A New Work Bag

Behold, my new work bag!

This bag was born out of my local sewing group. One of the ladies had so much fabric she decided to cut up a huge pile into squares, and the members of the group could piece together colours of their choice into a bag. At group day, I chose my pieces, and got them all sewn together but one seam. It them came home and sat on my sewing table. I had one brainwave that my bobbin lace fish could adorn this bag, so set out stitching him onto one blank square, then promptly left the bag rolled up, unfinished, in another bag, on my sewing table. I found it again in my clean up last week, so decided to finish it.

It only needed one seam to sew, lining, quilting, a bind and some handles. The lining was scraps, donated by the lady who cut the squares. There was enough of it, it just needed to be be joined to make a piece large enough. The batting was scraps left over from other quilts that I had made. Once again joined to make a piece big enough for what I wanted.

So I made my quilt sandwich -  backing, batting and bag outer, and pinned it all together. I even checked that my fish was in the best place for viewing. Then I decided to have a play with the quilting and do something I had not done before. Because I had added my bobbin lace fish, I thought it might be fun to quilt fish shapes and waves on the bag. I had quilted  plenty of straight lines, shadow quilting, and stitching in the ditch, but stitching shapes and other lines like this was something new. I had tried once before and outlined the marks on a quilt in pencil.  As a dressmaker I should have known better because the pencil has never washed out, and as a result I have stayed away from free form quilting. This time I traced the fish shapes and waves into a tear-a-way, and quilted  through that. Wallah! Fish shapes and waves and no pencil markings! Why didn't I think of this before?

I was on a roll, and my bag was looking good, until I started to join it together into the bag shape. My bobbin lace fish that had taken sooooooooo long to do, was sitting at the bottom! I nearly cried! He couldn't stay there, he would wear, so he had to be moved. But how? All his working ends had been taken back through the green fabric and finished off. There were dozens of them, so he was not moving from that piece of fabric. The only choice was to move the square, but that meant unpicking quilting! So that's what I did, unpicked the quilting, swapped two squares around, then re-did the quilting. Sounds easy right? Took me a while, but I got there and my fish can now be viewed well and is safe from wear.

The bag was formed, seams on the inside bound, once again out of scraps. Then I made my handles, once again out of scraps. They contain slotted waist banding for strength and ease of making, and a layer of batting for some padding.

All in all I am happy with my new work bag, and will use it with pride. Amazing what can be made from other peoples unwanted fabric and one's own stash of scraps.

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.

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.

Top Done

This is another quilt for charity, a combined effort from myself & another lady. M******* put together the appliques, & cut & assembled the patchwork corner blocks. I have stitched the appliques, pieced the squares & added the borders. The design has come from a Patchwork & Stitching Annual magazine Vol 8 No 10. It still needs to be sandwiched with batting & backing, then quilted & bound. The progress of this quilt so far can be found here & here.  It has been made only from scraps, mostly poly cottons. I prefer 100% cotton for quilts  but I guess someone will love it no matter what it is made from.

Working for Charity Pt 2

This is how the little appliquéd squares look when combined with some plain squares to make them go further. When complete, this will surely  brighten a  child's life.

For Charity

My local sewing group meets this week & one of the tasks I promised to do was to add some fabric to these cute little digitised animals. The blocks are to be a certain size so they can be cut down & patch-worked together with sashings. The end result will be a quilt to be donated to charity.

My sewing machine nearly had a fit this morning it has been so long. Poor girl has been neglected after all that wedding sewing I did a while back. Must get back into it & do my quilts that are hanging around.

Waste Not Want Not

A few years ago I was given a bag full of scrap triangles. They were off-cuts from someone's quick method of making a Flying Geese quilt. I brought them home & had a play, thinking I would join them together & just see how far they would take me. All the triangles were slightly different sizes but they all had one thing in common, they were all right angled triangles. So over time I have joined them together, and then re-cut them into the same size squares. I have 157 of thes little squares, & have worked out that if I join them together into strips, and add in some strips in a plain colour, I have enough for a quilt. As I child I was taught not to waste anything, so I am making use of someone else's waste, making it into something very useful. What a shame though that I have to visit the fabric store to purchase fabric for the other strips!

An Exhibition

Those people who know me well know that I belong to a few different textile inspired groups, one of which is called "Stitcher's Plus". We are a group of creative minded stitchers, and have been meeting & stitching together for over ten years now. Recently, we put together a collection of our works into an exhibition. Below are the pieces that I had in this exhibition.

