Showing posts with label slow stitching. Show all posts

Thursday, October 01, 2026

A Restful and Productive Holiday and I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome 😊 I had a restful but also productive holiday alone in the bush. It was just what I needed to recharge. Here's what I worked on.

New Stitching Projects

While at the cottage, I went to a nearby park on the river. It was so beautiful. The sun was shining, the river sparkling with sunlight and the reflection of the forest from the other side. I found the perfect place to sit, photograph and sketch. I just wanted to capture the gleaming sun, colourful reflections and the wave patterns around the rocks.

This is my first piece. The rocks are made from coiled fabric to make them 3D. In the picture below it's set on a blank canvas. I covered the canvas with two coats of watercolour ground and then painted it with watercolours.

First piece stitched but not finished

Here's a closeup of the wave patterns around the rocks. I used organza to show the reflection of the sun on the water.

Closeup of the patterns of the waves around the rocks

This is the watercolour painted canvas. I'll be attaching the piece to it so the top, bottom and sides will show.

Painted canvas with watercolour

Sketch of the rocks and the wave patterns

Here are three photos that I based the sketch on.

Water, waves, plants and sunlight

Water, waves and sunlight

Water, waves, plants and sunlight - 2

I'm working on a second version of the sketch - this time using the stitching to show the reflection more than the fabric. I hope to be sharing that with you soon.

Advancing projects

The first project I finished was my grandmother's (Mémère's) placemat. I only had a little bit to stitch so it was perfect to finish it and then use it during the week.

Mémère's placemat - all stitched up!

I also finished my watercolour stitching project. I added a bit of fabric to it, wove a bit and then added collage from a paper napkin. I call it Summer Tea Time. I'll be framing it and giving it to my younger brother since he likes it 😀

Summer Tea Time

Here is the morning view from the cottage. There are lots of trees and the temperature was cool, so I would move my chair to follow the sun.

Morning view at the cottage

I took over the table (and most of the living room) for my art 😀

What I learned

I was alone for most of the week and I was totally fine with that.
I did have my phone, so I could take breaks to listen to music or audiobooks and talk to JJ.
I went a little crazy making art the first day but slowly got into a routine.
I would get up late (my usual routine), have coffee outside and then start stitching. After lunch I would drive out to take pictures or go for a short walk. I would then come back, have supper and keep stitching until it was time to rest and listen to an audiobook.
I took many pictures and have lots of ideas for more small pieces.
I'm very thankful to my brother and nephew for letting me have the cottage - it was exactly what I needed. I really hope to do it again next year.
To use watercolour paint on canvas, the canvas needs a couple of coats of watercolour ground. That was one of the first thing I did when I got to the cottage. I now have three canvases ready to add watercolour so that I can mount my pieces on them.
Saturday I'll be posting the linking party for A Quilter's Cove QAL. Make sure to come by to see September's purple houses!

Related links

Stitching and watercolour on Free Motion Mavericks, August 03, 2023
Projects in Progress and I Quilted This!, May 27, 2026

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. You may want to check some out, after you've linked up below 😁 Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Sew & Tell, Slow Sunday Stitching, Patchwork & Quilts, Monday Musings,

I Quilted This!

Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it!

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button.

Thanks so much for keeping the party going without me while I was gone!

Gretchen of Gretchen's Little Corner is busy quilting baby quilts and here is her second one quilted and bound! What a lovey quilt, simple but beautiful!

Gretchen's second baby quilt

Gail of Quilting Gail rescued a placemat that she had started years ago. The placemat has appliqués from Missouri Star Christmas templates. Gail backed it with a cute bee fabric so that it can be used year round. It'll be part of her guild's Meals on Wheels donations at Christmas.

Gail's Christmas placemat

The back of Gail's Christmas placemat

Gwyned Trefethen quilted two of her Cats in the Attic blocks from the Rainbow Challenge. She's doing some very intricate FMQ and embroidery. It's really stunning.

Gwyned's orange cat

Gwyned's pink cat

Vicki of Vicki's Crafts and Quilting made two lovely snowmen runners. They are so cute!

Vicki's round snowmen topper

Vicki's snowmen runner

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts finished quilting last year's small purple quilt. She quilted it with straight lines diagonally crosshatched. What a cute finish!

