Busy little geese quilt

  Recently I decided I'd done enough embroidered geese so have just started putting them into a cot   I'm still trying to decide if it would have been better to go with pastel shades of  fabric.

A Block for a Baby

This is a cute little block with tabs to encourage a toddler to grasp things, but soft and squishy enough for Mum or Dad to grab. The 4 inch square sides are embroidered with a, b, c and 1, 2, 3

The pattern came from A Little Different, that wonderful shop in Sharp St, Newtown (Geelong)   The first task was to do the embroideries then cut the squares down to size.  This time I remembered to put a backing on the fabric first.

Lay them out as the pattern shows, then join, adding tabs randomly as you go,  and stuff.

Flowers and Ribbons Quilt

It is over three years since I finished these flower embroideries.

 But then I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them.  They were from an Inspirations magaxine some time ago but they had used them in an all white quilt, which was absolutely beautiful, straight out of a glossy magazine spread, but rather impractical in my world.

So every now and then I would come across them in the drawerr then put them back again.  I just didn't want to do my usual way of just having a rectangular border around each embroidery.  But the last time this happened some scraps of fabric were near the flowers which just happened to look like ribbons and a local shop had a sale on with fat quarters for $3  each so I was able to get a variety of fabrics for the ribbons.

What next ?  Well I'm thinking perhaps a very narrow, slightly bright border first, then a wider border in one of the ribbon fabrics if any of them are still availab.e

Shame on me but I forgot to put backing on the white fabric before I started the embroideries..  This is not a good idea. And the white fabric is a bit transparent so I hope when  the white batting is behind it the seams won't be quite so obvious.

I hope that having got this far that it doesn't sit in the drawer  too long while I make up my mind on how to  continue.

Vases of Flowers Quilt

Dear Diary

So sorry that I've been neglecting you. But every Friday afternoon I have been faithfully hand quilting my last two quilts.  It's been slow progress though.  But with the temperature hitting 45 degrees last week  I finally put together the last pieces of my Vases of Flowers quilt.  I had done the embroideries over 12 months ago -  I seem to do the embroideries and then can't decided how to put them together. They need to be integrated into the quilt, not just sit as contrasting boxes on a background. In this case the various florals have been chosen to tone with the flowers in each vase.

The background colour is not quite showing accurately.  I think I would call it an oyster green, if there is such a colour.  Just a very soft off-beat green. It is 50" square and is now on the pile for quilting.

But just remember dear diary that you were my first bloggy love and though I have less time to spend with you  and less things to report on these days because I am too busy doing other things I will still visit you as often as I can.

Having some rest and relaxation

I'm amazed to see that my last post was well over two months ago.  But after the concentration of doing two quilts at once I think I needed a bit of rest and relaxation from embroidery and quilting though  I didn't expect it to last this long.  But now I'm starting to feel the stirring of a renewed interest and am planning what my post-Christmas activities will be.  Not that I've been completely idle.   I've started working again on some embroideries of vases of flowers which I hope will end up in a quilt one day.

The Sixth and Final Embroidery for the Flower Quilt

Today I finished the sixth and final embroidery for my Flower Quilt.  I'll be able to call this quilt my Friday Quilt as most of the six embroideries have been done on Friday afternoons when five of us meet at a friend's house.

We must have done a lot of talking this year as I have been doing this tulip since February whereas the other five embroideries were done much more quickly last year.


The original quilt is all white, which looks beautiful in a glossy magazine (Inspirations No 59), but for me this wouldn't be very practical so I will have to start thinking about which coloured or patterned fabrics would suit these embroideries.  The cream squares, about 8" or 9", will be on point.

The blocks for the Gypsy Quilt are mounting up.  It will be 5 blocks square so as I

 

have already done nineteen blocks there are still six to do.  That will be something to keep me occupied next weekend.

I am a very slow starter most mornings but I had to be a bit more organized than usual this morning as I wanted to see 9 year old grandson running in a 2km cross country race. He had done well at school and district levels but now 80 competitors in the Under-10 race at Zone level was a much stiffer competition for him and he finished in the middle of the field..  There was a large range of natural ability among the runners.  It's great to see the young ones having new experiences.

