Showing posts with label punch needle. Show all posts

Thursday, January 02, 2025

Best of 2024 and Free Motion Mavericks

It's that time of year again - reflecting on 2024 and then planning for 2025. Usually in my best of post, I sum up the whole year, but this year, since I have quarter posts of what I've done (and a fourth quarter post to come), I've decided to just highlight my favourites in each of my categories (quilts, challenges, journal making, art quilts, mindful stitching/embroidery and miscellaneous projects). I'm linking up to Meadow Mist Designs' Best of 2024 linking party. Thanks Cheryl!

Small Quilts this year

This year I didn't make any large quilts. I think that I was too overwhelmed by last year's many quilts. I did make a couple of larger quilt hangings and some cuddle quilts, mostly as part of the 2024 Table Scraps Challenge. They allowed me to play and then practice my FMQ. I also FMQ my friend's quilt.

Yellow Cuddle Quilt

This fall I made a table topper for a friend's retirement, based on his painted fence of Newfoundland Houses.

I just love this photo of our friend in front of his fence and
the table topper

Challenges

In 2024 I participated in challenges, particularly the first three of Project Quilting in the winter and then most of the Table Scraps Challenge year round. I really enjoy these challenges - they let me be as creative as I want to be, and range from very simple to complex.

My favourite was definitely my first Project Quilting piece, Home to feed. It was more complex and creative, and allowed me to experiment with Sulky Solvy water stabilizer to get ready for my later project, Spring Tulips 🌷.

Home to Feed, a Project Quilting piece

I also made a number of placemats for my family during the Table Scraps Challenge. I had started in 2023 and by the end of November, everyone had one!

Five placemats made during the 2023-24 Table Scraps Challenge

Art Quilts

I did make quite a few quilts just because I wanted to! It's hard to say which ones were my favourite, although Spring Tulips 🌷was very challenging and a favourite 😍. When you put that much work into a piece, it's either love or frustration! This one, thank goodness, was love!

Spring Tulips 🌷

The Outdoor Fibre Art Exhibit “Impermanence / Éphémère” kept me very busy in the Spring. I'm really happy with the pieces that I made. Some of them are still outside in my back yard 😀!

My pieces in the Outdoor Fibre Art Exhibition
Impermanence / Éphémère

There are a few others but one that I'm very happy with is my FM stitched portrait of hubby. It was made based on a class with TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club.

A FM stitched portrait

Mindful Stitching and Embroidery

Many embroidery projects were started this year, but few are finished! At the beginning of the year, I started a Daily Stitching project. It didn't take me long to realise that daily anything is not for me. So now it's an Almost Daily Stitching Project 2024-25 😉

Almost Daily Stitching 2024 (and now 2025)

I started a new course this fall - Joyful Embroidery with Fleur Woods. The course is offered through Fibre Arts Take 2. I have watched the full course and now have 2 pieces in progress.

Embroidery in progress

Needle punch piece - coming along

I also discovered the joy of Kawandi Style embroidery and love it. I made 2 small pieces and then made another with Christmas fabric. This last one I started by machine stitching all of the pieces down and then covering it with running stitches. This makes the process so much easier and faster, and still looks great!

Christmas Kawandi Style mat

I also experimented with stitching on both paper and metal. If you're curious, check out the links.

Journal Making

I made less journals than last year but still love making them when I do. It helped that I went over to my friend Connie's home in the fall and we made a few together (although I forgot to post about these)😞.

Scrappy Journal Challenge

I also made two fabric covers - one for my 2024 agenda and the other for my niece's school agenda. She loves neutral colours - it must be her Danish side 😁

My niece's school agenda cover

Miscellaneous Items

I made a few small projects just because 😊 These included a woven band for my holey jeans, many lovely Cathedral Window hot pads as gifts, fun fabric corner bookmarks and my favourite and most practical, mosquito proofing my swing. The latter brought me hours of enjoyment in the summer.

Mosquito proof swing

As I'm creating this post, I find it hard not to include everything so I will stop now 😍. If you're curious, you can check out my new 2024 Finishes page as well as my quarterly posts (1st quarter and then 2nd & 3rd quarters). My 4th quarter will be posted in a few days.

My intention for 2024 was to learn by playing, with mindfulness and gratitude. It looks like I achieved that with much learning and experimenting - and always with gratitude! Thanks again for taking the time to follow me on my journey!

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many linking parties, including Meadow Mist Design's Best of 2024 party. Thanks so much Cheryl for another great yearly party!

Monday Musings, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2025,

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 513 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a week of getting things finished before the new year, and of reflection on 2024. Thanks to everyone who linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Gail from Quilting Gail was not going to make any last minute projects, until she took out her lovely nativity scene. It's hard to remember to make these small projects once the decorations are put away. So here is the simple but lovely tablemat made specifically for the nativity set!