Kat's small purple quilt

It's now your turn 😍

Thursday, September 17, 2026

Slow Stitching and an extended I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome 😊I didn't get any FMQ done this week but I played with thread, fabric, and slow stitching. I think I needed the calm that it brings. Please note that I'll be going away on a personal art retreat next week. Since I won't have access to the internet for my computer, I'm going to extend the linking party for an extra week. Also, the linking party for September's A Quilter's Cove QAL will take place on Saturday, October 3rd.

Mini Stitch Block

I have been reading a lot about art lately. On the Take Two blog, I read this very interesting article, "How to bring a sense of place into your art." Debbie Lyddon suggests that you sit quietly and observe a place, rather than reach for your camera. Here is an exercise that she suggests. In a place that you already know, spend 10 minutes and write down three sounds, two textures and one memory that the place brings up.

These are the notes I took on my phone (without taking pictures).

3 sounds: the leaves singing in the wind, bird chirping and crickets.

2 textures: long grass and cement blocks

1 memory: feeding the animals.

Here's what I came up with. A little piece that finishes at 5" x 5".

Backyard Senses - an impressionist fibre art collage

The piece started off with a white flannel back to which I attached the hand-dyed scraps. I used a variety of thread - shiny green rayon floss for the flower stems, shiny gold rayon for the leaves in the tree, and hand-dyed perle cotton. To illustrate the cement, I needle wove a little block.

After the embroidery and the bird appliqué, I used sewing thread to stitch the background with running stitch. I also added wool roving for the cloud.

I found a 5" x 7" canvas that I've attaching it to. It was probably the most difficult part since I looked online and they don't recommend using watercolour paints directly on canvas. I looked into my paint and ink supplies and found some Liquitex Acrylic ink that could work. That's what I worked on tonight - I was just too impatient to wait. I added Prussian blue ink to the front, sides and back edge of the canvas and then mounted the piece onto it.

Backyard Senses - attached to the painted canvas

What I learned

I'm sure that I could take this sense of space further but it was interesting to think about including sound and texture into the work.
I wanted to get the feel of the wind blowing in the leaves and the texture of grass and cement.
It was the first time that I used my rayon thread. They were at hand and I didn't want to hunt down anything specific. I'm glad that I took the time to play with them.
I'm hoping to work on this concept on little pieces like the one I did. They are fun, forgiving and take just an investment in thinking and a few hours of stitching.
After all of the quilting that I've done this summer, I'm going to give myself permission to play and experiment with art. 😍
I enjoyed working with the Liquitex Acrylic ink and it dries very quickly. When I painted the sides, it made a mess on the back edge of the canvas, so I carefully painted that. Next time I'll make sure to paint everything before attaching my piece.
As I mentioned, this linking party will be on for two weeks while the Quilter's Cove QAL linking party will start on Saturday, October 3rd.

Related links

"How to bring a sense of place into your art." Debbie Lyddon on Take Two blog

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. You may want to check some out after you've linked up below! Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, TGIFF, Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday, Beauties Pageant, Patchwork and Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2026, Oh Scrap!,

I Quilted This!

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button.

Gretchen of Gretchen's Little Corner is busy quilting baby quilts. What a lovely Berenstein Bears Baby Quilt with Framed Squares. Check out her simple but effective quilting. She started by stitching-in-the-ditch and then quilted around the insides of the squares and then added half orange peels.

Gretchen's Berenstein Bears Baby Quilt

Details of the quilting on the back of Gretchen's baby quilt

Sally from Crafts, Cavies and Cooking made a very lovely string backpack to replace an old one. She backed the blocks with fabric and stitched some wavy lines to keep it all together.

A lovely new string backpack by Sally

Sandra from mmm quilts made another lovely quilt. This one, Biblioasis, has some great book themed fabric in it. You'll want to check out her blog for more information on her FMQ and her quilt!

Biblioasis by Sandra

Yummy details of Sandra's FMQ on Biblioasis

Melva of Melva Loves Scraps finished her Little Lala quilt that she made for her QAL. It's so lovely! She used the same quilting motif as her grandmother, except that it was machine quilted. Check out her post for more details.

Melva's Little Lala quilt

It's now your turn 😍

Thursday, June 18, 2026

A Finished Flimsy, FMQ, slow stitching and I Quilted This!

