Another Christmas Bauble

My new Christmas bauble finally finished.

This Christmas bauble was started back in November in my local sewing group, the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews. We had decided to cancel our December meeting due to the proximity of Christmas, and instead made our Christmas decorations in November.

This decoration is based on a polystyrene ball, available from places like Spotlight and Lincraft. It is divided into sections, cut with a stanley knife, then fabric is pushed into the cuts. I have made plenty of these over the years, so this year I took the basic idea to another level.

I first had to divide my polystyrene ball to obtain a pattern. From there I scanned my pattern into my digitising program to get the correct size to digitise my words. Once done, I could then play with the shapes of the letters to get them into the shape to fit the bauble.

My first attempt at stitching them out showed that I needed more of a border around the letters to accentuate them more, so back to the file I went to fix it up. Once fixed, I was happy with the stitch outs.

My ball is divided into six, three sections are my digitised words, and the alternate three sections are the same green fabric that has been over-layed with a red glittery mesh fabric. The ball has been finished of with red ribbon.

It's probably my favourite bauble on my tree this year, thought I do have other decorations that are not baubles that I like much better. Most of my tree decorations are hand made, this just adds another one to the mix.

Digitized Machine Embroidered Multihooped Scallops

Behold! My first project that involved multi hooping!

I have wanted to know about multi hooping for a while. What is multi hooping you ask? It is where a whole machine embroidery design has to be hooped more than once to achieve the final result. The trick is getting it to join smoothly and without the join being noticed.

Then one day I discovered a new canvas in my upgraded digitizing program. It was a hooping canvas. Previously, I had only had an artwork canvas and an embroidery canvas, now I had a hooping canvas as well. I decided to play, and the only thing to play with was a big design that needed multiple hoopings.

I had asked a lady I know who is very good at digitizing. All I knew was that there were registration points for matching purposes, but I didn't know how or where to put them.  The only clue that A---- had given me was to start small, and had suggested to start with a flower that need a long stem. Mmmmm.......... what would I put a flower on? So I go thinking, what else could I do that would need a long line, take little matching, and that  could be used if it worked? So my scallops were born.

I started looking through my files to see what scallops I had. I did have one, but it was too small for what I wanted, so I set about digitizing a bigger one. I was going to stitch them out onto white fabric, cut the excess fabric away then use them as a trim of a bag. Sort of like a lace trim inserted between two pieces of fabric. They didn't need to be too strong just for a trim, but I still wanted them strong. So there are two different underlays under the scallop, as well as interfacing ironed onto the fabric. Hopefully this will be strong enough so the scallops wont stretch, or tear at the points.

The program automatically made them with the stitch angle at 45 deg. This was not good so it needed to be changed. I put it at 90 deg,  It was fine at tip of the scallop, but  did not look good at the points. I had discovered an 'add stitch angles' button which I decided to play with. I am sure I had it before the upgrade, but had never used it. It came in good use now. I inserted multiple stitch angles into my scallops to be at 0 deg at the points, and 90 deg at the tip of the curve. This made the stitches curve beautifully around the scallop.

OK, so scallop done, it now needed to repeated so it stitched out in a smooth stitching sequence. Time to adjust start and end points before repeating. In all, I repeated the scallop so I had a line about 19 inches, that's nearly 50 cm in length. A length  that I could use, and definitely had to be multi hooped.

In the hooping canvas, I learnt how to position hoops, add hoops, add splitting guides and a lot more that in reality I didn't need. It certainly was a learning curve. According to the program, I had one splitting guide, and two hoopings, but when I came to stitch it out, the machine told me that the design was too big for the hoop. Mmmmm........ not according to the program. This is where I found out that I could change the hoop size, and when I put in the hoop size that I had on the machine, I now had three hoopings!

OK, so now I was about to start stitching out this design. I had searched on line for resources on multi hooping, and read tutorials and watched You-tube videos. One of the tutorials said to use sticky backed stabilizer. I had seen it, but never used it. Could I buy it? Yes I could, but I chose not to. Instead I used my trusty tear-away. Lesson leaned, not a good choice.

The program had split the file into three different parts. I had to stitch part 1, re-hoop, match up registration points, then stitch part 2. Part 1 had registration points in the stitch out, and I was supposed to match the registration points in Part 2 to those in Part 1. The problem was that because I had used a tear-away stabilizer, it tore at the registration points! I tried to match them up when stitching out Part 2, but of course I was out and things didn't match. Mmm....... lesson learnt. I was out by about 2 mm, not a huge amount, and my scallops overlapped so at least it was still usable.