A tablemat perfect for Gail's Nativity scene

Frédérique of Quilting, Patchwork, Appliqué posted her Best of 2024. There are many lovely domestic machine quilted projects. Here is one of my favourites!

Frédérique had a great time quilting her Patio quilt for François!

It's now your turn to show us what you're making or finishing on this first week of 2025!

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

Updates and Happy New Year!

Hi and welcome! I hope that you had a good New Year's Eve and a great New Year's Day. It's been raining here so most of the snow has melted, but we did have a white Christmas and it's now snowing again! I didn't get much sewing or slow stitching during the holidays except for yesterday and today. It's great getting back to it 😊.

Snow Happens

I spent a few hours New Year's eve working on my Snow Happens Embroidery. It's slowly coming along. I'm hoping to finish it in a few days so that I can make a wall hanging. I haven't thought that out yet but there's still time left to get inspired.

Snow Happens - in progress

The first two snow people are almost finished. I'm waiting until I've finished all of the bodies before making the faces. Hopefully that will make it consistent.

The first two snow people - almost done!

I spent most of my time yesterday on the next three snow people. I thought that I would be bored with following a pattern but I'm really enjoying it. Only using shades of blue makes the colour decisions easier. I'm trying to be consistent but I'm sure that it won't really matter when it's all done.

The last three snow people

I had a great time stitching this snow lady's hair. It turns out that they were supposed to be ear muffs, but I couldn't really tell since part of the marking was erased. I started at the top making larger lazy daisies but then made them smaller and on top of each other. The effect is like curls. I love it! I would never have thought to do this before taking Fleur Woods' course. You can see the snow lady's finished hair and hat in the image above.

Stitching curly hair on the snow lady.

Updates on Joyful Embroidery Projects

I haven't worked on these embroideries in a while. Fibre Arts Take 2 is having a virtual show of the students' work but it needs to be submitted by January 9th. I'm not sure if I'll make that deadline and if I want to even try.

Embroidering over the fabric flowers

Work done so far

The next step is to make an arrangement with the flowers and other textiles. I have a few handkerchiefs and doilies that I'd like to include in the piece.

This next piece includes embroidery and punch needle work. I've included lines of white and off white at the top and bottom. I'll be filling these out more.

Punch needle and embroidery piece

Corner Book Marks

Last week I saw that Melva made corner book marks as gifts. I love them! I found a tutorial and they are easy though a little fiddly because are turned inside out after sewing, just like the pillow case finished quilts that I've experimented with recently. These are perfect for the December Table Scraps Challenge.

Two each of three sizes of corner book marks

Here they are looking wonderful in some of the books that I got for Christmas! The small ones will be perfect for paperback books.

Corner book marks in action

Poppy Sitting

Since Boxing Day we've been Poppy sitting. She's always a pleasure to have around (except when she needs to go outside at 7am). These are pictures that I sent to my son. 😍

Poppy looking for wildlife action in the back yard

Chilling out in the evening

Thanks so much for joining me on my journey this year. I think that I have a day or two to prepare my Best of 2024 post, so you'll see it soon.

What I learned

It turns out that embroidering on a pattern is not as painful as I expected. I think that part of it is that the end is in sight but the other thing is that I've played with stitches, using the fishbone stitch to make the small leaves.
Since taking my Joyful Embroidery course with Fleur Woods, I've experimented more with stitches. Doesn't the snow lady's hair look great with all of those curls?
I'd really like to join the class exhibition for Fleur Woods' course but I'm not sure that I can get one or both of the pieces done by then. The punch needle piece might be done in time but I would have to spend all of my time in the next week working on it....we'll see.
My favourite piece is the embroidered flowers but I don't want to rush it or make it smaller just to get it into the exhibition.
To get ready for my Best of 2024 post, I've started creating my 2024 Finishes page. It was interesting to see all the smaller projects that I've made. It looks like it was a year of learning and playing with smaller projects.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Scraps, Embroidery and Free Motion Mavericks

Allô and welcome 😎 I believe that this is the loveliest, warmest Hallowe'en day I've ever seen. Not very spooky here 👻👻 It's been another busy week but I did teach, in French, on Monday and it went really well. I was happy to see that my French and IM (Information Management) knowledge weren't too rusty after two years away from work😊 I've taken the rest of the week off to rest and read, so not much sewing except for repairs to a friend's boat cover. Now that it's no longer in my studio, I can get back to artsy things!

Light and Dark Scrappy Runner

October's colour for the Table Scraps Challenge is light or dark browns so I'm finally making my son's placemat with both dark and light brown scraps. I'll try to include a quilted cat since that's our October theme.

