Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Floral Update and a Finished Piece on Free Motion Mavericks

Hello and welcome! I hope that my Canadian readers had a good Thanksgiving. I know that it's about more than good food and being with friends and family but I'm thankful that the food was good 😋! I am also very thankful to everyone who reads or even just looks at the pictures each week. It means a lot to me. You have my gratitude.

Floral Fusion Update

As you may know, I've been making my Floral Fusion blocks and following along with Denise at The Quiltery. Once I figured out who was getting this lovely quilt, I was able to sew the pieces together in a wall hanging.

Floral Fusion quilt top done!

I had done about half of the smaller blocks and all of the larger blocks. When I put the blocks together on my board, I was just missing one extra block to make a wall hanging. Once it was done, it was a matter of looking at the different options for the blocks. Here's some of my thinking.

First attempt: I found that the very dark leaves in the top two flowers on the right were too strong.

First attempt

Second attempt: I moved a couple of the larger flowers around. I thought that the top right flower wasn't visually strong enough.

Second attempt

Third attempt: again I moved some of the larger flowers around. The balance was better but I wanted to bolder flowers in the centre column.

Third attempt

Final choice: I exchanged the large flowers at the top so that the more dominant flower was in the centre.

Final placement of Floral Fusion wall hanging

Once this was figured out, I started sewing the columns together. I'm not sure if it was my tension but my machine kept eating the beginning of each section that I was sewing. I used my walking foot, so that might be it, but anyway, I wasn't in the mood to fiddle around with my machine or the foot. I did what most quilters would do in this situation. I sewed a leader block before starting to stitch the Floral Fusion blocks. This was the first time that I had done this.

Using a leader block to stop or ignore the
bunching up at the edge of a seam

For those who are not familiar with this, here's what happened. Sometimes when you start sewing at the very edge of the fabric, the thread bunches right up. It's like the machine wants to eat the fabric. It happens mostly if there is a seam near the edge but in this case, it was just two pieces of fabric. This is VERY frustrating. Some quilters will start their sewing with an extra block to stitch (the leader). I assume that they either start about ⅛" from the edge of the leader or they just live with the bunching up. Either way, if you place the piece that you want to sew right at the end of the leader block, the machine won't eat this new block.

Strips of 2½" wide fabric

I used scraps from Floral Fusion to make leader blocks. I cut strips of 2½" wide fabric and then sewed them before every seam. Many quilters will do this and after a while, they will have enough leaders to make a quilt.

Paisley Collage

I finished up the piece that I started during the Nature's Narrative Workshop with Alice Vander Vennen. I had pulled it apart after the workshop because I liked the elements but not the design. This final design is better but I'm not sure that I like it.

Paisley Collage finished

My piece before pulling it apart

What I learned

I'm really happy with my Floral Fusion wall hanging. It was so much fun to make. Thanks so much Denise for a lovely sew along. It looks like this might be one of the first times that a sew or quilt along doesn't end up as a UFO!
I love playing on the design wall to see how the blocks can be placed. I adjusted the blocks but really, any of those placements would have been fine.
After our last guild meeting, I took a small quilt home from our Community Projects to quilt. I'll use this as an excuse to quilt both of these. Then the guild will have another charity quilt and my daughter will have her new wall hanging. 😊Bonus - apparently I won't have to bind the charity quilt!!!
I've decided to use the pillowcase technique to finish the Floral Fusion quilt. In theory it should be the same as a small piece. I'll find out and let you know!
I'm glad that my workshop piece is finished. One of the things that I don't like about it is the frame. I know that framed art looks more like "art" but it's not my favourite, especially a cheap IKEA frame.
I have an idea for re-purposing one of my previous piece. If I can get it done during the weekend, I'll share it with you. It would be a great way to re-finish a piece that I liked but didn't love. I'm hoping that it will all work, without too much fussing. We'll see. 😉

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 503 of Free Motion Mavericks! Thanks for linking up. It was a productive week but not necessarily in the FMQ department, so I'm going to feature the quilt finish as well as some very amazing purses - not quilted but gorgeous!

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts used her walking foot to quilt her gorgeous Star of Wonder topper. She tried to do Free Motion Quilting but it just didn't want to! Don't you hate that? Anyway she got it all done with her walking foot. It's going to look lovely on a table!

Kat's Star of Wonder topper

Island Batik had their What's in Your Bag Challenge and both Gail and Preeti did an outstanding job on their bags. I'm always so impressed because I know that bags are fiddly and they did a great job!

Here are Gail's small and large Payday bags.

