Thursday, October 31, 2024

Scraps, Embroidery and Free Motion Mavericks

Allô and welcome 😎 I believe that this is the loveliest, warmest Hallowe'en day I've ever seen. Not very spooky here 👻👻 It's been another busy week but I did teach, in French, on Monday and it went really well. I was happy to see that my French and IM (Information Management) knowledge weren't too rusty after two years away from work😊 I've taken the rest of the week off to rest and read, so not much sewing except for repairs to a friend's boat cover. Now that it's no longer in my studio, I can get back to artsy things!

Light and Dark Scrappy Runner


October's colour for the Table Scraps Challenge is light or dark browns so I'm finally making my son's placemat with both dark and light brown scraps. I'll try to include a quilted cat since that's our October theme.

Dark and light brown on this side

Dark and light mostly brown on this side

During our Fall Fling, one of the artists gave me a bag of mostly cotton scraps. How fun! Many of the scraps in these two pieces come from that haul (way better than Hallowe'en candy!) It included what looks like fabrics from a Thanksgiving line of fabrics. I made sure to add more fabric because I didn't want the placemat to only be about Thanksgiving. On the second picture the three strips on the right come from pillow shams that my mother made for my grandfather (along with a quilt). I know that my son will appreciate that.

This is as far as I've gotten. The two pieces will be cut down to match the scrappy placemats that I made everyone. My son was last since he wanted neutrals. I have until November 3rd to link up to the October Table Scraps Challenge, so watch out for a post this weekend.

A bit more Embroidery


I haven't done much embroidery this week, but I did add a little bit to the Needle Punch piece that I've been working on for the Joyful Embroidery course. Since my last post, I added the brown leaf fabric at the bottom and covered it with organic blanket stitch. I decided to stitch outside of the fabric area and I love how it looks. I'll probably go back and do the same for the blue-green fabric.

Adding stitching on and around the leaf fabric

I added a row of yellow thread between both fabric areas which I'll be thread-weaving. If it looks good, I'll make it a larger area.

After looking at the YouTube videos about the different yarns to use in punch needle, I experimented with adding my lovely linen yarn which was too slippery to use alone. I paired it with a thin cotton yarn and it worked beautifully. There is also so much dimension when more than one yarn is used.

A Black Eyed Susan in my Almost Daily Stitching piece

Since Fleur Woods encouraged us to stitch more than one of our flowers for additional practice, I added a sweet Black Eyed Susan in my Almost Daily Stitching piece 2024. I drew it on with a Frixion pen and then stitched it in no time. Practice does make it better and easier. 😊

On my way from work to my car, I noticed this amazing mural. I knew that you would appreciate it also!
Mural in Hull district of Gatineau

I also saw hundreds of Canada Geese in the sky as I was coming home from Fall Fling last week.

Safe journey everyone!

What I learned
  • It was so nice to get back to sewing after so long. Hand stitching is awesome but it seems that I need both in my life.
  • I love going through scraps that I've been gifted. What can I say, it's better than Hallowe'en chocolate (but not quite as good as great chocolate! Thanks Lise for that amazing birthday chocolate😋)
  • Now that I "discovered" fabric twining, I get to keep narrow, long pieces of fabric - or even ripping up long strips. Oh joy, I'll need another basket just for twining strips!
  • It's so much fun adding "special" scraps to a project, like from my mother's pillow sham for my grandfather. 
  • I'm having a great time experimenting with the punch needle project, like playing with different yarn and embroidering outside of the lines. 
  • Since I'll be making a quilt sandwich for the placemat, I'm also going to take the opportunity to sandwich my Floral Fusion wall hanging and a small quilt that I got from the Community Quilts table at the last guild meeting. Hopefully there will be some fun FMQ here soon! 
Related links
Linking parties

Free Motion Mavericks


Welcome to week 505 of Free Motion Mavericks. It was a lovely and productive week for last week's party! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts finished up a lovely 18" Christmas Candle Mat. 

Kat's lovely 18" Christmas Candle Mat

Donnalee added the eyes and whiskers to her Avocado Cat. He is gorgeous! Look out for her Eggplant Cat next!

Donnalee's finished Avocado Cat.

Quilting Gail linked up her latest wonderful quilt - this time for her son's birthday. This one was all about the fabrics (a bundle of Tim Holtz fabric). Gail used her Silly Moon Kite ruler for the blocks and then swirls for the 

Gail's latest finish for her son

Here is the FMQ loveliness.

Gail's quilt as seen from the back

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts has produced another beauty, Presto Mushrooms! It's got an amazing amount of colour going on! Perfect for a six year old and me! 

Presto Mushrooms by Preeti

A close up of Presto Mushrooms by Preeti

 It's now your turn

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Wednesday, October 23, 2024

More Joyful Embroidery and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome 😊 It's been a crazy week here between stitching, getting ready for Out of the Box (OOTB) Fall Fibre Fling and membership and actually working! When I retired, I never thought that I would ever say that again. It's actually been great, so no regrets!

Stitching Black-eyed Susan


I usually share my disasters but I'm making an exception here. My first attempt at stitching the flower was a complete disaster. I'm not exaggerating. I picked out the embroidery thread since it was easier than re-drawing the flower. Then I watched Fleur Wood's video and it was clear that my stitches had been too long. Fleur uses a split-back stitch to colour in her flowers. It's sort of like a short-long stitch but better. It ended up being very fun to do!

First two flowers stitched

For the first flower, I used 3 strands of embroidery floss for the petals and then two strands for the outline. In my first attempt, I had used a lighter colour for the outline and that did not look good. So I did learn something other than don't use long stitches!