Dark and light brown on this side

Dark and light mostly brown on this side

During our Fall Fling, one of the artists gave me a bag of mostly cotton scraps. How fun! Many of the scraps in these two pieces come from that haul (way better than Hallowe'en candy!) It included what looks like fabrics from a Thanksgiving line of fabrics. I made sure to add more fabric because I didn't want the placemat to only be about Thanksgiving. On the second picture the three strips on the right come from pillow shams that my mother made for my grandfather (along with a quilt). I know that my son will appreciate that.

This is as far as I've gotten. The two pieces will be cut down to match the scrappy placemats that I made everyone. My son was last since he wanted neutrals. I have until November 3rd to link up to the October Table Scraps Challenge, so watch out for a post this weekend.

A bit more Embroidery

I haven't done much embroidery this week, but I did add a little bit to the Needle Punch piece that I've been working on for the Joyful Embroidery course. Since my last post, I added the brown leaf fabric at the bottom and covered it with organic blanket stitch. I decided to stitch outside of the fabric area and I love how it looks. I'll probably go back and do the same for the blue-green fabric.

Adding stitching on and around the leaf fabric

I added a row of yellow thread between both fabric areas which I'll be thread-weaving. If it looks good, I'll make it a larger area.

After looking at the YouTube videos about the different yarns to use in punch needle, I experimented with adding my lovely linen yarn which was too slippery to use alone. I paired it with a thin cotton yarn and it worked beautifully. There is also so much dimension when more than one yarn is used.

A Black Eyed Susan in my Almost Daily Stitching piece

Since Fleur Woods encouraged us to stitch more than one of our flowers for additional practice, I added a sweet Black Eyed Susan in my Almost Daily Stitching piece 2024. I drew it on with a Frixion pen and then stitched it in no time. Practice does make it better and easier. 😊

On my way from work to my car, I noticed this amazing mural. I knew that you would appreciate it also!

Mural in Hull district of Gatineau

I also saw hundreds of Canada Geese in the sky as I was coming home from Fall Fling last week.

Safe journey everyone!

What I learned

It was so nice to get back to sewing after so long. Hand stitching is awesome but it seems that I need both in my life.
I love going through scraps that I've been gifted. What can I say, it's better than Hallowe'en chocolate (but not quite as good as great chocolate! Thanks Lise for that amazing birthday chocolate😋)
Now that I "discovered" fabric twining, I get to keep narrow, long pieces of fabric - or even ripping up long strips. Oh joy, I'll need another basket just for twining strips!
It's so much fun adding "special" scraps to a project, like from my mother's pillow sham for my grandfather.
I'm having a great time experimenting with the punch needle project, like playing with different yarn and embroidering outside of the lines.
Since I'll be making a quilt sandwich for the placemat, I'm also going to take the opportunity to sandwich my Floral Fusion wall hanging and a small quilt that I got from the Community Quilts table at the last guild meeting. Hopefully there will be some fun FMQ here soon!

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 505 of Free Motion Mavericks. It was a lovely and productive week for last week's party! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts finished up a lovely 18" Christmas Candle Mat.

Kat's lovely 18" Christmas Candle Mat

Donnalee added the eyes and whiskers to her Avocado Cat. He is gorgeous! Look out for her Eggplant Cat next!

Donnalee's finished Avocado Cat.

Quilting Gail linked up her latest wonderful quilt - this time for her son's birthday. This one was all about the fabrics (a bundle of Tim Holtz fabric). Gail used her Silly Moon Kite ruler for the blocks and then swirls for the

Gail's latest finish for her son

Here is the FMQ loveliness.

Gail's quilt as seen from the back

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts has produced another beauty, Presto Mushrooms! It's got an amazing amount of colour going on! Perfect for a six year old and me!

Presto Mushrooms by Preeti

A close up of Presto Mushrooms by Preeti

It's now your turn

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

More Joyful Embroidery and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome 😊 It's been a crazy week here between stitching, getting ready for Out of the Box (OOTB) Fall Fibre Fling and membership and actually working! When I retired, I never thought that I would ever say that again. It's actually been great, so no regrets!

Stitching Black-eyed Susan

I usually share my disasters but I'm making an exception here. My first attempt at stitching the flower was a complete disaster. I'm not exaggerating. I picked out the embroidery thread since it was easier than re-drawing the flower. Then I watched Fleur Wood's video and it was clear that my stitches had been too long. Fleur uses a split-back stitch to colour in her flowers. It's sort of like a short-long stitch but better. It ended up being very fun to do!

First two flowers stitched

For the first flower, I used 3 strands of embroidery floss for the petals and then two strands for the outline. In my first attempt, I had used a lighter colour for the outline and that did not look good. So I did learn something other than don't use long stitches!

