Showing posts with label embroidering on metal. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 04, 2024

It's that time of the year again!

Hi and welcome! Ottawa has finally gotten some snow. Is it here to stay? Who knows, but it should last at least a few days. Just enough to get us thinking about snow tires, shovels and winter boots!⛄❄

Seasonal Stuff!

I'm not sure what's happening to my brain, but I seem to be on Squirrel alert! I think about something and oops, there I go! All that to say that I have new projects to share with you.

More embroidery on metal

After making the flower last week, I thought that it would be fun to make a little Christmas tree ornament. I made a template of a Christmas tree and embossed the pattern on two pieces of metal. I made the holes around the tree using what I had learned previously 😊.

First tree - my favourite

Second tree

Both embroidered trees, ready to be stitched together

The next step will be to add a star at the top of the first tree so that its shape will match the second one. I'll then very carefully cut about a ¼" from the embroidery. I was considering adding lace between the layers on the edges. I'm not sure if that will work. Eventually I have to stitch each treer, wrong sides together and add a little something to hang them.

Kawandi style stitching

I've been wanting to make another Kawandi style piece for a while. I got an attack of the Squirrel today and thought that I could make one for Christmas for my son and his fiancé. There is not way that I can do it all by hand before Christmas, so I've attached all of the pieces with the sewing machine. This made it so much easier. Now I'll start stitching it with various colours of perle cotton. There is nothing as relaxing as embroidering a running stitch.

A lovely Christmas Kawandi style mat ready to stitch

Back of the piece

An assortment of perle cotton for stitching

This is also my November Table Scraps Challenge. The colours were anything goes and the theme was a tree. There are some trees in there.

What I learned

I have to stop playing with squirrels! It's becoming ~~almost~~ obsessive!
I have so many projects that I want to work on. I thought that being retired would give me all this extra time, but somehow it's never enough.
I'm going to keep this short since I want lo link up to the November Table Scraps Challenge and I only have minutes to link up! It's OK, I came back to finish the post.
I did learn a few things while making the Christmas tree on metal. It turns out that fancy embroidery thread doesn't appreciate going through holes in metal! I wanted to use a red mouliné thread to decorate the tree. There was no way to get them through the holes! Instead, I used a red metallic rayon thread. I ended up putting the thread through the hole at the beginning, then going around the back stitches of the embroidered tree instead of the holes in the metal. It did let me go through the hole at the end to be secured!

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 509 of Free Motion Mavericks. Thanks so much for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Gail had two wonderful finishes this month. Here is her Jelly Roll Mystery Quilt, done with a strip set and background fabrics from Island Batik.

Gail's Jelly Roll Mystery Quilt

Gail quilted it on her domestic machine and used Silly Moon's Rocket and Beanie rulers.

Close-up of Gail's quilted Jelly Roll Mystery Quilt

Preeti, of Sew Preeti Quilts published a new pattern, Fireworks. It really is lovely!

Preeti's Fireworks pattern is now available

Close up of Preeti's Fireworks quilt

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts finished quilting her Calico Gold 3 Yd quilt. What lovely colours. Kat quilted it using free motion / ruler quilting with overlapping circles.

Kat's Calico Gold 3 Yd quilt

Close-up of the quilting of Calico Gold 3 Yd quilt

It's your turn!

Friday, November 29, 2024

Finished embroidering on metal

Hi and welcome - just a quick post to share my finish. It was a great workshop by Emma Pannell. You can read more about it in my previous post.

Finished Flower

I wanted to share this finish before next Thursday. Here is the finished project.

Flower embroidered on metal is finished

As you can see, once I finished embroidering, I embossed the rest of the metal to give it a little something special. A few of the other students from the workshop had done some amazing embossing on their pieces. As usual, I just went for it. I used my free motion quilting (FMQ) designs but embossing wasn't like drawing or FMQ. The curves were much more difficult to make.

Close-up of the embroidered flower

I used a compass to emboss on the metal. The square end might have affected the smoothness of the embossing. I'll have to experiment with just using an old pen - which is how I originally embossed the flower. However, the end of the compass did make nice additional holes when I was stitching the leaves.

Using the end of the compass

Here is a progress photo of stitching the leaves. It was more difficult that stitching the petals since there was so much floss to deal with as well as the extra holes that I added. You can see those extra holes on the first leaf that I stitched.

