Pooh Bear & Friends

There is nothing like a new baby arriving in the family to spur on some sewing. This little quilt was made for a little one born yesterday, & congratulations must go out to S.... & H....... on the birth of their son.

I have only met the mother of this child a few times, & don't really know too much of her background. But every new child born into this world deserves something special, so I decided to make a quick & simple quilt, something that could be loved & cuddled into for many years to come.

To make it quick, I was on the lookout for a printed panel that I could just quilt, rather than taking lots of time in cutting & piecing, let alone applique or digitizing. After many visits to the local fabric stores, I found this piece of Disney print featuring Pooh Bear & his friends. Perfect! I could just layer it with some batting & backing, quilt it, then bind it & wallah! Done! Well, so I thought.

When I bought the fabric, my first thought about the quilting was to do it in straight lines, between the rows of patterned squares & circles. But when I had it layered on the table ready to pin, it started to talk to me. It must have been the angle I was looking at it, all layered on the table,  that made me notice the diagonal lines. The little patterns are all printed in either a circle or a square, and if we look at them straight, they alternate, one circle, one square. It is only when we look closer that we notice that the alternating patterns produce diagonal lines of all square or all circles. Mmmmmm......... maybe I could quilt it with diagonal lines. No, that would go through the printed patterns & spoil them. So my mind when one step further, making a line going around the outline of half a square, then a short diagonal line to the next square, then around the outline  of half of the next square. Much better!

After making this decision, I thought I would be able to continue each row with only going around half the square. It would certainly be enough machining to hold the layers together for washing. But something wasn't right, it looked incomplete. So then I decided to make a second row, still linking the squares together in a diagonal line, but this time going around the other half of each square.

 It took me a long time, longer than I thought, with each diagonal row of pattern requiring two rows of quilting. I am so glad I quilted it like this. It not only made an interesting pattern of stitching on the back, it made all the little designs pop out of their background on the front.

Lesson learned, take note of the design and explore all options for quilting to achieve the best results.

My New Book

Yesterday I had a fabulous day. A group of five of us from our local sewing group went on a day out to Crowle Home in Meadowbank. It was my first time and I was in Heaven! The Emporium and the Fabric Cave are treasure troves for any type of needleworker. Everything from beads, buttons, embroidery threads, needlework kits, bias binding, batting, crochet threads, fabric, books and all kinds of goodies. Everything is donated and at reduced rates, with some fabulous bargains to be had.

I spent a grand total of $25 and brought home lots of goodies. There is enough thread to make my Tenneriffe lace until I die, numerous rolls of cotton tape for name tags for 20c each, a piece of lovely wool fabric to make a jacket, numerous spools of  beautiful variagated machine embroidery thread, brand new, still wrapped in plastic.

Then there is the treasure of all treasures, my book on fabric flower making shown above. As you can see it is very old with the price of  7/6. Australia changed to decimal currency in 1966 so the book is older than that, but there is no date on the book anywhere. Cost of book .......... $2. Bargain! This little gem is staying in my book case forever.

Great day yesterday, thanks ladies!

Flutterby Dreams

Well, what can I say, it's been a while! We might just skip over all the Seasons Greetings stuff (hoping everyone had a good one) as we are way past that now, and just get on with the creativity.

I have been creating, ( those that know me well know that I create something with textiles every day !), I have just been creating things that I couldn't show here for a while. Most of what I am creating at the moment are for the new little people arriving in the family.

This quilt was created for a new little girl that arrived in the family late last year. I knew she was arriving, but it still took me by surprise when I got a phone call to say she was due "next week". That sent me in a spin, what do I do? In the same phone call I was informed of another little person arriving later this year! I might add here that this phone call was the night before I was going on holidays, how could I think? My mind was in a spin. The phone call was from the mother of the baby expected later this year, so at least I could ask her what she wanted. Mmmmm..........anything. What colour? Mmmmm...........whatever you feel. I was after inspiration,  so I had to look elsewhere for that, and I was going on holiday, no time to look through my patterns and books! For the whole trip in the car ( I was passenger) my mind was thinking, I could do this, or that, no, little fingers get caught in the holes, this would be better. What design? My books are at home! Then I remembered about the two creative shops in the little town I was going to. One of these shops is a patchwork shop, selling a great range of fabrics, patterns and general sewing stuff. My kind of store! I would just have to go for a visit to see what inspiration I could pick up there.So visit I did, and came out with a bag full of fabric that said "baby". Then it was onto the other store for more inspiration, but there will be more about that in a later post.