Hello and welcome 😊 Another week has whizzed by. We're back to more seasonal weather and lots of rain. Yesterday the rain drops were so big that my patio umbrella was vibrating 😮 Let's get to the good stuff!

A Finished Baby Quilt Flimsy

The first baby quilt (of three) is now a finished top. It's actually one row less than the pattern but it's a baby quilt and didn't need to be that long. It measures 43" x 47". I just want baby to be wrapped up in it when it's cold and they're going out in the car or to play on the quilt on the floor.

As I mentioned, this is the first of three baby quilts. Three of JJ's friends had babies this winter. JJ helped me plan the quilt and chose the novelty fabrics based on her friends' hobbies. This one has fabric featuring Star Wars, pickleball, smoothies, and cute animals, including dinosaurs. I have three more blocks that I'll be adding to the back (hockey, trucks and mittens) and JJ will design and prepare the label.

A baby quilt flimsy from the Square Dance pattern

FMQ Two More Houses

I had fun FMQ two more Rainbow Neighbourhood houses.

Yellow house now FMQ

The brown house at night is also FMQ

My process is to take out some thread and then do all of the FMQ that I can with that colour. I started with white, since I was piecing the baby quilt before this. I did all of the insides of the blocks on the side walls. I then went on to yellow and then brown since I could use the same bobbin thread for both. So far it's worked very well.

I haven't quilted the yards or the actual rooves since they're another colour. The quilt has 8 houses and a park. I've FMQ 3 of the houses, so 5 more left! I'm also looking forward to playing in the park!

Slow Stitching

While watching video tutorials and catching up in the TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club, I've continued stitching my grandmother's placemat. I wanted to stitch something different in the pink sections and happened to watch Mirjam Gielen as she demonstrated how to do an organic honeycomb stitch. It's not a great stitch to quilt with since it's difficult to keep the tension even but after ironing the placemat, it wasn't too bad - at least not worth un-stitching😁

Honeycomb stitch on the placemat - a little wabbly but fine

I'll be using the honeycomb stich for only these two sections

This afternoon it was cool enough to stitch outside. It's my favourite retirement activity. There seems to be new baby grackles and squirrels around. They really don't like each other but they mostly behave 😃 Today I took out my floral watercolour concertina book and stitched away while watching the live nature show.

I started using "W" shapes - they stitch easily

Adding a lot more stitches to the pages

The concertina book - many more hours of stitching left 😍

What I learned

After finishing the last two rows of the baby quilt, I wasn't in the mood to make another two rows (the squares and then the triangles). I looked at the quilt and decided that it was big enough. It is for a baby, and would be fine for a toddler.
I do have three more novelty blocks to add, so I'll make a fun pieced backing since the quilt is wider than 42" (of course).
I do want to quilt the baby quilt but the Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt is a priority. However, if I can FMQ a couple of houses per week, in a month, I could have most of it finished. I was thinking that this gave me tons of time but July is just two weeks away, 😳 so I'll be focusing on the Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt.
I'm happy to report that I've only had issues with my white thread when FMQ. I have no idea what that's all about but the tension at the back just wasn't quite right. However with the other coloured thread, everything was fine. I was using a piecing thread, so next time I'll use something a little better for the FMQ.
The slow stitching on my grandmother's placemat wasn't as great as I hoped but it's still fine. I'll finish the last of the yellow perle cotton and then do something else for the other pink blocks.
I had a lot of fun stitching on paper on the concertina book. The first page is the easiest, after that it gets a little clumsy but it's all good.
I want to explore what other very simple stitches I can use on the paper. I have done some French knots. The vases on the collages are card stock, so I'll be able to try something different on those.

Related links

Flitting from Project to Project and I Quilted This! June 11, 2026
Baby Quilt

Baby Quilt, Upcoming Retreat and I Quilted This! May 21, 2026

Rainbow Neighbourhood

A finish, June's OMG and I Quilted This!, June 04, 2026

Slow Stitching

Projects in Progress and I Quilted This!, May 27, 2026
Playing with watercolour and stitch, January 07, 2026

Linking parties

I'll be linking to many fun linking parties that you may want to check out!

Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2026, Patchwork & Quilts, Put your foot down, Beauties Pageant, Slow Sunday Stitching,

I Quilted This!

Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it!

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button.

Gretchen from Gretchen's Little Corner, has finished quilting her two final compassion quilts for the year. Awareness & Butterfly Beauty are both lovely quilts. Gretchen did some straight line quilting in both and added a piano key border and diagonal quilting in the border corners of Butterfly Beauty. You'll want to check them out!

Awareness, made and quilted by Gretchen

Butterfly Beauty, Gretchen's own design

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts finished quilting her Peaches quilt for the Quilts 4 Kids Program. It's quilted in a straight lines pattern in a zig zag style.

Kat's quilted Peaches quilt

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts participated in a blog hop to showcase a new collection of fabrics, Sunflower Spice. They are gorgeous! Preeti created a wonderful queen sized quilt, Phagun, which she quilted on her domestic machine. You won't want to miss reading more about it and seeing more eye candy! Also, you'll want to check out her very cool pouches made with a recycled Nepal napkin.

Preeti's Phagun quilt

Diann of Little Penguin Quilts participated in Sandra's Lyra QAL and made a runner/wall hanging. It is really lovely. Here are both views.

Diann's version of Lyra as a runner

Diann's version of a wall hanging

It's now your turn 😍

Thursday, June 11, 2026

Flitting from Project to Project and I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome ☔ We're getting rain after a couple of wonderful sunny days. It was time for the rain to come since it got very hot and muggy. It was hard not spending my morning in the back yard, but I'm sure the sun will be back 🌞eventually! Let's see what I've been playing with.

FMQ an Orange House

I haven't done much stitch-in-the-ditch on the Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt since last week. I got bored and so started free motion quilting (FMQ).

I was a little nervous because the last time I FMQ I had serious problems going left! I'm not sure if I got better results because I doing less swirls or if going slowly helped but the FMQ with cotton and polyester thread worked well. Yay!!!!!

FMQ the front of the house and the yellow star

You can see some of the stitching

When I change thread and start FMQ the grass, I'll see if I get the same great results 😊

Back on Track with the Baby Quilt

The last time I posted about the baby quilt, I noticed that I had an oops at the bottom of the second row. It took me a while to get to it, and to figure out what I had done wrong but I did it.

Square Dance quilt is now fixed and ready for two more rows

I've got all of the Kona solids fabric picked out and planned. The pieces are all cut out for the next row. It's now a matter of getting it done!

Slow Stitching Mémère's Placemat

This week I had the chance to keep stitching my grandmother's placemat while watching the Fast-N-Easy Quilters Paradise Summit. It's a virtual summit with many fun. simple projects to quilt. It features many teachers and techniques. So far I haven't succumbed to the temptation of trying anything out. I did take detailed notes on a couple of the projects that I'd like to try eventually. Even if I don't make the projects, I learned something from each presentation that I watched. It was also the perfect time to stitch.

Stitching each large square using different designs

By the fourth block I needed something different - circles!

At this time, the plan is to stitch the whole placemat except for the small tulip squares.

What I learned

I seem to be restless these days. I spent some time in my studio but didn't feel like making much. It's all good - this is meant to be a fun hobby, not a job! I'm happy that I got a little further on three of my projects.
I'm really happy with the FMQ on the orange house. I had originally thought of only using my walking foot but with a big quilt, that's a lot of shifting the quilt around. I'm glad that I tried the FMQ - and even happier that it worked.
I took full advantage of the nice weather last week to hang out in the back yard watching the critters. One of the squirrels just cracks me up and the grackles have had their baby. It's really noisy when it's hungry 😀

Feeding time for baby grackle

Squirrel antics

I really hope to make some lovely art quilts one day, based on these visitors.

Related links

A finish, June's OMG and I Quilted This!, June 04, 2026 (Rainbow Neighbourhood)
Baby Quilt, Upcoming Retreat and I Quilted This! May 21, 2026 (baby quilt)
Projects in Progress and I Quilted This!, May 27, 2026 (slow stitching)

Linking party

I'm linking up to many fun linking parties. You may want to check some out 😍

Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2026, Slow Sunday Stitching,

I Quilted This!

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button.

This week Melva of Melva Loves Scraps, finished two versions of her Little House Sew Along 2026. She hosted this very successful Sew Along. I love the blocks within the log cabin. You'll want to check out the participants' quilts.