Wednesday, October 05, 2022

Exciting News

Hi, you may remember that I taught a Meditation Stitching course this summer. It was a great experience, and I'll be repeating it (in French!) at the end of November.

Getting Ready

I know that I have a lot of time to get ready, and that this is probably another great way of procrastinating, but I've prepared this lovely piece to show at the course.

Joyful

There isn't anything very about doing mindful stitching. It's all about taking the time to be creative, to set a few parameters around what you want to do, and then enjoying the meditative process of stitching. I believe that doing this process regularly can help to keep you grounded, bring relaxation and encourage creativity.

As an exercise, I used my wonky block sample to see if I could create four different blocks from each quarter of the cut-up block.

I cut this sample block into 4 to make meditation blocks

Here is my stitching process. I chose various fabrics that might go with the base block and then started stitching. My favourite stitches are the running stitch, cross stitch, blanket stitch, chain stitch and a variation of the fly/feather stitch. These embroidery stitches are about as basic as it gets.

Adding fabrics and colour

Using stitches to add texture
(and more colour!)

At some point I trim the block, although I do like having things sticking out when I can. 😊 Here are close ups of the blocks.

First block

You can see that all of the bases started with the wonky star but evolved pass that! I love using different thread, yarn, and fabrics like hand-dyed cheese cloth, organza, felt, linen and velour. The flowers were cut from one of my favourite top.

Second block

I love how I can use up little bitsy pieces of some of my favourite fabric. Now I have an excuse to keep all of my tiny scraps if they are interesting :-)

Block 3

I also added beads on this last one. It looks so elegant!

Block 4

Creating a 4 drop hanging

One of the things that I want to include in my class are options for how these wonderful mindful stitching blocks can be displayed.

While reading a "new-to-me" Creative Embroidery book by Dilys Blackburn, I found a wonderful example of a drop hanging that is used to display embroidery pieces. The link to the book is in Related links below.

Since my finished blocks were roughly 4" square, I decided to make the finished hanging square 4½". I started by cutting my white fabric in 5" squares. I placed 2 squares facing each other, then added the square of batting on top. With my walking foot, I stitched with a ¼" seam all around the square except for a 1½" opening on one side. I then trimmed the batting and then turned the square inside out through the hole. In the image of my first block, I left a 3" space to turn the square inside out. This was a little too large, so I reduced the openings of the other blocks.

Opening pinned before stitching

I repined that opening so that the square would be more square. Then I top stitched around the whole square, as close to the edge as possible. After the four blocks were finished, I attached some wide white ribbon.

Back of the hanging

To prevent fraying, I cut the ribbon with pinking shears and the added a ½" fusible web and folded it over. I made sure that the ribbon was long enough so that I could sew a single layer over the original top stitched line. After I was all done, I just hand-stitched the edges down to stop them from flopping over.

I attached the meditation blocks with a couple of beads on the top corners. I want the students to be able to look at the blocks as much as possible. This also allows me to switch out the blocks if I wanted to.

I then went on a photo shoot in the back yard.

Twix and Taffy (my brother's dogs) exploring the area.

A close up with the tree and sun as backdrop

The picture that I took at night because I was so impatient 😊

What I learned

I do find it difficult to know when to stop embellishing these beauties. Often it's when I've had enough 😊
I've been reading about blogging and decided that I need to up my game by taking better photos. It's not always easy because I usually finish a piece in the evening and then have to wait for the next day to take good pictures.
I got so caught up with making the hanging that I only took one process picture. If I make another, it might be a good subject for a tutorial!