Thursday, June 12, 2025

Floral Fusion Finally Finished!

Hello and welcome 😀! I hope this post finds you well. I'm slowly getting back to stitching and working in my studio. I've also spent some lovely mornings outside in the backyard. Coffee always tastes better there! This week I even have a finish! Yay!!!

Floral Fusion wall hanging

My first post about the Floral Fusion SAL was at the beginning of September. I was pretty good at keeping up and started sewing the blocks together in mid-October. Unfortunately it's taken until now to finish it. It will finally be hanging on my daughter's wall.

Finished! Floral Fusion wall hanging

I went outside yesterday for the photo shoot. I just hung the wall hanging in front of my prayer flags.

Floral Fusion hanging in the backyard

In my last post, I mentioned that I had found some of the dark fabric from the wall hanging in my stash. It finished up quickly and looks great. I was hoping to finish this early and I did 😊. It's my June One Monthly Goal (OMG), so I'll be linking it to the party at the end of the month.

Floral Fusion wall hanging

What I learned & updates

I always have a hard time finishing up SAL or QAL on time - they usually linger for years as UFOs. I'm really happy that this one didn't!
I'm so grateful to Denise at the Quiltery for hosting her SAL. It was a lot of fun.
I got to use a lot of older floral fabrics - many of my mother's scraps from the summer dresses she used to make.
I'm also working on some mending - a pair of jeans that needs a new behind, and cut-off shorts that need a couple of patched to be presentable 😉
My studio is slowly coming along, but I need to rethink my book making storage. It's taking up too much space, especially for the much smaller amount of time that I spend making journals. The problem is that if it's not easy accessible, it'll never get used!
I have a few empty bins in the basement that I'll bring up and try to organise. Hopefully that's all I'll need!

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 535 of Free Motion Mavericks! Thanks for linking up your lovely projects! Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Gretchen from Gretchen's Little Corner has finished quilting another quilt - this one made with lovely embroidered blocks by her granddaughter. What a great joint project!

Gretchen's granddaughter embroidered these blocks!

Gretchen put together a lovely quilt using her
granddaughter's embroidered blocks

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts finished quilting two lovely quilts! The first one is a cute baby quilt and the other a lovely wall hanging!

A lovely panel baby quilt by Kat

A very cute foundation paper pieced
wall hanging by Kat

Vicki, from Vicki's Crafts and Quilting, did an amazing job FMQ her UFO quilt. Lucky for her, she had bundled up fabric for the border, backing and binding. That makes finishing up so much easier! Vicki custom quilted it on her long arm, doing a little bit every day. Check out her post for more eye candy!

Vicki's FMQ UFO - a real beauty!

Details of Vicki's quilting

Frédérique from Quilting, Patchwork, Appliqué, made this very cute textile card (4" x 6"). She was able to share it with us since it's been sent and delivered. Frédérique FMQ it and even included fancy machine star stiches.

Frédérique's sweet textile card

Frédérique's textile card, as seen from the back

It's now your turn!

Thursday, June 05, 2025

More Zen Stitching and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome! I did some hand-stitching on a sampler that I started in Karen Turner's class last week. We had lots to do! I finally found the fabric to bind the Floral Fusion wall hanging that I started last September with Denise of the Quiltery. There's going to be a finish in the near future!😍

Slow-stitching Sampler

In her Making Zen class, Karen also showed us how she makes lovely hand-stitched samplers which she incorporates into a journal. I haven't worked on a meditative stitching piece in ages, so it was great to get back to it. Karen uses fusible interfacing as the base and then irons on scraps, covered by a transparent fabric like tulle or organza to keep everything together. I did the same thing but added a piece of flannel at the back to make the sampler sturdier and easier to stitch.

Stitched sampler based on Karen Turner's workshop

I used mostly hand-dyed scraps for this sampler as well as many different types of thread, perle cotton and yarn. As long as it fits in the needle, it can be used 😁. In the end, the piece reminds me a little bit of a landscape, with the spiral sun at the top, many vines and even rain drops!

My son's latest hobby is 3D printing. He made a box to place at the back of the printer to collect the scraps of plastic (we call it plastic poop! That's what happens when you have a dog 🐕) So I used three of these in the piece. One is black, the other black and white and the last one a gray, which happens when the black and white plastic fuse together. All of the plastic pieces have some kind of hole, so they're perfect for stitching. Apparently he now has many colours of plastic so I will get more colourful poop for my art making.

In the closeup, you can also see scraps of yarn and perle cotton placed under the tulle.

A closeup of the plastic pieces and scraps of yarn

I've now placed it in my Mindful Meditation Journal.

Sampler placed in my Mindful Stitching Journal

This side - bottom!

I was Poppy sitting earlier this week. What a cutie!

Waiting for the squirrels - in the jungle that is my
backyard right now!

What I learned

I was happy to have something simple and fun to stitch as my energy waned.
Poppy was a great distraction and I'm thankful that it was cool out for all of those walks!
Poppy is gone and the heat is here, but the evenings will be cool, so all is good!
I spent some quality time in my studio looking for the fabric to make the binding for the Floral Fusion wall hanging. When you use scraps, it's not always easy to find enough binding fabric.
I took the opportunity to clean up in the studio. It's not great but it's less chaotic.
I'm linking up to the June One Monthly Goal and will finish this piece, hopefully sooner than the end of the month! I did finish FMQ the empty blocks a while back, so it really is all about the binding.

Floral Fusion ready to be bound

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 534 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a productive week! Thanks for linking up. This week there were lots of quilts in progress. Here is the project from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts free motion quilted this lovely pink and brown quilt following one of Angela Walter's video.