OK, so I had fabric, now to a design. I would worry about that when I got home (or so I thought),. I had other stitching with me to do.

While we were away the message came about L____'s arrival. A little girl! Mmmmm....... I had lots of pink fabric............... and white................ mmmmmm...........enough for a quilt? There were lots of other colours in the bag too but this was a little girl, she needed pink and white. So the paper came out,  the designing started, then the calculations. Mmmmm.......... I would just have to go back to that lovely shop to buy more pink fabric!

The quilt needed to be done as fast as possible, after all, L_______ was already here. So just quick squares were the answer, but it was looking to plain, how to jazz it up to give it some oomph! Some machine embroidery! Butterflies for a little girl! That would be good.......and quick! Well relatively, considering Christmas was around the corner. But it would all have to wait till I got home.

Upon arriving home I set out to see what butterfly designs  I already had , after all it is the digitizing process that takes all the time. I found a few, but only one I thought was anywhere near suitable. The shape was nice, but the heavy stitching wasn't, it needed to be light and delicate. So I set about changing it. I took all the heavy stitching away from the wings and inserted a filling stitch, placed at an angle to give more interest. Then I set about changing all the start and end points of each component of the design. If they are in the wrong place, the stitch out will have nasty looking jump stitches that cause problems. As any digitizer will tell you, this may sound simple but in reality takes time, then it all has to be tested to make sure it works.

The butterfly above is what I came up with.

Once the design was tested, I then had to think about how to execute it to fabric. I could cut out all my squares ready for embroidery, but they wouldn't fit in my embroidery hoop, and would need calico stitched on all four sides to make them fit. Mmmmmm........................time consuming. So then I thought about marking the squares onto the fabric, and  positioning the embroidery design in the hoop to fit within each square before the fabric was cut. Much better, less sewing, less time. So all 33 butterflies were stitched onto the fabric before it was cut.

Once the butterflies were done, the cutting and piecing were quick. Then I just had to think about the quilting and that was a no brainer. I had set the design off center to add more interest, and added the quilting lines to reflect it. Just straight line quilting, nothing fancy, pink thread on pink fabric, white thread on white fabric. Quick and easy, followed by the binding.

The quilt is now being cuddled by it's new owner, hopefully for many years to come.

"Seasons Of Sneezes" - A Place Getting Piece

My creative stitching group has been running a challenge "Changing of the Seasons". Two of the girls have done all the hard work in orgainizing it, and it was open to all members of the Embroiderer's Guild. Members of the group entered as well as other members of  the Guild, and entries came in from as far as Victoria and Queensland. Last Sunday was the day of presentations, and I was astounded to recieve a third placing.

My piece, "Seasons of Sneezes", is a depiction of my allergies that change as the seasons change. In winter my skin goes dry, no matter how much moisturiser I use. As the season changes to spring, my nose will start to run, my eyes will get itchy and I will be sneezing with hayfever as the flowers of spring emerge.

The balckwork pattern is my own, developed from a pic of a snowflake I found, and stitched with a combination of variegated and blended threads. The reticella section is also my own design, developed from a drawing I did of a flower.

Originally the piece was going on a book cover, but time was short so it is just mounted it on core board with a hanging string at the back. It will be a while before it comes home, but when it does I may still change it to a book cover.

All the pieces are currently on display at the Concord library her in Sydney.

Piecing for Charity

My local ASG Sewing Group, the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews, is sewing for charity. Every meeting, one of our members brings along her huge bag of fabric scraps and  we try to put together fabrics to turn into quilts. Some of the hard work has already been done, where embroidererd squares and possible fabrics to go with them have been bagged together. I brought two of these bags home with me last month to see what I could create from them.

In the first bag were some lovely digitized machine embroidered squares, with some very girly handbags and shoes. All stitched onto pink polycotton fabric.

In the bag with the embroidered squares were pieces of other fabrcs, some large, some small, some prints, some plain. All were off cuts, some with odd shaped pieces already cut from them.

So, what to do with it all? How to put it all together?