First up is a book cover. This was the piece of Reticella that I worked for our tenth anniversary calendar. The piece has been sitting for quite some time waiting to be made up into a finished piece. I needed a book cover, so a book cover it has become, & how fitting that it should be a cover for my lace journal.
Next is a piece of Teneriffe Lace that I inserted into a handkerchief. Inspired by pictures of teneriffe lace that I have seen on the internet, I have been playing with different designs using the technique. This was one design that I found, & had to work out the method by myself as there were no instructions. Not my design, but definately my stitching, and was great fun using the brain to work it all out. It was relativley easy once I thought about for a few minutes.

Piece three is my first piece of Reticella which I showed you all here. This piece has been in two other exhibitions, and will probably go in at least another one or two. I am extremely proud of this piece.

Piece four,"A Summer Sanctuary", has also been exhibited twice before. The challenge proceses involved can be read here.
Next is a bag that I made from a challenge we were handed invoving faces. The face has been created using applique & FME, then pieced into the front of the bag.

The back of the bag has been pieced using the Flying Geese pattern & the whole bag has been machine quilted. This face has become my internet face & anyone who knows me personally will tell you I look nothing like this. A bag I use a lot.


Then there was my scarf. Made with a daisy wheel using a fancy knitting yarn, then crocheted together. Very slinky & warm.

Finally, my "Bugs In Boxes". These were another challenge & both consist of a painted canvas backgrounds which have been threaded with various yarns . Both also consist of couched yarns for the tree branches & leaves made from hand dyed fabric that has been FME'd with a metalic thread. The caterpillars in the top one are stuffed rouleau tubes featuring surface stitching, while the butterfly on the second one has been digitized & stitched onto water soluble fabric.



The exhibition is now closed, but for some more pics please visit our Stitchers Plus pages.

Hundertwasser

When I received the title of this book to create a page for, I was in a dilemma. I had not even heard this name so had to do lots of research. In the process I learnt about the artist Hundertwasser, his life & his works. Not really my cup of tea, but the challenge was real & I still had to make a book page.

I started by cutting small pieces of fabric & ironing them onto vylene. Machine stitching was added, followed by strips of the same fabric also machine stitched in place.

The spiral shape was drawn in my computer drawing program, imported into my digitzing program, digitized & finally stitched onto the created background. The angled shapes were also computer drawn & digitized, but stitched onto another pieced background, which in turn was appliqued onto the main page. The final page was finished with a twisted cord made from fancy knitting yarns.

Going Crazy

I belong to a local sewing group which meets once a month. This month the activity was on crazy patchwork. The lady who was leading the activity happens to be one of my previous students, and the project for the day was one that I had led her through a few years ago. As a result, I was asked if I could help. J*** had not asked for anything in particular, just "help". So the day before, (nothing like leaving things to the last minute) I set about putting together some samples on the "how to" of crazy piecing. All in all there were eight samples, beginning with "placing piece 1 here", and moving through the order of how to place the pieces. Each sample had one more piece stitched on to it than the previous piece, so at the end, I had 7 part made squares and only one finished square. So I have sat down & finished the others, and now have eight crazy squares similar to the one above, waiting for some embellishment & to be turned into something.

I really enjoyed being back on my machine again. After sewing for a wedding last year I have not even felt like turning on my machine. So watch this space to see what I do with these squares.

2009 Challenges

Each year at this time of year I like to set myself some new challenges for the following year. Sometimes I achieve them & sometimes I don't, but at least it gives me something to aim for. Usually I give myself too many challenges & that would be the main reason why I do not achieve what I set out to do. The list that I set myself for this year was a perfect example of that, way too many large projects. So my list for 2009 reads like this.

1. One quilt. This is left over from this year. It was supposed to a present for a family member who was celebrating a special birthday. Needless to say the birthday has been & gone & all I have done is purchased & washed fabric. I have promised it by November 2009.

2. A piece of reticella, which is also another challenge left over from this year. I've started to have a look at this already, but the fabric that I have chosen to work the piece is different than I used for my failed attempt earlier this year. So consequently I have had to do more samples to make sure that the fabric/thread combination will work, as this fabric is a higher thread count than before.