First flower needs a stem and centre

The first flower was stitched with the split-back stitch. I used a stem stitch for the outline. This really helps to show where the petals overlap. I am using very sharp embroidery needles and have left a bit of DNA on my piece. I didn't bother washing it off since it was stitched over.

Working on the second flower

I used 6 strands of brown embroidery floss for the centre of both flowers. I started with the split-back stitch and then covered it in French Knots. The stems are done in stem stitch, in a light green #8 perle cotton.

For the second flower, I used a yellow #8 perle cotton for the petals. I'm happy to say that it didn't make much difference. I'm happy because when I can, I prefer embroidering with perle cotton.

Punch Needle

As I mentioned last week, Fleur has shown us how to use punch needle instead of using a Turkey stitch to make rug-like fringes. I must admit that I had a hard time getting used to using the punch needle but a little practice and some very good information from Amy Oxford of the Oxford Punch Needle School helped a lot. In her video about which yarns to use, she explains the mechanics of the punch needle and gives suggestions of yarns that work and don't work.

In the image below, I was trying to use a cheap ~~inexpensive~~ embroidery thread. If it doesn't work, Amy suggests to either double up the thread if it's very fine, or use a "control" thread such as wool along with it. I managed to do one line with this teal thread but gave up after that. I only watched the video after giving up.

Trying various yarns and threads in the Punch Needle

For punch needle the image at the top shows you that I worked from there, but it's actually the back of the piece. The lovely fringe comes up on the other side, as you can see in the image below.

Later on I used a gorgeous fine variegated cotton yard. I used two pieces of thread in the punch needle. It worked beautifully and the mixed colours of the variegated thread came out great. If this image is a little confusing it's because I flipped the hoop around and punch needled from the front, to obtain a flat lovely area. Since it worked so well, I flipped the hoop again and added some fringe for the top in the same yarn.

Experimenting with doing punch needle from the back and the front

At the beginning, it's difficult not to have the thread pop out of the fabric so once I was finished, I embroidered with the same yarn in the areas with gaps. When the fringe is actually on top, you don't notice these gaps, unless they are huge. On the top, the luscious fringes take up lots of space.

In the image below, you can see that I added some curly twined fabric at the top. In the space between the yellow and green rug area, I stitched the fabric strip down to add crinkly texture.

Punch needle, stitching and adding interesting texture

This is where I've gotten so far. Below the green rug, I added a scrap of blue green fabric and stitched some organic blanket stitches on top. I'm not sure where I'll go next with the piece, but I did add a few interesting bits that could work....we'll see 😁

Embroidery stitching on fabric and a few ideas

I wanted to share with you this great picture I took earlier today. It's been raining leaves!

Raining Leaves in the backyard!

Coming up - Fall Fibre Fling!

I was happy to learn that I only have one shift at the Membership table since the volunteer coordinator included this in the list. I'll be doing one shift on Saturday afternoon and then a shift at the front doors on Friday early afternoon. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's art. Since this is a sale, there is likely to be a little less art and a lot of fun textile things for sale. I'll try to keep my purchases reasonable 😍

This Friday and Saturday in Ottawa

What I learned

When embroidering, don't draw your flower too close to the edge of the fabric - it makes it more difficult to stitch! I really should know that but didn't notice until I came to stitch it.
I love the effect that the paint had on the fabric. It's so uneven and splotchy, and yet stitches up very well!
I enjoyed stitching the flowers using the split-back stitch and it didn't take long that my stitches were improving.
I really like the stem stitch, so that's what I used for the outlines and the stems.
As I mentioned I'm happy that in this instance, the #8 perle cotton was similar to three strands of embroidery floss. I just prefer stitching (and threading) perle cotton!
I know that we'll be going back to work on these flowers later because Fleur Woods is all about layering and she believes that more is better 😁
Punch needle is a skill that is improved with practice.
Once I got the basics and my work should have been ok, I looked up Oxford Punch Needle on Google and got the exact video that I needed. I figured that my problem was the yarn that I used...and I was correct.
So don't be afraid to search out more information if what you're doing isn't working. Odds are, someone else had the same issues and you'll find it solved somewhere!
I love being able to do punch needle from both the back and the front. It also helped me understand what what happening at both ends.
I have been stitching much more densely then they recommend when you are making a rug. It will be fun to actually make a small rug at some point.
I've registered for a workshop on punch needle next winter. The workshop is with Robin through OOTB. Then I can learn to use punch needle the way that it was meant to be used.
Fall Fling was a huge success. People love seeing what we do and I love having an excuse to talk about it.😊

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 504 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a productive week! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts finished quilting two very lovely Swirling Star Christmas Toppers. Check out her post to see the FMQ from the back!