I started with borders around the embroidered squares, then added some sashings, a fine floral border to tie them all together, then a wide pieced border of plain pink with a pink and white check. Overall effect, not bad. The quilt still needs to be layered with batting & backing, then quilted & bound, but that will happen sometime in the future. I am sure some little girl somewhere will be happy to cuddle up to this once it is finished. Now on to working out what to do with the second package I have.

Quilting For Charity

My new sewing group is on the road again, sewing quilts for charity. This one was embroidered and  pieced by one lady from donated and cut squares , and I offered to quilt and bind it. It is now finished & ready to be donated to a deserving cause.

Sharing the work load of a project like this is interesting. Some of the squares were cut on bias and  some of the strips were not cut straight. Therefore the quilt top is pulling in all kinds of directions because the different grains are fighting against each other. We knew this from the beginning, but we figured it was going to be loved & dragged around for comfort by some grateful child so we continued. The quilting was fun because of all the grain changes, but I still managed, and the bind may not be quite straight, but we figure it will be loved anyway. I have two more to do, both need to be pieced, so they are next on my agenda.

I might add here that our new sewing group is going great guns. We have 16 members on our books, ranging from beginner sewers to experienced dressmakers, and we have plenty of room for more. So if anyone would like to come and join us, all info is on the Australian Sewing Guild website. Just look under the "groups" tab, then click the drop-down arrow in the "select a group" section. Scroll down and select the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews, then click the "select a group" button. This will give you meeting times, dates, a contact, and also a map of how to find us. We'd love for some new members to join us.

Byzantine Lefkara Lace

Just over a week ago, I had the absolute pleasure of participating in a two day workshop in Byzantine Lefkara lace with Christine P. Bishop. The workshop was a private one, organised by a lovely group of ladies, and participants were by invitation only. I felt so stoked that I was on the invitation list! The two days were full on, and my eyes were complaining by the end of day one, even though there were plenty of rest breaks with copious amounts of tea & food, especially on the sweet side. On the morning of day two  I thought my eyes had recovered enough to start stitching again, but even my brain had frazzled a little, and I couldn't count as well as I had in the past. Consequently, there was much reverse stitching and not as much progression as I would have liked. However, I still learnt plenty, and now have enough knowledge to finish the piece.

By the end of day two I only had two of the nine squares above filled with the appropriate fillings, the other six fillings have been worked over the last week. There are many more squares of fillings yet to go. When completed ( yes it will be completed!) it may not be exactly the same as the teacher's, as I plan to work a different edge than the one on her sample. I think that is called "individuality". Watch this space to see how it turns out.

I must add here that I have possessed a book on this type of work for a number of years and am glad that it is finally getting some use.

I had a fabulous time at this workshop, and it was the first time I had participated in one run by this tutor. Christine was an excellent tutor and I would love to do more of her classes.

Coral Calypso - an Exhibition

A week ago, my local embroidery group held an exhibition. We only hold one once every five years so that there can be enough work to show off a really fabulous display. I personally had 10 pieces in this one, the most I have had in any exhibition I have been involved in. So here I will show you the ten, some you have seen before, some not, and some you have seen in progress.

Piece 1 - The above white table mat featuring reticella, measuring approx 50cm x 36cm, this piece is my pride & joy. It took five years from conception to completion, including designing, sampling and one failed attempt where at the last minute I changed the design, and didn't think it through before starting to stitch. The consequence was my reticella design wouln't fit the space. You can read about that story here and see the result here. Then there was the twelve months that the piece sat there waiting for me to cut into it. After one failed attempt already, I was scared it would happen again, even with all the extra counting & thread marking I did this time around. Luckilly all that counting paid off & the design worked, to the point that I am extremely proud of the end result.

Piece 2 - Is an experiment in combining pulled and drawn work as well as in design. I had come across a book showing how to create and use mandalas in patchwork, & thought I may be able to use the same concept as a base for some drawn work. The piece of fabric was a scrap that I had aquired from somewhere, and there was not much room for sampling stitches, that is if I wanted the end result to be square. The square also presented a problem with designing, as I found six sided shapes didn't sit well, they needed to be four sided. So I played with a drawing program I have, overlaid a number of four pointed star shapes, then set about eliminating lines until I was happy with the resultant design. Then came the fun of stitching. Pulled work is not something that I have done much of, so the stitching had to be simple. Satin stitch, eyelets & four sided stitch, it is amazing the effects these three simple stitches can have when combined together, used in differnt counts, or used where some threads have been removed. Over all I am happy with the result.