Gail's small and large Payday bags

Next we have Preeti's small and large Snapshot bags.

Preeti's small and large Snapshot bags

It's now your turn!

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Joyful Embroidery with Fleur Woods and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome! 😊 I hope that the change in weather is not too rough on you. I was not enjoying the extreme heat but it would be nice to have temperate weather for a little longer. It looks like we'll be enjoying a couple of warmer days at the end of the week and I'm very grateful that it's not below freezing yet! 🧤 I'm in Canada - what can I say, weather is an important topic of conversation here.

Painting fabric to stitch on

Being very keen to take the class, I signed up for Fleur Woods' class, Joyful Embroidery the first day enrollment opened. I don't normally watch courses ahead of diving in but I think that I was a little intimidated and watching the videos helped me to see where we are going. Eventually I started doing.😊

Flower drawn on painted fabric - ready to embroider

One of our first tasks was to paint some fabric. I think that half of the fabric is linen while the larger pieces are cotton. I mixed up some blue and yellow with the Colour Vie pigment system. I know that it works well on fabric. I watered it down a bit to get a soft wash.

Painted fabric drying outside

Since it was quite cool outside, the fabric stayed out overnight and dried in the morning sun. I took pictures as soon as they were dry but they were very wrinkled. I don't mind some wrinkles but this was too much, so I ironed it and it looks so much better!

The two top pieces on the left are a loose weave linen while the rest is cotton. It's mostly a mottled teal green, with more green than blue. I did have a few splatters of blue on the cotton that I decided to keep - it adds interest and shows the painting process.

Linen squares on the top left with cotton

Practice Stitching

After painting the fabric I decided to start doing the practice stitching. These are all stitches that I've done before and I have so many samplers everywhere that I decided to just stitch up a little area on my eco-printed fabric piece to practice almost all of the stitches. Here it is below. I'll have to use some of these stitches elsewhere on the piece so that it doesn't look out of place.

Practicing most of the stitches on my eco-dyed piece

The only two things that I didn't put on this piece was the Turkey stitch and beading. I added these to a challenge piece that I'm making for the Out of the Box (OOTB) Fall Fling show. More about that below.

Sketching flowers

As you saw at the beginning of the post, we had a section on drawing. I'm not very good at it but with practice I am getting better. Since most of my garden is past its prime, I checked out my photos from this summer. I took these two photos at the beginning of September. I just love that the birds are eating the seeds of the flowers instead of just going to the bird feeder!

I used the image of the flower, without the bird

Using the image of the flower at the bottom

Here are my two sketches, transferred onto fabric using a light box

I just want to mention that I'll be using my special journal to take notes and keep my sketches.

Joyful Embroidery Journal

OOTB Challenge

This spring I helped to organise a brown bag challenge for Out of the Box (OOTB) fibre artists group. Everyone who wanted to participate put a few things in a brown bag for someone else to use in their challenge piece. I had a little bit of plaid fabric, plain white fabric, two kinds of ribbon, a snowflake button, a green flower button and pieces of green felt and red leather. I used a little bit of most of it in the piece, as well as some scraps that I picked up at my quilt guild.

My OOTB brown bag challenge piece

I used the Turkish stitch as well as beading (one bead!) from my Joyful Embroidery sampler exercise. You can see the small tuff of Turkey stitch at the top middle of the piece. The bead is on top of the felt and leather circle at the bottom. I pulled apart one of my daughter's large bracelet.

Close up of the challenge piece "2B Merry!"

You'll notice that I used a bit of home-made twine in the piece and to hang it up. I really love making twine 😍. I'll be adding the flower button and the other ribbon on the back, as part of the label, which will be written up on the white fabric.

"2B Merry" reveals its secret!

Out of the Box (OOTB) Fall Fling

My piece will be part of the Challenge exhibit at Fall Fling in a couple of weeks.

