Showing posts with label beads. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

A Shuttered Window and Open Works Tutorial on Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome to Week 566 of Free Motion Mavericks! I taught part of a playday on Monday for some members of the Out of the Box Fibre Artists group (OOTB). Since I'd like to share this with you, I created a tutorial. Hope you enjoy it.

Shuttered Window

We start by making the shuttered windows. The open work, which are the threads on top, is optional and is done once the shuttered window is finished. 😊

Shuttered window

Shuttered window with open work

These are the triangles that I made for my Exit Strategy piece.

For this tutorial,

I made a few samples, so please don't mind the different coloured fabrics.
There is both a hand stitched and machine stitched component.

1. You will need two pieces of fabric. The larger one is at the top and the slightly smaller one is at the bottom.

2. Mark the shape that you want on your top fabric. The shape needs to be smaller than your bottom fabric.

You can use any shape that you like, but one side needs to be straight. That's the side that you will be using for your shuttered window. A triangle, rectangle, or square works well. They can also have wonky sides.

On the top fabric, mark your shape.

If you're not sure if the shape is larger than your bottom fabric, place your top fabric over your bottom fabric and hold these up in front of a window or a light. You'll want to ensure that your bottom fabric is at least a half inch (½") larger than your shape, on all sides.

Use a light or window to check that your bottom
fabric is larger than your shape

3. Except for the side that will be shuttered, cut the other sides of your shape along the line.

Cut the sides of your shape, except for the straight shuttered side.

4. Place the bottom fabric underneath the top fabric, both facing up.

The bottom fabric peaks out of the open shape

The sides of the your shape can be wonky 😊

Decide on the orientation of your bottom fabric if applicable.

You can change the orientation of your bottom fabric
as long as it still a ½" larger on all sides than the shape.

5. Stitch around the three sides of the fabric. Fold the window shutter section to keep it out of the way of your stitching.

Stitch all sides except the window side.

You can stitch however you like, as long as the sides are stable.

You can use one of your sewing machine's
fancy stitch to sew around the three sides.

6. Fold your window shutter any way that you like and then secure it using stitches, beads, buttons, etc.

You can be as fancy with your folds as you like!

1. Close your window shutter

2. Fold the shutter in half diagonally

3. Fold the other side diagonally

4. Bring the point up and pin

4a. Fold the point to face downward

Point is facing down. Secure it.

You can fold the shutter accordion style and secure it with beads.

An accordion fold secured with stitching

Open Work

To add the threads across your window, you can do this by hand or by machine.

Ensure that you secure the thread on the edge, each time that it crosses the window.
Watch the tension on the thread so that it isn't too tight (and pulls) or too slack (and sags).

If you do this by machine,

Take a few stitches on the side to anchor or secure the thread.
Lift the foot and go across to the other side where you want your thread to land.
Anchor the thread by taking a few stitches on the side.
Repeat until you are happy with your threads.

The open work can be done by machine.

If done by machine, once you are finished, you can clip
the bobbin threads at the back of the piece
since they have been secured at the side.

The finished block that was stitched by machine. You can now
secure the window if you didn't do it before.

Class piece finished with open work

Demo finished with open work.
Threads were doubled.

Members' work

Here are images of the work done by the members during the playday. There are some very interesting variations!

What I learned

It was so much fun teaching my part of the playday. I was the second presenter and it was the perfect position since my section was the easiest, so a bit of a break between the two more involved sections of smocking and creating tucks.
All the participants had a good time and did some interesting things. It's always nice to see the creativity in the class.
When I presented, I mentioned that at least one side of the shape had to be straight for the window shutter. That got me thinking that my other sides didn't have to be straight. That's when I made my wonky sides 😊
I enjoyed using my sewing machine to make the fancy stitches on the side of my demo for you. It has so much potential.
Did you recognize the fabric? These are scraps from my niece's t-shirt quilt.

Free Motion Mavericks

We had three lovely FMQ finishes last week.

Melva made a runner and bowl cozies for a client. The mountains on the runner are prairie points and the "C" is for Colorado! 😎

Melva's lovely Colorado runner and bowl cozies.

