Thursday, July 28, 2022

Paper is a fibre too at Free Motion Mavericks

Hi! Welcome to Free Motion Mavericks, Week 392. The title of this post might indicate that I didn't get any free motion quilting (FMQ) done this week. It's the correct assumption to make. I guess that my overseas partner (Muv) and I have that in common - except that she's having a great time on holidays while I'm still in my studio 😊. I did however, play with paper and paint. Wow, what an adventure!

Making Accordion Books

I found another course/challenge to follow. I know....yet another one but I've been having so much fun 😍 Did you know that paper is a fibre? As a fibre artist, this is all part of learning to make and play....ok I'm really trying to justify my taking yet another course, but I've had a wonderful time making these accordion books.

Day 1 - Accordion book with 8 pockets

The 5-Day Accordion Books Challenge is organised by Vintage Page Designs through The Handmade Book Club (you will find the links in Related links below).

I had to go to my local art supplier to find the correct paper. I was a little nervous because I generally work with printing paper - so it was a new experience for me. The organisers gave us enough information that I was able to find the 2 sheets of 22" x 30" paper of the correct weight. I did buy 3 sheets of the paper and I'm glad since I have ideas on how to use these books...but more on that later 😊

Day 1 Accordion book with 8 pockets

Day 1 had us cutting all of the paper so that we would be ready for all of the challenges. I love working with this paper. It's a good weight but not too stiff. It's really perfect for these projects. We cut each sheet in four so we ended up with 8 strips of about 7½" x 22".

For our first book, we also cut up some paper for tags to put into the pockets.

For each day we have a series of short videos to watch. They are really well made and I found them very simple to watch and follow. The organisers also have a Facebook group for the challenge as well as Zoom calls twice a day to answer questions.

Tags or bookmarks in the pockets

Each day also includes a video from a guest artist who demonstrates techniques for decorating the accordion book. The guest artist for Day 1 was a collage artist, Kat Kirby. I will put all of the week's guest artists' links in Related links.

I don't remember the last time that I played with water colour paint. I picked up a set a while back but never used it. I also found some spray ink in my box of "paint supplies" that I never use. That's what I used for the front and back of the accordion book.

Book with pockets filled with tags

Back of the accordion book with 8 pockets

My husband was quite impressed with this accordion book. Since he's always running out of bookmarks, I'll make him one and included a couple of bookmarks with it. He said that he'll fill up the other pockets with the bookmarks he has.

Day 2 Accordion book with 4 panels and flap

I made this accordion book but haven't had time to embellish it. It has 4 pages, a flap and a closure.

Day 2, a 4 panel accordion book with flap

Here's how to close the flap

Accordion book ready to be embellished and used

Day 3 Layered Accordion Book

I made this accordion book but adjusted it to have more pages instead of an inside layer. The inside layer was like a band inside the book. It's pretty but I really want to be able to use these books.

Stitched fabric on the front of the book

I just had to add fabric to one of the books. I cut the fabric and then sewed it onto the paper using the walking foot that was still on my machine. I did increase the length of the thread so that it wouldn't just puncture the paper.

Instead of keeping the layer in, I cut the middle to make extra pages

The book also had a belly band to keep it closed. I stitched fabric to the outside of the band.

Accordion book with belly band

Here are the three accordion books posing in front of my Jag 😊

Three accordion books posing in front of the Jag!

Day 4 is a spinning accordion book while day 5 is a flag accordion book. Both look very intriguing. I'll have to write another post when I've made possibly embellished them.

What I learned

I can see how people who don't want to paint, could have fun using water colours. I just might try more of this one day.
I found that water colours are a lot like painting on fabric in that it doesn't really matter what you paint, you can always add stencils and stamps (or FMQ to fabric) to make it look good....and that's exactly what I did!
I love making these accordion books and I love it when they can actually be useful (to me or others!)
I had to re-attach the button on the accordion book with 8 pockets. Paper is not as strong as fabric so I ended up placing a piece of scrap fabric on both sides of the paper and then stitching the button through these scraps. It should be pretty secure now.
I have a few ideas for using these books. I was thinking that I could use two of them to illustrate or explain Stéphane's Version 2.0 quilt as well as Jeannine's Paddington quilt. I'm sure that I could play and make a variation of these with some pockets to hold things as well as space to draw or write. It would make a great souvenir of the making of their quilts. My mother made a book for the original Stéphane quilt and it's been really useful to the making of Version 2.0.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to Free Motion Mavericks. If you didn't get any FMQ done, you're not the only one, so don't let that stop you from linking up to this party!

Last time Dawn, of Quilting by Dawn, showed us her Sweet Summer Strawberries Quilt. This is my favourite photo of the quilt. What a beauty. If you didn't see it last time, go check it out!

Sweet Summer Strawberries by Quilting by Dawn

It's now your turn.

