Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!: herringbone stitch

Monday, July 01, 2019

Relaxing and Playing

With its deadlines and general busyness, June was a pretty difficult month. I'm glad that the rush is over, but I'm sorry to see spring come to an end. I just love the cool weather and the beautiful early flowers - now it looks like the heat and humidity is back! Oh well, if I can't play in the garden, I'll just have to play indoors with my fabrics 😊

Playing with hexies and embroidery

I've finally taken a little bit of time to add to my embroidery. I'm not even keeping track of the Take a Stitch Tuesday (TAST) since I won't be catching up anytime soon. But who says that it needs to be done in one year? Certainly not our host, Sharon of Pintangle. I really appreciate her posts laid back attitude, and encouragement.

Page 3 - Buttonhole wheel stitch

I love how there buttonhole wheels play so well with each other. It almost looks like they belongs in the sea. This was my One Thing With Amy post last week on Instagram. I did get it done - now I have to remember to actually post it!

Buttonhole Wheels (week 13)

Page 4 - Feather stitch (in progress)

I started this page this morning, while enjoying my coffee in the back yard. I'm going to play with variations of the Feather stitch.

Feather stitch (week 5) in progress

Page 2 - Herringbone stitch

After not knowing how to proceed with Page 1, I decided to add some hexies to break up the stitching and add a focus to the page. This page contains different sizes of herringbone stitches.

Herringbone stitches (week 6)

Page 1 - Chain stitch

The Chain stitch page may not be pretty but it sure holds many types of chain stitches. There is the Chain stitch (week 1), the Detached Chain stitch (week 7), the Cable Chain stitch (week 14), and the Butterfly Chain stitch (week 15).

All kinds of Chain stitches

Important Notice! I just found out that #100hexies100days2019 has already started on Instagram. I just love looking at everyone's very artfully arranged hexies. It's so much fun. Anyway, I'll be joining in once a week and will write a couple of posts during the event!

Summer Book Club Quilt-Along

I'm participating in the Summer Book Club QAL on Instagram with Kate Basti of Quilt with Kate. I'm only on my second book but it's a really cute foundation paper pieced pattern called Tall Tales. It's very affordable and all proceeds from this pattern benefit the Columbus Literacy Council.

I really love seeing everyone's books on Instagram. They are so lovely.

Here are my two books so far. Instead of making a quilt, I'm making minis (of course!) Most of these will be cubicle minis for my colleagues, friends and family 😊 and the bonus is that these are great to practice FMQ.

This first book was made because it was the first cute fabric that I found.

Bambi book inspired by the fabric

FMQ flowers

"The Earth is Not Flat" book for my son

This second book was made for my son, the science guy in our family. I was going to call it "The Earth is No Longer Flat", but I knew that there wouldn't be enough space on the book spine and of course my son would have argued that the Earth was never flat - and I certainly didn't have space for "The Earth is No Longer Perceived as Flat!" :-)

FMQ stars and planets

One Monthly Goal (OMG) for July

My OMG for July is to finish the quilt top from last year's Kingfisher Stitch-Along,

What I learned

It's good to be playing around with quilting and FMQ.
You may have noticed that I join a lot of quilt-alongs and such but often don't get much done. I ~~really like~~ love to try new things and as long as I keep my expectations small (like minis and occasional posts) then I feel that I've gotten a lot out of them. Each activity, hosted by dedicated people, has lots to offer. I appreciate all of the work that goes into organising these events.
For all of the events that I do participate in, there are many more that I bypass. I'm finally getting to know what I'll enjoy doing and what will end up being just one more obligation....she can learn!

Happy Canada Day!

Slow stitching Update

To try to minimize the evenings when I go home and do absolutely nothing quilty, I joined The 100 Day Project (#the100dayproject) on Instagram. Will it work? I guess we'll find out...

The 100 Day Project on Instagram

Herringbone stitch added to the mix

Why would I want to add this to my plate? Well, it's on Instagram, so it takes about 2 minutes to post, which is a plus. Also, even if I'm wiped, it would be nice to do something that is productive but simple and stress free. My answer to that is to follow #the100dayproject and at the very least do 10 minutes of hand-stitching (embroidery or English paper piecing, etc) a day. It's a goal and no one will care if I do it or not - but it would be nice!

I won't be posting everything on the blog, but I'm sure that I can manage an occasional update. 😊

While I was practicing the herringbone stitch and playing with hexies, I created a fabric page dedicated to the Herringbone stitch.

I got the idea from Janine at Rainbow Hare, who is also participating in the Take A Stitch Tuesday (TAST). I get bored easily and love the embroidery work that she is doing. One of her ideas is to create a page of the different stitches. You can check it out in the Related links below.

This is my Herringbone page so far. I've been experimenting with the size and angles of the stitches, and of course the more colour the better. And, just for something different, I added hexies to the mix. I'm starting to think that everything is better with hexies (and chocolate)!

Herringbone page

I started the chain stitch page a while back. This week, I did a little bit of embroidery in the car on my way to work. It was a really great way to start the day. I'm going to try to keep that up!

Chain Stitch page

I've also working on the final hexie flowers for my Kingfisher Stitch Along. The Stitch Along started last May and finished in July, so I'm not a year late....yet. Hopefully the sewing of the diamonds will go well. My objective is to finish it by the end of July, so that it's only one year late!

Last two diamonds coming along

Love that blue-black batik!

What I learned

I need a variety of small projects to keep me going. If I have a few easy ones started, I'm more likely to pick one up in the evening. That's the theory anyways.
I'm still following TAST but getting pretty far behind. When I feel ambitious I can work on new embroidery stitches, and when I'm not, I'll just do more chain stitch or practice other stitches that I'm getting better at.
I also want to experiment with the size of the stitches as well as the size of the embroidery thread and perle cotton I use.
I have a colleague at work who is learning to embroider - so next week we are going to embroider during our lunch.

Page titles

Monday, July 01, 2019

Relaxing and Playing

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Slow stitching Update

First Quilt-Along