Showing posts with label snippet roll. Show all posts

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Playing in isolation

Hi, I hope this post finds you well. I'm afraid that I am now officially under isolation - that second bar appeared on the darn Covid test 😒. I don't know how much I'll be able to sew and stitch in the next few day. If I follow the same path as my daughter, I'll be sitting up somewhere with a fuzzy brain and no energy. Not looking forward to that!

Projects in progress

I'm making a runner and another wall hanging based on the Swirling Leaves piece that I made for the Hello Fall Blog Hop in 2020. It's always been one of my son's favourite, so I'm going to make him a runner. The other wall hanging is going to the workplace charity auction that will be held in November or December.

Swirling leaves wall hanging

I have enough neutral background stitched up for the wall hanging. Have I told you that I love improv piecing? I did learn a few lessons so far, so keep reading to find out what!😊

Stitching in progress with lots of trimming

Almost done the background for the wall hanging

Fabric strips pile

Next comes the borders and then the appliquéd leaves. A couple of days ago, on my way back from picking up the mail, I stopped in my neighbours' yards to grab these leaves. They make rather realistic leaf templates, don't you think?😁

Leaves and templates

I'll be digging into my scrap bins of hand-dyed fabrics gifted to me by Elaine Quehl. I'm sure that I'll find the perfect scraps of fabric for the leaves since they are the focus of the pieces!

Slow stitching update

I've been slowly working on my hand-stitched snippet roll which will be loosely based on our fall trip (see Related links below). It's a little more planned than a regular meditation block but once I start stitching, it's just as meditative. It's going to be a long snippet roll, so far about 44" long. It will hang on that antique bobbin which comes from the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum.

Meditative hand-stitched snippet roll

Fall colours in my back yard

I may have gone several hundred miles to take the Agawa Canyon train tour but I could have seen the fall colours in my own back yard. I took these yesterday. The fire bush is living up to its name!

I also love the view from my back yard. The red maple in the school yard seems to be sharing its colour with the sky.

A bit of a sunset from my back yard

It's past time to clean up the yard so I hope that the weather keeps cooperating for at least another couple of weeks.

What I learned

Although I love improv piecing, mostly because I'm accuracy challenged 😊, I did discover that I do have to either:

cut my fabric strips relatively even, or
piece the fabric with a consistent seam.

Turns out that if your fabric cut is uneven and your seam is inconsistent, even I will have to use my seam ripper 😲
So, I started being more careful about my seam allowance and everything is great! I trim the blocks often to ensure that things are even.
After picking leaves to use as templates, it really important to either make the template within a few hours or to place the leaves under some books to keep them flat as they dry. Ask me how I learned that lesson!😉
I even took the time to read my Swirling Leaves post to make sure that I remembered what I learned. I didn't write it down, but it looks like I created the background to fit the leaves placement. I didn't do this for this first quilt, so I'll see if it makes a difference. I'll update you on that when I make the runner, or finish this wall hanging.

Sunday, June 06, 2021

Snippet Exchange

Exchanging Snippets

In mid-February I exchanged the background of my snippet with Dorothy, another member of the Out of the Box (OOTB) Fibre textile group. We had until May 17th to finish embellishing our partner's snippet background and exchange them for the final reveal during our monthly virtual meeting.

Snippet background

A snippet is a small piece of something. You've probably heard of a snippet of music or video. If you Google "snippet roll" you will find that they are generally narrow lengths of embellished fabric that are often rolled around a piece of wood, such as a dowel or tube.

Dorothy's background

My background

Dorothy's background was made of purple fabric that she had hand-dyed, as well as a square of dyed cheesecloth. She has a lovely gradient of purples there. My background consisted of two strips of rather wild coloured fabrics that ranged from light blue to deep purple and fuchsia. I bought this fabric years ago when Ricky Tims came to Ottawa for a presentation.

Embellishing a snippet

The snippet that I was to embellish hung on my design wall for at least a month. When I finally started putting things to embellish it aside, it slowly came together. I filled a small basket with threads, yarn, buttons, hand-dyed scraps, lace etc.

Fabric

The first piece of fabric that I stitched on was the long pinkish sliver on the left. I used Kimono silk thread to attach and sew when I didn't want the stitching to stand out. Otherwise I used my hand-dyed perle cotton as well as other embroidery thread.

First pieces of fabric

Adding various elements

Top of the snippet

One evening I stamped a couple of my hand-dyed fabrics. The swirl next to that first piece was stamped and then I just added random cross-stitches. On a piece of purple and blue fabric, I stamped on some birds. I added them at various places to add a little bit on cohesiveness. I embroidered around that first bird but since the result wasn't worth the effort, it was the first and last bird to be embroidered.

Here are the details of the completed snippet in three images.

You can see that I added a lot of different fabrics. The colours that matched the background were easy to find while the contrasting pieces were more difficult. That's why I added that first pinkish piece - to remind myself to use contrast.

While colour is important, I also wanted to use contrasting textures in the fabric scraps. Here is a piece of voile from an old skirt that is attached to the first pink fabric and the printed swirl.

Layering fabrics is a great way to add contrast and interest. At the bottom of this image is a layer of silk organza, a scrap of a dyed t-shirt and finally some dyed cotton velour.

Middle of the snippet

In the middle section, you can see a couple of other stamped birds that I didn't bother to outline with embroidery. Near the middle, Dorothy had used a purple cheese cloth so I added a piece of white silk organza to add some depth.

I couldn't resist adding a small scrap of fabric with violets - it was just so perfect.

The fabric that starts in the middle and goes all of the way down the right side is the back of a skirt where tulle had been attached to the dark purple slip underneath. What you see is the sergered stitches. I thought that it might add interest to a piece at some point.

Yarns and thread

Since I wanted to use many yarns in the piece, I started by couching some fuzzy dark purple yarn to create the top flower.

Bottom of the snippet

I wanted to cover the stitching on the background piece, so I alternated between couching yarn and embroidery stitches.

I also couched a piece of cheesecloth and added beads for interest. Many are small pieces of amethyst from my mother's broken necklace.

At the very bottom, you can see a white piece that is sort of lacy. It's a piece of FMQ on soluble fabric that I made a couple of years ago. I backed it with purple semi-transparent fabric.

Buttons

I added a couple of fun purple buttons with white dots on them for a little bit of whimsy. There is also a beautiful hand-carved flower button near the bottom.

My Snippet

Here is the lovely snippet that I received from Dorothy.

My snippet made
by Dorothy

Dorothy used embroidery, appliqué, and beading. She added a few pieces of cheese cloth, some fun buttons (stars, an inch worm, bees, sewing machine, etc.) as well as ribbon that looks like a measuring tape.

She made the swirls from foil that lines the inside of many food containers (I'm going to have to try that!) as well as two hand-made flowers.

I attached the snippet to those ice cream sticks that I roll up my hand-dyed thread on. It now hangs in my studio.

My new snippet roll.

My June OMG
June's One Monthly Goal (OMG)

I will be sandwiching my son's Version 2.0 quilt by the end of the month. Hopefully I will have gotten further along but at this point I'm being prudent by just putting the sandwich as the goal.

What I learned

The blank background was very intimidating but when I started to gather possible materials, it became less daunting.
I found it difficult at first to work on such a narrow background.
When I found my groove, it was a real delight of slow stitching to put this together.
I found it hard to part with the piece but I got such a vibrant, joyful piece back.
Our snippets are so different. I can really see the influence of the workshops that I've taken from TextileArtist.org Stitch Club.