What I learned

I am really enjoying the Joyful Embroidery course will Fleur Woods. Watching most of the course ahead of time has helped me figure out what I want to do and has lowered my anxiety.
I stitched up the practice stitches on my eco-printed cloth as well as in a couple of blocks in my Almost Daily Stitching project of 2024. That was a great way to practice without having to start a new sampler.
In the course, instead of doing the Turkey Stitch which is a very time consuming stitch, we will be learning to do Punch Needle. I just received my Oxford needle punch from Robin, my local distributor. I took her rug hooking course a few years ago. I'll put the details in the Related links section below.
I enjoyed watering down my Colour Vie pigments and painting the fabric with it. It's going to make a great base for the embroidery. Since I had lots of paint left, I painted a few sheets of water colour paper so that I can use it to sketch on, before embroidering. You can see the paper in the first image of this post, above the fabric and sketch.
I've also been stitching on eco-printed paper (more in another post) so I could also use those painted papers to embroider on. That would be very cool!😎
I had a lot of fun working on the "2B Merry" OOTB challenge piece. The background fabric is a swatch of upholstery fabric that I got from a fellow artist. What a great way to use it! I also stitched around one of the grommets. It's great to be able to keep it to hang the piece.
I didn't have to stitch around the second grommet since it's hidden by the fabric of the twine.
I haven't really done anything to enter into the Fall Fling show yet. I'm not sure that I'll have time to make anything before then but I will be attending both days since I'll be sitting at the membership table.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 502 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a very productive week! Thanks so much for linking up😊. Check out these amazing projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Last week Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts had two quilt patterns published! Both of them used the Peppermint Sprinkles collection of Island Batik fabrics. The first quilt, "Good Tidings" is in Annie's Christmas Pattern book while the second, "Austin", is in Make Modern #60. Check out Preeti's post for links to the patterns.

Preeti's "Good Tiding", now in
Annie's Christmas Pattern book

Preeti's "Austin" is in Make Modern #60

Donnalee has started making more table toppers for her guild's sale in 15 months! Check out her first three.

More table toppers by Donnalee

Melva of Melva Loves Scraps quilted up a lovely vintage table cloth, ready to use for tea.

Melva's lovely quilted vintage table cloth, ready for tea!

Kathleen of Kathleen's McMusing created a lovely quilt, "Accidental Stars" for the Flower Pot Blog Hop. I really love the quilt's secondary pattern.

Kathleen's "Accidental Stars" quilt

Margo of MY Quilts and Crafts finished her baby quilt as well as a fabric basket. Both are lovely!

Margo's finished baby quilt

The perfect gift basket by Margo

Thanks so much for linking up and visiting! It's now your turn 😊

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

#2024 Quilting Q2 and Q3 Check-In

Hi and welcome. I missed the second quarter (Q2) check-in but since I found writing up a first quarter (Q1) check-in post so useful, I'm going to put both Q2 and Q3 here. I hope that you'll indulge me - it is a long post.

Second Quarter Check-in

April, May and June

Although I worked on a few larger projects, most of my finishes in the second quarter were smaller pieces.

Spring Tulips was an ambitious 3D art piece. The background was quilted while the vase and tulips in the vase were created with Solvy water soluble stabilizer. You can find all of the details in this post.

Spring Tulips, a 3D art piece

I also made a number of Cathedral windows hot pads using a layer cake package and a wonderful tutorial. These made great gifts.

Cathedral windows hot pads

As usual, I participated in the Table Scraps Challenge. This is a cute yellow cuddle quilt. I was able to practice my FMQ and quilting with rulers. I finally figured out how to properly use my universal darning foot. More practice is required but it was a lot of fun.

Yellow cuddle quilt

In May, I participated in a workshop taught by Alice Vander Vennen. I really like the mini that I made during the Nature Narrative workshop. I'm still working through the design of my larger piece.

Mini made during the Nature Narrative workshop

In June, I learned Kawandi style quilting from Jen Strauser during Making Zen. I finished it during our Alaskan cruise. It was a great stitching project for the trip.

Kawandi style quilting

From March to April I started the 2 Colour Mystery Quilt hosted by Joanne of Canuck Quilter design. It consisted of only two colours and worked my accuracy challenged brain. I sewed six of the twelve blocks, which is in week 7 but didn't post on it. This is now a WIP, unless it becomes a UFO. 😁

Half of the blocks sewn together -
at least all of the fabrics and blocks are in one place!

See the Parade of Quilts on
Canuck Quilter's site

Third Quarter Check-in

July, August and September

The end of June was an incredibly busy time as I tried to finish up my pieces for the Impermanence - Éphémère Outdoor Fibre Art Exhibit at the Arbor Gallery in Vankleek Hill. We set up the exhibition in early July with a vernissage on July 5th.

For the first time ever, I used my blog as a way of keeping track of what I still needed to do to get the 5 pieces ready. In fact, there were 5 pieces, but two of these consisted of 5 and 4 art pieces. I'm not going to repeat everything in this post. If you're interested, I created a page "My pieces in the Impermanence - Éphémère Outdoor Fibre Art Exhibit". It has lots of details and links to the original posts.

The outdoor exhibit was very well received and there is a possibility of participating again next summer.