First flower needs a stem and centre

The first flower was stitched with the split-back stitch. I used a stem stitch for the outline. This really helps to show where the petals overlap. I am using very sharp embroidery needles and have left a bit of DNA on my piece. I didn't bother washing it off since it was stitched over.
 
Working on the second flower

I used 6 strands of brown embroidery floss for the centre of both flowers. I started with the split-back stitch and then covered it in French Knots. The stems are done in stem stitch, in a light green #8 perle cotton. 

For the second flower, I used a yellow #8 perle cotton for the petals. I'm happy to say that it didn't make much difference. I'm happy because when I can, I prefer embroidering with perle cotton.

Punch Needle


As I mentioned last week, Fleur has shown us how to use punch needle instead of using a Turkey stitch to make rug-like fringes. I must admit that I had a hard time getting used to using the punch needle but a little practice and some very good information from Amy Oxford of the Oxford Punch Needle School helped a lot. In her video about which yarns to use, she explains the mechanics of the punch needle and gives suggestions of yarns that work and don't work. 

In the image below, I was trying to use a cheap inexpensive embroidery thread. If it doesn't work, Amy suggests to either double up the thread if it's very fine, or use a "control" thread such as wool along with it. I managed to do one line with this teal thread but gave up after that. I only watched the video after giving up. 

Trying various yarns and threads in the Punch Needle

For punch needle the image at the top shows you that I worked from there, but it's actually the back of the piece. The lovely fringe comes up on the other side, as you can see in the image below.

Later on I used a gorgeous fine variegated cotton yard. I used two pieces of thread in the punch needle. It worked beautifully and the mixed colours of the variegated thread came out great. If this image is a little confusing it's because I flipped the hoop around and punch needled from the front, to obtain a flat lovely area. Since it worked so well, I flipped the hoop again and added some fringe for the top in the same yarn. 
Experimenting with doing punch needle from the back and the front

At the beginning, it's difficult not to have the thread pop out of the fabric so once I was finished, I embroidered with the same yarn in the areas with gaps. When the fringe is actually on top, you don't notice these gaps, unless they are huge. On the top, the luscious fringes take up lots of space. 

In the image below, you can see that I added some curly twined fabric at the top. In the space between the yellow and green rug area, I stitched the fabric strip down to add crinkly texture. 

Punch needle, stitching and adding interesting texture

This is where I've gotten so far. Below the green rug, I added a scrap of blue green fabric and stitched some organic blanket stitches on top. I'm not sure where I'll go next with the piece, but I did add a few interesting bits that could work....we'll see 😁

Embroidery stitching on fabric and a few ideas

I wanted to share with you this great picture I took earlier today. It's been raining leaves!

Raining Leaves in the backyard!

Coming up - Fall Fibre Fling!


I was happy to learn that I only have one shift at the Membership table since the volunteer coordinator included this in the list. I'll be doing one shift on Saturday afternoon and then a shift at the front doors on Friday early afternoon. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's art. Since this is a sale, there is likely to be a little less art and a lot of fun textile things for sale. I'll try to keep my purchases reasonable 😍 

This Friday and Saturday in Ottawa

What I learned
  • When embroidering, don't draw your flower too close to the edge of the fabric - it makes it more difficult to stitch! I really should know that but didn't notice until I came to stitch it.
  • I love the effect that the paint had on the fabric. It's so uneven and splotchy, and yet stitches up very well!
  • I enjoyed stitching the flowers using the split-back stitch and it didn't take long that my stitches were improving.
  • I really like the stem stitch, so that's what I used for the outlines and the stems.
  • As I mentioned I'm happy that in this instance, the #8 perle cotton was similar to three strands of embroidery floss. I just prefer stitching (and threading) perle cotton!
  • I know that we'll be going back to work on these flowers later because Fleur Woods is all about layering and she believes that more is better 😁
  • Punch needle is a skill that is improved with practice. 
  • Once I got the basics and my work should have been ok, I looked up Oxford Punch Needle on Google and got the exact video that I needed. I figured that my problem was the yarn that I used...and I was correct. 
  • So don't be afraid to search out more information if what you're doing isn't working. Odds are, someone else had the same issues and you'll find it solved somewhere!
  • I love being able to do punch needle from both the back and the front. It also helped me understand what what happening at both ends.
  • I have been stitching much more densely then they recommend when you are making a rug. It will be fun to actually make a small rug at some point.
  • I've registered for a workshop on punch needle next winter. The workshop is with Robin through OOTB. Then I can learn to use punch needle the way that it was meant to be used.
  • Fall Fling was a huge success. People love seeing what we do and I love having an excuse to talk about it.😊
Related links
Linking parties

Free Motion Mavericks


Welcome to week 504 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a productive week! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts finished quilting two very lovely Swirling Star Christmas Toppers. Check out her post to see the FMQ from the back!

Swirling Star Christmas Toppers by Kat

Donnalee only has the buttons to add to her Avocado Cat. How cute is that?

Avocado Cat by Donnalee

Dawn of Quilting by Dawn made a gorgeous Circle of Friends quilt for the newlyweds. In the photo you can see the lovely stitching. 

Circle of Friends quilt made by Dawn

It's now your turn!

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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. 😉
Related links
Linking parties

Great News: Floral Fusion was featured on Needle & Thread Thursday. Thanks Kelly!

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!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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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. 
Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. You might want to check some of the out, before you link up below! Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Midweek Makers, Put your foot down, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall Friday, Beauties Pageant, TGIFF, Patchwork & Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2024, Oh Scrap!,

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 😊

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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