Piece 3 - This little bag is also a combination of pulled & drawn work. It bagan as a holiday project, one where I threw a piece of fabric, some threads, and mabe a book or two for inspiration, into a bag & see what I could come up with. As soon as I started stitching, I realized the fabric was open to pulled work, but I had only brought drawn books with me, so I started on drawn work which kept me busy for my holiday. The pulled work background came later, and the lining & twisted cord came two days before it had to be handed in for exhibiting. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute. Am I happy with it? Mmmmm,......... it's cute and functional and I intend to use it as a little work bag.

Well, the above pieces were all new, the rest have been seen here before, but I will show you them again anyway.

Piece 4 - A cream table mat also started when on another holiday.

Piece 5- My first piece of reticella, which has now been in a few different exhibitions. Might be time to retire this piece, even if I am still very proud of it.

Piece 6 - My Seahorse Sanctuary, which took pride of place by the front door. A piece of creative drawn thread work done a few years back for a course.

Piece 7- My first full piece of Tenneriffe lace. This piece was designed for, and given to a special friend for a special birthday. I so want to do another piece, one for me to keep. A slightly differnt design though.

Pieces 8 & 9 - Bookmarks, both of which are a form of drawn work. The one on the lft is filet, while the one on the right is an all over filling, something that I want to play more with.

Piece 10 - A bobbin lace fish that went to Japan for an OIDFA dispaly. A huge challenge for me to work as he is double sided

For those of you that made it to the exhibition, I hope you enjoyed what you saw. For those of you that didn't, you missed some stunning pieces, so I hope you enjoyed seeing what I had displayed. Anyone see a common theme happening here in my work?



Seasons of Sneezes

My creative stitching group, Stitchers Plus, is hosting a challenge. The challenge is "Changing of the Seasons" & works are limited to A4 size. Any member of the Embroiderers Guild can enter, & works will be exhibited at the City of Canada Bay Library, Concord Branch, in October 2012.


The above is just a snippet of my piece ( just to tease you all), the piece can been seen in full at the exhibition. It features Reticella lace work combined with modern creative black-work, and was inspired by my changing allergies that change with the seasons.


I do hope you can all come to see it in full. Otherwise you will all have to wait for some time before I post it in full here.

A Baby Blanket UFO

There is nothing like a new baby in the family to spur on the finish of a UFO. This little baby blanket started life quite some years ago as a little baby matinee jacket. At the time it was earmaked for another little girl, but once I started it I felt that I wouldn't like the yarn up against a new born baby's skin, it wasn't soft enough. So I pulled it all undone & started this blanket instead. It is simple chains & blocks of trebles & I very soon got bored with it. Consequently it soon got put aside for more interesting things & so became a UFO. Then last Monday I got an early morning call to say a member of family had given birth to a little girl. Mmm..... time to pull it out & finish it. It was only about 1/3 done, so there was still lots to do, but I had it completely finished in three days & handed over to the proud parents. Congratulations go out to S & A on the birth of their beautiful daughter & I hope they find the blanket useful.

Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews - Our First Day

What a great morning I  had yesterday. It was the first meeting of our new Australian Sewing Guild group, the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews. We were all a little anxious, being a new group, a new venue, wondering how it would all go and what we were going to do. In hindsight we shouldn't have worried at all, it was just a fabulous meeting. We had thirteen in attendace, 1 appology, and one person walk in off the street to see what we were doing. By my maths, that makes 15 people, and they are all talking about comming back. Yippee!

The first adventure was unlocking the door and getting it to stay that way. In the end we just clipped the door back with the hook provided. It was only a door into an entry, and as there was another door into our hall space, the cool weather oustide wasn't a problem, especially when we found the airconditioner button. Once that was pushed it wasn't long before we were all warm and cosy.

The second adventure was the lights. So many light switches! They were all labelled, it was just a case of finding the ones that we required. Easy to find for the next time.

