Going a Little Crazy

I have been going a little crazy lately, crazy patch-working that is.

My local sewing group are having fun with some donated fabric scraps, and one lady has been busy pieceing all the small pieces together into some crazy pieced blocks. There are lots of them, so that means lots of hand stitching to decorate. Many of us are lending a hand, including myself.

Last week I got handed a pile, not sure how many, maybe about ten, so I have been busy stitching.

It's been a bit of fun really, letting the piece talk to me to tell me colour choice & stitch pattern.

It is amazing how some pieces talk to you & some don't, then all of a sudden they shout at me to use a certain colour. Some even get put away until they are ready to talk to me.

I have done four so far, with a little help from M------- in my sewing group( who pieced them all together & started stitching one some), and also my friend Robyn J who did some of the gorgeous stitching in the second piece above.

It has given me a break from my knitting & my huge sampler that I am working on, but they are both starting to call to me too, as is my sewing machine. Ahhhh..................so many choices, so little time!

A New Year - A new Book Cover

Happy New Year! Yes I know, I'm a bit late, but I hope it is a good one for everyone, and a very creative one for all my textile friends.

I also know it has been a while since I have been here. I have still been creating though, lots of things in the "Slow Cloth Category". But more about those later.

For today, I want to show you all my quick little creation of a book cover. It is to cover yet another inspiration book. The book is to inspire my local sewing group friends that inspiration for projects can come from anywhere. Inside the book is just clippings from magazines and mainly shop catelogues, the type that get dropped in the letterbox just about on a daily basis.

The first clipping is one of a doona cover. It has bands of colour across the bottom, tucks placed in one of the bands of colour, then a print all over the remainder of the cover. I have used to the print as my inspiration.

To begin with I searched through some bags of fabric that I just sorted through and pulled out three that would go together. The green was from my stash, but the pink and the check were from scraps. Interfacing on the back, pieced together, then appliqued and machine embroidered.

The machine embroidery was the fun bit, trying to find a stitch on my machine to look like what I wanted. Then playing with the colours to get something that looked good. After experimenting, & remembering that contrast embroidery to the base fabric took time to get it to look good. I settled on two shades darker than the fabric so that the mistakes were not quite as notaceable.

Then I wanted some embroidery on the outside of one flower. Silly me did not test it, and it looked like ****. I tried to unpick and got part-way there, but it was looking messier by the minute. At the back of my mind was this little voice reminding me 'never unpick- just cover it up'. So that's what I did, just covered up the mess with a larger flower. Who can tell?

My little bud needed something, so this is where I had fun playing with one of the features of my machine. I can set a stitch pattern to stitch from 1 - 10 pattern repeats, or to contujnue forever until I stop. I programmed it to stitch just one, hence my little staymens erer born.

All in all I am happy with the end result. I am hoping it will inspire the ladies of my group to try something new.