Here are some of the competitors heading up a grassy part.  It didn't help either the runners or the competitors that it was wintry cold and raining on and off.  It took place in a mildly hilly park - the sea is just down the other side of the hill  - and there were three uphill sections in the race.

Starting New Projects and Swapping Hexie Flowers

I really didn't need to start a couple of new projects just yet when other things are so close to completion but I just couldn't resist. This is the progress I have made on the first dress for "Dress Me Up", a quilt displaying twelve dresses from the 1950s.

With all my efforts with my improvised light box I find I have drawn a spot which wasn't even in the original. A ghost spot !  I had intended to do the spots in outline only but the black of the dress outline is so strong that I fell that all the overall patterns will need to have strength in them too, hence the solid red spots.  Time consuming though.

This was also a hexie flower week and the following beauties arrived from my fabric pen-pal, Brandie.

Isn't the guipure lace centre attractive. It's always nice to add variety to a few of the centres. Thanks, Brandie.

At the same time my offering for this month was heading in the opposite direction.

I was in a much more mellow mood this month and made these very quiet hexies. I'll brighten up again next month, perhaps blues, or reds, or greens, or blacks - perhaps not blacks ! No, definitely not blacks.

Spending time at home meant time to slip on a new pair of shoes so that they would soften up a bit and mould to my strange feet to make sure they were perfectly comfortable before going out in them.  So what happens?
I knock my needlecase onto the floor and spill some needles, and when I stand up I wonder what is the matter with my shoe.

It's going to take a stronger wrist than mine to wield the pliers to get this well-embedded needle out of the shoe.  Fortunately it didn't go right through to my heel.

Improvising A Light Box

I needed to transfer a pattern today, one of twelve, and I wanted a more satisfactory method than my usual one.  I should have bought a light box long ago but there has  always been something else which I wanted more. So this is what I did .........

The piece of glass is the top of a bedside table in the spare bedroom, placed on two chairs and over my light-magnifier.

Then comes the pattern I wanted to trace. I had first printed it onto a heavy tracing paper, then taped it to the glass.  The pattern is the first of twelve in a quilt called Dress Me Up from Bobby Socks Quilt Company   Each is a dress from the 1950s displayed on a dressmaker's dummy.

 A piece of the off-white fabric I am using is taped over the tracing paper.  To look at it you would never guess how carefully I had ironed it.

I can see most of the pattern through the fabric but I keep the original drawing beside me so that I know what I'm looking for and don't draw the pattern by guess and by gosh.  I was using an archival pen from a local art shop.   It leaves a permanent mark but it's a fine line and will be easy to hide under the embroidery.

Then I had the bright idea (no pun intended) that by twisting the light source straight up instead of pointing down at the floor I would see the image more clearly.  Well it looks like that in the photo.  But the combination of better view of the dress combined with the clearly defined self pattern on my fabric meant that I couldn't see the pen strokes I was making.  I was heading for trouble there !  Pressing more heavily and repeating strokes.  So it was back to the more diffuse light.

And by now my knees and back are starting to protest at all this getting up and down.  Have to have a think to see if there is some other way I can prop up the glass !

So here I am, just starting off.  I've ironed on a backing to stop the material from puckering from my stitching. The dress and form is just clear enough for me to see comfortably and won't disappear.  The dress form is a bit too close to the embroidery hoop so I'll do it last of all. A family member has already seen the pattern and uttered a most definite That's Mine so this quilt's destination is already determined.

I found this quilt a few weeks ago on the Dread Pirate Rodgers Blog and today the Pirate has blogged that she has now finished embroidering the twelvth dress and is pondering on how she is going to finish the quilt. I couldn't resist it once I saw her work.  The quilting blogs are such a source of inspiration.

Much as I like quilting I am not happy at doing  little bits and pieces on the sewing machine.  I prefer to have a nice un-interrupted day in front of me.  But I always have a piece of embroidery on the table to pick up at odd times during the day or evening. These days my embroideries are meant to be made into quilts.