Then came the tables and chairs, and I am pleased to note that everybody helped. At first we only got out three tables, thinking it would be plenty for the people we knew that were comming, but it wasn't long before we were putting up more to accomodate all the newbies.

Now that was just the setting up, the real guts of the meeting was yet to come. We talked about what people wanted to do, what they wanted to get out of the group, and came to decisions as to how the next few meetings would go down. There was show and tell aplenty, including the quilt blocks at the top by Margaret. So bright and fabulous, all made from scraps.

This quilt was also by Margaret, full of beautiful applique.

Jenny J was off to a special function and had made this stunning outfit to wear, including the matching bag. Somthing that would cost $$$$$ in any little boutique.

There were also these fun tissue box covers by Jenny J that will be for sale, great for that special place or person.

 Then there were the conversations, so manyof them I couldn't keep up with them all. There were conversations about quilts, quilt blocks, quilting and how to get quilting designs onto fabric. Paper pieceing, mitered corners in binds, making personalised dress forms, how to choose  threads, pants fittings, taking patterns from a garment, how to read commercial pattern instructions, sewing machines, sewing machine mechanics, scissor sharpening............and that's just what I was a part of. There were conversations happening all morning, everyone was chatting and it was all about sewing. All the new people were made welcome and were included in on conversations. Just fabulous! In the end we were havng to push people out the doors because our time was up. Now that's what I call a sewing meeting. May there be many more to come.

Acknowledgements:-
Photography - Helen N

The Fix

Some of you might remember the counted thread band sampler round robin that I entered into way back in late 2006. Well, this was mine as it was returned to me. You can read my thoughts about this in this post.

 I have a motto that "everthing is fixable" (well almost everthing) and I have been deliberating on this one for a while. Now has come the time to share how I fixed my sampler.

Step 1. Identify the problem. In this case it was 4 broken threads in the fabric.

Step 2. Mark with thread where the broken threads are so they would be easilly found when required.

Step 3. Carefully remove the stitching. Appologies to the lady that did the stitching but it had to come out so I could get to those broken threads.I had to use my magnifier and  good light so I didn't do any more damage. The unpicking left a few holes from the stitching, but these will come out later either just with handling or by easing the threads back in place with a needle.

Step 4. Carefully un-weave (is there such a word?) the broken thread back to an anchor point. In this case the anchor point is the buttonhole stitch of the hardanger band. Care muxt be taken not to break the thread as it is removed as we need as much length  as possible. In this case I had only a few mm.

Step 5. Turn the work to the wrong side .

Step 6. Finish the end under some anchoring stitches. In this case the end was far too short to thread into a needle so I pulled it under with  a fine crochet hook. Ideally I would have liked to have done some double stitching in under that buttonhole stitching but the end was far to short for that. I'll settle with it just tucked underneath.

Step 7. The other end of the broken thread also has to be removed back to an anchor point. This was my initial delema as to where to take it back to. There was a  band of blackwork which wasn't really the best anchor point. I could have used it if I was desperate, but Mandy had kindly left me some space to work with so I worked a row of satin stitch to give me an anchor point. The row of satin stitch will be decorated at a later date.

Step 8. This time it was easy to to put that fabric thread into a needle & anchor it under the satin stitching.

Step 9.To replace that broken thread that I had removed, I took a thread from the side of the fabric. I'ts the same as what I just took out, only in one length, not broken.

Step 10. After threading that side thread into a needle, I anchored the end in underneath the buttonhole stitching.

Step 11. Then I very carefully wove it into the space that was vacated by the broken thread. Care had to be taken to go under and over in the right places to keep the weave correct.

Step 12. There was more anchoring to do at the other end once I had woven that thread back in.

This is that one broken thread all fixed. The weave is correct but my tension isn't the same as the original, it shows as a pulled thread. Hopefully over time with some handling, the fabric threads will work themselves around and it will be less noticeable. Having some stitching over the top will certainly help, but that is for another day. It is certainly better than no holes. In the process of fixing this one, I found another two, that makes six broken threads in all. Now to fix the other five (and any more that I find) and to think about what will go in the space.

At this point I would like to add that this fix is not suitable fo all mistakes. Each error has to be assessed in it's own surroundings to work out which is the best and least noticable way to.

Three cheers to my motto -  "Anything is Fixable" . Hip, hip hurrah.