Monday, July 25, 2022

Happy hexie flower mug rugs

Hi! It would seem that hexies are back into my life. They are very meditative to prepare and to stitch together (i.e. relatively mindless but enjoyable for a short time).

Happy Purple & Spots

July's colour for the 2022 Table Scraps challenge is purple and the theme is circles, spots and dots. Until last year I had very few fabrics with spots but because of a wonderful gift of scraps, I now have tons.😊

Two English paper pieced, appliquéd, purple & spots mug rugs

As soon as I saw the July theme of spots, I knew that I had the perfect scraps to English paper piece (EPP) some hexies. I also had some gorgeous purple hand-dyed fabrics in my scrap bin. This project was meant to be!

Making the Mug Rug

My first try at stitching the hexies onto the background and batting was a dud since I used free motion quilting (FMQ). It was a mess. I don't often take things apart, but I did this time. I then took my time, pinned down my hexies and very carefully used the walking foot to stitch on the outside of the hexie flower. If you enlarge the picture below you can see puncture marks of very crooked stitch lines around the edges of the flower,

Second attempt at appliquéing the hexie flower

Using a walking foot

Hexie flower stitched down

The next step was to make the mug rug. I had actually planned ahead a little bit and knew that I wanted an envelope or pillowcase type finish. The background piece was twice the length of the mug rug so that it could be used for the background. Below you see that the edges are stitched on two sides of the fabric and the one side is the fold. I left one side open so that I could flip the front out.

Leaving one side open

I learned a couple of lessons during the making of the first mug rug that I was able to apply to the second one (see below).

Stitching the envelope of the second mug rug

Stitched on two sides, ready to be turned inside-out.

Flipped over through the open side

I found that the trickiest part was closing up the open side. Again, I learned a couple of things with the first one that I was able to put into practice on the second.

Over-stitching around the four edges of the background

Two Finished Mug Rugs

First happy hexie flower mug rug

Second happy hexie flower mug rug

Mug rugs in the clover

Mug rugs on a very large Hosta :-)

More Mug Rugs in progress

A third mug rug appliquéd and stitched by hand (WIP)

Last hexie mug rug (WIP)

What I learned

My most important lesson learned is to attach a hexie flower to the background using a walking foot, not FMQ. Lines need to be straight. With all of the layers of fabric, it's a perfect job for the walking foot.
It was very useful to make one mug rug at a time. I was able to use a couple of tricks that I learned from my first try:

It was easier to make the batting a ¼" smaller than the background, and then use the outside of the batting as a guide to stitch around the edges.
When leaving an opening to turn the mug rug over, it's best if the opening is a smaller opening than a full side. It was very easy once right-side out, to stitch up the open portion when a side had been partially stitched on both ends.

You may have noticed that none of my hexie flower mug rugs are centered. I was hoping that I would get better at that as I made more but I seem to have regressed, so my advice is to make it obviously not centered so that it looks like a design feature. 😊

Thursday, July 14, 2022

Books everywhere on Free Motion Mavericks

My favourite summer pastime is reading. In this post, we are celebrating all kinds of books - the free motion quilted (FMQ) and the paper pieced kind 😊

FMQ books of the Version 2.0 kind

I wanted to FMQ something on my son's quilt but it had to be simple and relatively mindless. As I looked at the PowerPoint map of the Version 2.0 quilt, I realised that I could quilt a whole bunch of books onto one of the maroon stripes. Yeah!

FMQ books following the patterns copied
onto Golden Thread quilting paper

I started by tracing 5 or 6 images of books from the internet. From the first tracing, I made a second copy and then pinned them onto the stripe.

All of the traced images are pinned on the stripe

Eventually I had to remove some of the traced images since they were getting in the way of the FMQ. It was easy to pin them back when I was ready to quilt them.

I wish I could say that it was easy and mindless to quilt but that would not be true! Since the quilt is queen size, it's awkward to quilt to begin with. I figured out that I had to start at a top corner of an image so that I could work my way forward and actually see the tracing. I also quilted all of the books sideways since it was the easiest way to place the quilt within the machine.

Here are a couple more pictures!

All kinds of different books -
some even have a feather pen!

Many books as well as the night sky

Update on the Summer Book Club

I'm quite behind on the making of my Tall Tales blocks but I did manage to make ten so far.

Here are my ten lovely book blocks

What I learned

I'm glad that I ended up doing some FMQ on my son's Version 2.0. It's so lovely to see the different areas slowly being filled! It's very encouraging.
Next time, I think that I'll use a thin marker to trace the images so that they'll be easier to see.
There is a blue stripe next to the maroon one that I may tackle next. I'm going to FMQ some herbs since it's something that Stéphane is growing. I hope that he has better luck than me! I hope to practice drawing these and then quilt them without tracing paper.
I'm not going to predict how my Summer Book Club will go but I think that if I make the blocks in an assembly-line fashion, that I'll have better luck with them. I did make a huge effort to concentrate on the last block and it did go well, but I still used the seam ripper a little bit.