When I came to stitch out Part 3, I didn't even use the registration points, I just moved the design on-screen and matched the start point of part 3 with the end point of Part 2. Perfection!

That's when I decided to stitch another line of scallops, the could be used on the other side of the bag. I have trimmed them now, and they are ready to trim my new bag.

OK, so my first try at multi-hooping was a huge lesson. I have learned heaps. Would I do it again? Absolutely! So watch this space for more multi hooping adventures and of course my finished bag trimmed with my own stitched out scallops.

A Baby Mobile

A cute little baby mobile that I made for my new great niece.

The inspiration for this mobile started two years ago when another of my great nieces was born. I had made her this baby shawl, and when visiting, asked her mother if she needed anything else. The answer came back "a mobile". My niece had been trying to make one, but with a new baby she was having difficulty. So the conversation started about colours, and what she wanted on the mobile...... ........owls. I possibly would have done something different, but owls were, and still are,  very poplar.

I needed inspiration, so hunted around on the net for owl pics. Of course there were heaps, I just had to pick one. Once I chose a pic, I had to work out fabrics and how it was actually going to be constructed, etc etc. I had fabrics of course, that was no drama, and working out the pattern for the construction of the owls was no big deal. The eye area and the chest pieces were to be appliquéd, but what about those half moon eyes, the beak, and the feet? They were all so tiny! I thought about using  felt but how to apply? Glue is messy and I thought they would be too fiddly to hand stitch on. Then one day I had a brain wave that I could use my digitizing program and machine embroider them!

Digitizing is a whole different world, and these little eyes and beaks needed to be an exact size and spacing. It took me two attempts, the first one being slightly too big and slightly too far apart, but I eventually got there. Scanning my pattern and placing it as a backdrop in  my digitizing program  certainly helped. Thank goodness for testing first! I also digitized the eyes and beak in two different colours. This would stop the machine so I could put whatever colour I wanted in the needle.

So once I had the eyes and beak sorted, I could make a start. The owls were going to be double sided and slightly padded, six hanging, so that made 12 owls total. I wanted them all the same, but all different, if that makes sense. So they were all the same shape , size and design, I just changed the colours around and put different designs on their chests.

The designs on the chest were just fancy machine stitches, stitches I very rarely use. I started playing to see what effects I could get if I mirrored or flipped the patterns. Yes, my sewing machine has this wonderful feature available. At first I had picked out sewing threads and machine embroidery threads in plain colours to match the fabrics, but then I dug out a variegated machine embroidery thread that I had dismissed previously and tried it on a sample. Why didn't I use this before? It looked so good!

One of the fabrics had a small pattern of circles on it. I had to be careful which machine stitch to use on it so that it enhanced the circles, not conflict with them. So I chose an eyelet that I found in amongst all the buttonholes. I think it worked well on the printed fabric.

Once the chest pieces were decorated, I could appliqué them to the background, appliqué the eye sections, then stitch out the eyes and beaks. At this stage they were still on squares of fabrics and they were screaming to be made into a quilt, but this was not the end purpose, so I soldiered on.

The owls were then carefully placed back to back with padding in between, so everything matched, then carefully stitched around the owl outline, and cut to shape.  It was at this stage that I placed the feet . I had agonized over these feet the same as the eyes and beak. Once again  I had thought of felt, but as the feet were hanging, I thought the felt may pull out, it was very tiny. So another brain wave said digitize! This time it was the feet outline, in a small stitch length, stitched onto two layers of fabric vlysafixed together. I felt that this would be stronger than felt. Once digitized, stitched and cut out, they were stitched onto the base of the owl, then satin stitched in place as I satin stitched the edges of the owls. Finito!

Well not quite. Once again I had agonized over how to hang them. My initial thought was dowel, painted to match, with tiny holes drilled to tie the owls to the dowel with fishing line. I wanted them to turn and swing, another problem to solve. DH to the rescue with his  fishing and hardware knowledge. 

I had found an old lampshade ring in my stash, so ended up padding it and covering it with matching fabric, This saved drilling holes in tiny pieces of dowel and messy painting. My part done, the rest was up to DH who supplied fishing swivels to let the owls spin, fishing line to hang, and the knowledge of how to tie knots so they didn't come undone.

This is a one of a kind mobile which is now entertaining is new owner. Would I make another one? Maybe, but it would have to be different. At least I now know about the uses of fishing swivels.

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.