3. To start learning Bedfordshire Lace. This is a form of bobbin lace that just makes my toes curl. I have the book pictured above, which seems to take the learner from the beginning. To achieve this, I will have to finish the piece that I currently have on my pillow, or aquire a new pillow from somewhere. I will also have to go back & revise all the Torchon techniques that I have previously done so as to refresh my memory on how to work some of the stitches. Note, the operative word in this challenge is to "Start" learning.

OK, so I have only given myself three challenges for 2009. Personally I think that is enough, considering I did not get though all that I set myself for this year. I do tend to overdo it occasionally. So that is why I have steered myself away from signing up for the Stitch Explorer challenge that Sharon B has going. I will follow this one with interest & may even participate in my own way. We shall see. There is also the fact that I really want to explore pulled work. I have in mind to do a sampler of stitches, but this might be just one of those things that continue from year to year. It may even get to be started in 2009. Just another "We shall see".

So watch this space to see if I achieve all the challenges that I have set for myself for 2009.

More Patchwork

Just another "flower" block today. I figured out that I would need at least 50 of these if I want to make a quilt. M......, is that what I want? Not sure. I have plenty of scraps of fabric that I can use to make all these blocks, but I think I would get very bored very quickly. If it is going to be a quilt, then it is going to be a very long time happening. This is only the fourth one I have done. I need to re-think that one.

I am really only filling in time whith this patchwork while I get my next major project underway. I want to do another piece of Reticella, but the fabric I have chosen is different to what I have used before, it is much finer. So all the counting & graphing that I have done has to be re-done to fit the fabric, otherwise my spaces will not be large enough to fit the fillings in that I have chosen. I am in the middle of experimenting, but the piece of linen is patiently waiting for some fabric strips to be atached so it can be put in a hoop. Just something else to add to the "must do" list.

Time Out

What a year! I'm saying this now & it is only October? Well................................................................

One of my challenges for this year was a wedding. Yes, a wedding. That means one wedding gown and three bridesmaid's dresses, all patternmade & made by Your's Truely. Well, challenge it certainly has been, in more ways than one. Today, though, I officially class it as "challenge complete"! The bridesmaids dresses are all packaged & have left the house. The wedding gown is all packaged & ready to be collected by a courier to go 300miles up the coast to be professionally pressed, ready for the big day. Photos ? Maybe later, the groom may be reading.

At this point I would personally like to thank my friends Robyn & Christine for being at the other end of the phone when I got stuck, & needed both technical advice & moral support. Without them this dress would not be at the point that it is today.

That said, what am I to do with myself now? I am not sure. I have so many things that I want to do I just cannot make up my mind. I do still need to stitch though, and lately it has been some mind numbing English Patchwork. The piece above will be added to my collection of "Grandmother's Flower Garden", and may one day be made into a quilt.

English Patchwork - A "Filler"

When I finish a major piece like the one in the previous post, I quite often feel on such a high that I need something to bring me "down". I still need to stitch, so I usually look for something that I consider "mind numbing". The above piece of English Patchwork is just one of those types of pieces. The only thing I have to think about is choosing fabrics to put together. I have started a collection of these to one day put together into something usable. This is the second "flower" in the series, the first one is here, so the finished something might be a long time comming.

A Summer Sanctuary

My latest finished work finally revealed. It has been finished for some time but I have held of posting it until now. It is on exhibition at present at the NSW Embroiderer's Guild "A Gathering Of Threads" exhibition. The exhibition opens today at Olympic Park, Homebush, in Sydney & runs until Sunday.

The piece was a challenge in which we had a specific size & base to work to & had to include some metallic gold. What we did after that was up to us. There were 9 of us in the challenge & it will be interesting to see them all hung together, as they will be all so different.

I have used hand dyed fabric, with Drawn Thread, Patchwork, Cross stitch & Surface Stitching. The piece is in two layers. The underneath layer is patchworked together, while the upper layer is drawn, surface stiched & cross stitched. Hand dyed fabrics are used in both layers.

English patchwork

A few weeks back I joined another on-line group. This one is a quilting group & they are very social off list as well. I found out a little of-shoot of this group meet local to me so I have been along twice to join them for afternoon tea, lots of chat and some stitching.

This piece of English Patchwork is what what I started the last time I went. I need to start another project like I need a hole in my head, but who can resist? Now I am thinking " What am I going to do with this? Any ideas?