Showing posts with label Liz Kettle. Show all posts

Friday, May 30, 2025

Making Zen and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome 😎! I hope this post finds you well! After the excitement of the wedding, it was great to rest this week. Things are back to normal here and I finally have a little bit of time to stitch. Nothing serious but it's a start.

Making Zen Retreat

This week is/was the Making Zen Retreat. These are free online mini workshops that all include a slow making process. If you choose the free option, you have 24 hours to watch the workshops of your choice. It didn't help that I realised that it was Tuesday before I remembered! However, I did watch several workshops - they were really great. I learned new things and reviewed a few that I already knew.

The first video and project I started was the zero-waste hand-stitched needle book by Karen Turner. I love her work and follow her on Instagram. This was the first workshop that I took with her and was very impressed. I'm going to look into taking some of her online workshops in the future.

The hand-stitched needle book so far


Working outside on my zero-waste hand-stitched needle book

One of Making Zen's Tuesday workshops

I'm really hoping to finish up the needle case this weekend. I'm debating putting it together by machine or completely hand-stitching it. We'll see how I feel. Although it's not finished yet, this is my May Table Scraps Project. I purposefully added green for the colour of the month, and some of the stitches look like grass....don't they?

Green scraps and fresh (cut) grass?

I used perle cotton and Tercel pearl to stitch most of it. Over the lovely figures in the fabric, like the owl and the bear, I stitched with a thinner King Tut variegated thread. A layer of pink organza covers parts of the bear, and is stuffed with scraps of perle cotton! What fun😁!

Update: I finished the needle case. Here are a couple of images. I do want to add a little more embroidery and of course, needles and pins 😉

The front of the needle case

The back of the needle case

Opening the needle case - I'll probably embroider my initials

I just need to add needle and pins!

The other project that I really want to try is this Japanese book bag. I made a copy of the pattern with a smaller piece of cardboard so that I'll be able to put it together later. It would also be cool to make some sketch books for the bag and then add my needle case in it. 😍

cardboard pattern

Here are some of the other courses that intrigued me.

I don't know if I have enough information to make this Chinese Scrap Puzzle Pouch but I do want to try it out!

Jen Strauser's mini landscapes are very cute. I love how she stitches them up in a spiral pattern and then adds them to a fabric-made book. Something else that I would love to do!

Liz Kettle, the artist who introduced me to meditation stitching, had a video on dyeing smaller lengths of fabric (quarter or half meters) in trays. It would be perfect to do in my laundry room.

I haven't watched Tiffany Smith's Up-cycled belt bag with printed fabric yet but hopefully I'll have time before it expires!

I hope that I've intrigued you enough to look out for next year's Making Zen retreat.

What I learned

Before I start, I'm never sure if there's anything I want to watch but once I watch a couple of workshops, I'm totally hooked.
I love doing little stitching projects - so these are perfect (except that a few a day is not possible!)
I~~'m looking forward to~~ had fun stitching up the needle case. I made one ~~last year~~ in 2022. I posted it on Instagram and in my Best of 2022 post.

Needle case 2022

Linking party

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including the 2025 Table Scraps Challenge. You may want to check them out before linking up below! Needle & Thread Thursday, Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday, TGIFF, Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Put Your Foot Down, Beauties Pageant, Patchwork & Quilts, Slow Sunday Stitching,

Project details

Scrappy needle case

Made following Karen Turner's Making Zen workshop

Size: 12" x 4"

Materials: commercial and hand-dyed cotton scraps, fusible interfacing, tulle, embroidery floss and perle cotton, flannel pieces, button

Techniques: hand and machine stitching, embroidery including button hoop

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 533 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a very productive week! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Gretchen of Gretchen's Little Corner had a few quilts to share with us. The first two were compassionate quilts. Here is the first one. Gretchen quilted it in-the-ditch and through the purple chain.

Details of Gretchen's quilting

Gretchen's first compassionate quilt

Gretchen's Trip around the cottage, quilted in-the-ditch

Here is Gretchen's Peter Rabbit quilt. What a beauty! She quilted it in an "X" pattern.

Gretchen's Peter Rabbit quilt

Gretchen quilting her Peter Rabbit quilt

Donnalee finished her very special Wisteria Wall Hanging. It took a while, but it's really great! Donnalee stitched every leaf and petal by free motion. Congratulations!

Donnalee's Wisteria Wall

Details of Donnalee's FMQ

Here is Melva's Fractured Emeralds quilt.

Melva's Fractured Emeralds quilt

Details of the quilting

Our last quilt today is by Quilting Gail. This beauty was made for the Irish Chain Blog Hop. It features Island Batik fabric and was made using the Accuquilt cutter. Gail quilted it using Silly Moon rulers; Rocket, Drop 2 and Drop 3.

Gail's finish for the Irish Chain Blog Hop

Details of Gail's quilted beauty!

It's now your turn!

Sunday, January 19, 2020

More slow stitching, meditation style

I've been doing some more slow stitching. This time with a little meditative quiet time added in.

Slow stitching, meditation style

In the October/November edition of the Quilting Arts magazine, I read an article that spoke to me. The article, Stitch Meditation, by Liz Kettle talked about meditating while stitching, since she found that regular meditation didn't really work for her. Wow! I've been trying to meditate and find it one of the most painful things to do. Quieting the mind is really difficult, except when I'm immersed in my quilting, or playing with code! Since I rarely play with code except occasionally at work, my best bet is probably stitching and quilting.

First four meditation squares

In the article, Liz says that she only has a few guidelines and one rule.

Avoid planning - choose your supplies quickly (less than 5 minutes)
Minimize distractions (for the meditative part)
The one rule: don't undo stitches - there is no need for perfection

Liz does talk about doing this every day, but I'm staying away from that since I don't need another commitment that I won't follow. I do it when I remember and when I feel like it. I trust that I will remember to do it when I need it.

I've cut up a bunch of 4" flannel squares from a dearly loved flannel blanket. I use this as my backing. For the fabric on top, I have a small bag of my hand-dyed fabrics. They are really perfect for this.

Angles is made with hand-dyed fabrics and stitched with several weights of thread and embroidery floss.

Angles

Green & Blue with bark includes an unraveling piece of dyed fabric, thread and wool, and two pieces of hand-dyed that friends though was bark .

Green & Blue with bark

The moon in Pretty moon and star was made of pieces of felt from the backing of my daughter's embroidery pieces. The stones are pretty pink quartz and the star is a Murano glass bead bought in Venice last year.

Pretty moon and star

For Shining rose, I cut up a hand-dyed cloth napkin that I had embroidered a very long time ago. I added shiny ribbon that I save up when I buy things. I also used some metallic floss.

Shining rose

Last week I started this piece. I was in the mood for ruffles so I just took another fabric piece and stitched it on. I used sewing thread, embroidery floss and even did some chain stitch. I like the look of the feather charm.

Orange, pink and a feather

If you've seen my Flower of Life piece for the first challenge of Project Quilting last week, you will see where I got the inspiration for this block. Now that I know about the Flower of Life, I see it everywhere! In this block, I did some embroidery, including fly stitches without tails, and added beads.

Web in the Flower of Life