After a day of enforced rest yesterday it was great to make some progress today. I'll be glad to hear if anyone else has any handy hints on light-boxing. For all things embroidery you can't go past Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread . Under her Tips and Techniques she has a interesting selection on Transferring Patterns.

A little Snail

This little snail is a copy of a snail forming part of the embroidery on the gauntlet of a glove made c1595-1605.  It  is held by the Fashion Museum in Bath, UK, and is owned by the Gloves Collection Trust.

This little fellow is 1 1/4" from nose to tail and has some resemblance to the kit-maker's sample but  with a few slips !  It was made from a kit from Thistle Threads and a donation of $7.50 is made from the sale of each kit  to the Fashion Museum to help buy conservation storage boxes to re-house the Glove Collection.

In the following image, which was part of the kit instructions, you can see the snail towards the bottom left hand side of the embroidery near the fingers, sitting on the curved line. I just love this glove.

Embroidered Flower Quilt

Now that the Goldwork is finished it's time to get back to my embroidered flower quilt- six different flowers set in a diamond pattern,  Five of them are finished , the tulip still to do.

The Carnation

No matter how hard I try I always pull my stitches too tightly in this type of embroidery and usually I put some sort of fine backing on the material.  But this time I forgot and now I am paying for it !  Everything looks nice and smooth when it is in the hoop but once it comes out of the hoop there is plenty of puckering which doesn't seem to disappear with ironing.  Hopefully the quilting might disguise some of the puckering.

The Cornflower

The Double Rose

The Pansy

The Pink Rose

Finishing a goldwork "UFO"

I am completely in awe of those people who are able to blog regularly, whether it be daily or weekly, their prose just flows.  I always find it interesting.  Sometimes it concerns a craft project, or a meal they've cooked or little items of news about their family.  A small window into a life which in some ways so similar to mine and in other ways so different.

There was a rumble of thunder a moment ago but the rain we're having is nothing to what is happening in Queensland.  We're getting  almost non-stop reporting of the disaster on radio and TV.  Just terrible.  You can't help being horrifed at what is happening to people.  But today the flood is moving into Brisbane and it was a newpaper article which really sent the shivers down my spine. This writer is a master of his craft.

 http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/darkness-at-noon-lent-a-weird-disaster-movie-aesthetic-to-the-massive-leavetaking-20110112-19mxz.html

I have been using this post-Christmas period to try and tackle some of the UFOs in my cupboard and  have managed to finish one.  It's not perfect, and I ended up making a couple of changes  as I was making a mess of things.  The pattern was "Extravaganza"  by Betsy Bee Designs for Rajmahal.

The background is white satin. I started it about three years ago but kept getting frustrated and  leaving it to do something else. I've decided I don't really enjoy doing goldwork. There a still a couple more smaller ones in the cupboard to finish but I won't start any new ones !

All that's left to do now is get it framed.

Linen Tote Bag

I only finished this linen tote bag this week and promptly gave it to my daughter as a birthday present. It had been my "go visiting" piece of embroidery for a while - nice and small for carrying to a friend's house for an afternoon or evening of embroidery.  So now it's on to other projects.  Must think about more tote bags.  They're fun to do and make a pretty but useful present.


It's been raining steadily overnight and again this morning - would be a perfect day for sitting and sewing but it will have to wait for a while - perhaps this afternoon.

Jane Austen's Bonnet

And so that was Easter ..... I had a feeling it was going to be a rather bleak time this year so I armed myself with a new embroidery. Starting something new is always exciting, in fact I wouldn't mind being a professional starter. Wouldn't it be wonderful ? Something new to start each week then just hand it over to someone else to finish instead of having a cupboard full of UFOs (unfinished objects).

This time I have chosen a quilt called Jane Austen's bonnet. It contains twenty embroideries related to Jane Austen and the Regency period. Plenty of Regency ladies and bonnets, fans, reticules, shawls, posies. I've always been a Jane Austen fan. I have called this project my Easter anti-depressant pill, but it's going to last for much longer than the Easter period. One down, nineteen to go.

Anyway it's back to normal tonight - Book Club. This month the book is Gilgamesh by Joan London, an Australian novel. Not too bad. Looking forward to the discussion (once we've got the important gossip out of the way)