their own categories, and you may submit up to three entries in each category.

After all the entries are in, our lovely team at Urban Threads will pick the 5 top finalists from each category, hand and machine. As an extra bonus, all stitchers who get into this final round will automatically win a $10 gift certificate to Urban Threads! Finalists will be notified through email.

Once the finalists are chosen, we will post the lucky 10 up on the blog on Monday, June 3, and you’ll have through that week to vote on your favorite color scheme in each category (hand and machine) and pick the winners of the grand prize!

So, what do the final two crafty coloring stitchers win?

The lucky embroiderers who get the most votes  in each category will win a $100 gift certificate to grab all the designs you ever coveted on your wish list! Or at least get you a good ways until our next birthday

So, download the freebie, choose your own colors, and email your entry for the chance at $100 worth of UT goods. What are you waiting for? Grab your free design and start stitching!