Progress photo of the first leaf

What I learned

To make the densely embroidered leaves, I should have arranged the holes more closely and evenly. You can do that when you plan your project 😁
The compass worked really well to make the holes but wasn't great for embossing.
For some reason, I outlined the second leaf with a backstitch before embroidering it. I knew that I shouldn't but did it anyway. I guess if my stubbornness needs to come out, it may as well be on something as innocuous as embroidery!
I realised that I didn't add any more French Knots in the centre of the flower. I guess that I just wanted it done.
I hope to use this in my needle punch project. That would mean trimming the metal around the flower. Until I use it, I have a pretty piece to look at. 😊

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Embroidering on metal and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome! For my American readers - Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you get some time to stitch after all of that eating and visiting family 😋. I didn't have much to share (remember those very SLOW stitching projects!) so yesterday I worked on a little project so that I would have something to show.

Embroidering on metal

Yes, you read it right.... my background for this piece is the inside of an aluminum can! Years ago I played a little bit with burnished aluminum in an art quilt after a workshop with Hillary Rice, but I haven't since (see Related links). Aluminum is very pliable and easy to cut and pierce. Our latest Textileartist.org course is with Emma Pannell. She does some amazing embroidery on metal.

Embroidering on metal - so far

I wanted to make something very simple and small that I can eventually add to my punch needle piece. I settled on a flower, something that I can draw without tracing. Here is my template.

Drawing of the flower with leaves

I cut the can open with my old scissors and then cut the edges to make sure that they were smooth. The scissors do a great job on aluminum. I taped the template onto the can and embossed it by tracing the image with an old pen. I then used my journal making awl to pierce the holes, following the embossed line.

At first, the metal was directly on the mat when I made holes with the awl. That made holes in the mat, so I placed the piece of craft foam board between the metal and the mat. It may have made larger holes than I wanted, so I'll have to experiment with that. Our instructor uses a pottery needle to make the holes - these might be a little smaller.

Tools used to cut and pierce the metal

I used three strands of embroidery floss for the base of the petals, using a variation of the cross stitch. After all the petals were stitched, I added a lighter coloured thread of two strands to add some dimension.

Embroidering the petals with 3 strands of cotton.

Petals all embroidered using a variation on the cross stitch

Stitching with 2 strands of lighter cotton

It was only after finishing the first petal with the lighter cotton that I realised that I probably should have stitched them from the centre of the flower. I didn't want to start over, so I stitched three alternating petals in that direction, then I had the next three going the other way.

Finishing the petals and outlining them

I finished the petals by outlining them with a back stitch. After outlining the centre of the flower using 4 strands of embroidery floss, I added a hole in the centre and stitched the area. Over the middle hole, I added a French Knot.

Metal in an art piece

As I mentioned, I used metal in my Canada 150 art piece in 2017. Here is the piece and you can see below the burnished metal that has been stitched by machine and embossed.

Canada 150 art piece

Cut, embossed and stitched burnished metal

What I learned

It's easy to cut the aluminum can but not so easy to keep it flat. I thought that I could place it under heavy books to flatten it (like my journal pages) but that didn't really help.
Keeping the aluminum flat is important if you want to frame your piece. I'm hoping that it won't make a big difference when I trim the flower and stitch it onto my punch needle piece.
Stitching on the metal is very much like stitching on cardboard or paper. The holes need to be punched from the front to get the best effect.
My holes may be a little big, so I'll experiment with that next time. I think that using more strands of thread to outline each section might also help fill in those holes.
It got pretty difficult to find the holes when there was a lot of stitching. Instead of trying to find the hole from the back, I placed my needle in the hole from the front, without going right through. I could then see the needle sticking out of the back and knew where to stitch from the back.
I like the French Knot in the middle of the centre and I think that adding many more would be very effective - hopefully I'll feel like it!😁
I'm going to use another stitching technique on the leaves - in theory they will be and look denser.
In my workshop with Hillary Rice, we had used a big propane torch to burnish the aluminum. That created lovely colours, including gold. Apparently you can also use copper which already had a lovely gold colour.
I don't think that I'm going to work with metal a lot but it is fun to discover new techniques and material.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 508 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.

Sandra from mmm quilts made this very lovely Goose Dance quilt. She FMQ it with her favourite fat flowers design with loops and added swirls with hooks as well. She also quilted in 3 ghost geese. It looks great!

Sandra's FMQ Goose Dance quilt.

Preeti from Sew Preeti Quilts finished her LION quilt for the Island Batik Dresden Challenge and Blog Hop. Doesn't her signature wavy stitch quilting look great on her Grandmother's Fans quilt?