Three seasonal garden fence art pieces

In the Sky, an Outdoor Hanging Sculpture

A series of Prayer Flags

I am very happy to say that all of these outdoor pieces are now in my yard.

In the Sky is now hanging in my poplar

The series of Prayer Flags

Raining Pink Petals and Essence of Leaves

Squirrel! is the only one that was changed by being
outdoors. Someone (probably a squirrel) stole the nut
that the squirrel was getting ready to eat😂

At the end of September I learned to make twine with fabric strips. This is my latest yard art piece.

Yard Art piece made with twined fabric

In mid-July I mosquito proofed my swing. I am so happy with it and spent many hours, mostly in the evening, enjoying the back yard without being eaten alive!

Mosquito proofed swing

After the intense productivity of June, it was wonderful just playing around and making small projects. This is my second finished Kawandi style quilt. It was bigger than the first piece and I would love to make an even larger one eventually.

Second Kawandi style quilt

After quilting the yellow cuddle quilt using rulers, I decided to make a scrappy blue butterfly table topper. I quilted it using FMQ and rulers. Practice does make it easier!

Scrappy blue butterfly table topper

During our Alaska cruise, I started on a mini landscape quilt based on one of the pictures that I took. Enjoying Alaska was finished after re-doing the gray mountains using FMQ instead of embroidery. Textile art can be so forgiving. Don't like a section? Just cover it up!

Enjoying Alaska mini landscape quilt

Another project that is a WIP is my Tibetan appliqué piece. I absolutely love it but have been distracted by pretty much everything! I only wrote one post on this project but got quite a bit further on it. I need to add another border, stitch on some cording and then decide how to finish it. I will probably quilt it but I'm quite nervous about it. I'll have to feel very Zen before tackling it!

Tibetan appliqué piece in progress (WIP)

I had a few playdates with my friend Connie to create journals. With her encouragement I did some eco printing on paper. This was the first one that I stitched on.

Embroidering on eco printed paper

I continued to make scrappy pieces for the 2024 Table Scraps Challenge. This is my orange scraps piece. I started using orphan blocks and adding to them. I also used the pillowcase method to finish these off. It's so much easier than binding small pieces.

Orange scraps piece made around an orphan block

This is a second scrappy mat that I made using an orphan block. I used it to practice my FMQ.

Second scrappy mat

For International dog day I made this lovely scrappy mat for Poppy's water dish. It has doggy prints as well as fabric picturing her friends (birds, rabbits, squirrels, etc.) 😀

International dog day scrappy mat for Poppy's water dish

Finally these are the last scrappy mug rugs that I finished for my son's niece to play with. I only used scraps, most of which I had just gotten at our quilt guild meeting.

Scrappy Play mug rugs

As part of the pre courses for the 2024 Sketchbook Revival, I made a journal for hubby to use at work as well as one for me. This was a new technique by a new-to-me teacher.


Lay-flat Notebook with French Link Stitches

5 hole pamphlet stitch journal

I treated myself to a course, Joyful Embroidery with Fleur Woods through Fibre Arts Take Two. To get ready, I made a Joyful Journal for my notes.

My Joyful Journal

As if these projects weren't enough to keep me busy, I started the Floral Fusion Sew Along presented by fellow blogger Denise of The Quiltery. I am presently a couple of weeks behind but should be able to get caught up on the weekend (my famous last words!)

Floral Fusion blocks so far

I have a couple of ongoing embroidery projects but the one that I've stitched on the most in the last quarter is the Almost Daily Stitching project of 2024. I love trying out new embroidery stitches, thread and designs. It's coming along nicely and is still a stress-free project done whenever I feel like it.

Almost Daily Stitching project

Well, it looks like I've had a very productive second and third quarter this year. Thanks so much to Quilting Jetgirl for hosting this great event. Again, I'm so glad that I've taken the time to do this.

Linking parties

I'll be linking this post to many fun linking parties, particularly the #2024QuiltingQ3CheckIn. Sew & Tell, Midweek Makers, Put your foot down, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall Friday, Beauties Pageant, TGIFF, Patchwork & Quilts,

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 501 of Free Motion Mavericks! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts used an all over design to quilt up her Sulky Village quilt, started in 2004! She quilted wavy lines using Superior Bottom Line thread, perfect for such a busy top.

Sulky Village quilt by Kat

Details of the Sulky Village quilt

Vivian, the Bronx Quilter custom quilted her lovely "Apple Crisp" quilt. She wasn't sure how to quilt it but then went literal - using an apple core template as a ruler to quilt the inside of her blocks and borders. She used her clam shell ruler to stitch the sides of her triple four patch blocks.