Frédérique of Patchwork & Appliqué made this gorgeous reversible Patio quilt for her husband. It took a few years to accumulate the right fabrics, but what a finish! Her backing consists of blocks made during the "30 days of improv" challenge last year. She made a stencil of a lovely continuous line flower pattern. It looks amazing!

Frédérique's reversible Patio quilt is finished!

Sandra of mmm quilts finished this cute pixelated heart quilt for her daughter's cat. How wonderful! I'm sure that Harper will enjoy cuddling up on it. Sandra quilted it with lovely double loops. You can see Harper's name quilted in the bottom left side of the quilt.😊

A pixelated heart quilt for Harper by Sandra of mmm quilts.

It's now your turn!

Saturday, May 28, 2022

Let Them Flourish is finished!

If you've been following me on Instagram, you've seen lots of images of the progress of this piece. Lately I've been adding a gazillion French Knots, finishing up the beading and then finally mounting it on a fabric-covered canvas.

Let Them Flourish - Ready for Exhibition

Let Them Flourish (aka Biodiversity)

In the Beginning

This piece started off as a fabric collage of images related to Biodiversity, the theme that was given to us as part of the February 2021 TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club workshop. Kate Tume, our instructor, had us exploring narrative potential with embellishment.

The beginning of Biodiversity (working title)

I attached the fabric pieces to batting using Heat n Bond Lite. From there I started stitching and beading. To say that it was slow going is a huge understatement. Again, not called slow stitching for nothing 😊.

Starting the embroidery and beading

At some point I got tired of its slow progress and wondered off to other projects. I came back to it during my #100dayschallenge on Instagram. I would say that the majority of it got done between March and May 2022. It also helped that I had a deadline approaching - the Conversations exhibition with Fibre 15 (see related links below).

Towards the Finish Line!

I love using my own hand-dyed perle cotton 💙

At one point I got bored and had an aha moment. I realised that I didn't have to embroider the images using the same colours that was on the fabric. Notice the house in the image below, which was printed in blue but covered in orange thread. I love that the blue peeks through. That was quite liberating! 😊

Adding different colours than those on the fabric

The green embroidered background around the moose took forever -
I was seeing swirls in my sleep!

I added a gazillion French knots around the tree. I knew by then that it would drive me crazy, so to keep it interesting, I used different shades of green and went roughly from light to dark.

So many French knots!!!

I was worried about the owl - I wanted to add beads but wasn't sure how much. I found out fairly quickly how much was "too much"! I was going to bead every other line but got mixed up and ended up beading all of the lines. It wasn't really bad but it made the owl the focal point, which is not what I wanted.

Too many beads....

Just the right amount of beads 😊

I used sewing thread to lightly embroider various parts of the owl.

Finishing up!

Finishing up involved covering a 14" x 11" canvas with fabric and then attaching the piece to the canvas. I used Sulky's Invisible thread since it was clearer than the other kinds I have. I wasn't able to make a knot at the end of the thread, so I left a long tail and then after taking the next stitch, tied a knot at the back.

I just put in a few pins through the canvas to keep the piece from shifting as I was sewing it down. I stitched around the edges but also within the piece to keep it securely in place. It was easiest to stitch behind beads.

Attaching the piece to the canvas

Let Them Flourish

What I learned

I learned that this technique is called textile collage. This is probably my favourite technique of all times. I've used it a few times to make some of my favourite pieces. I'll include links to my favourite ones in Related links below.
I love being able to add bits and pieces of fabric to tell a story or show a moment in time.
The hardest part is probably leaving reality behind since there is no way to keep the actual perspective real since the elements come in the size that they are on the fabric! I love that whimsical part of it.
I'm glad that I figured out that I don't have to use the same colour as the background image to embroider. It adds a different look when using a different colour and having the original fabric colour peek through.
I realised that I need to change things up to keep me interested. What's not to love about many shades of green instead of just using one?!
I really got to know my threads - there's nothing wrong with embroidering with regular sewing thread if you just want a small accent of colour and texture.
A bonus is that the technique almost always needs the little bling of beads 😊
It's always a slow project, even if using FMQ but it's usually well worth making. I'm making myself finish this one before I start another one - it would be too easy to get sidetracked at this point!