Embroidery Project

A year or so ago a friend of mine passed to me a partially completed embroidery project she inherited from a relative.

Two cushion covers: one already embroidered, and one only just started. I even received a little zip bag of the embroidery threads, which is terrific.

I've had this collection for a while now, in a drawer, and slowly my interest in embroidery has grown while I've been preoccupied with fabrics and crafting patterns.

So I picked it up last night. Boredom is a fabulous motivator when you can't move and reading just doesn't do it anymore.

I occasionally get a little bummed with my poor stitching but I realize this is the only to learn and improve.

New Year 2013 - New/Old Quilt circa 1999

Hi, so it's been some time since I posted about my quilting practices, but that's mainly because it's been a while since I've done some quilting and sewing.

The last quarter of 2012 became a blur after a little while with a manic work schedule, the new James Bond movie Skyfall, and Christmas celebrations, and then all of a sudden it's the 31st December. Phew! (See Skyfall if you haven't already, it's a brilliant Bond movie!)

But I realise that there are some quilting/sewing projects I have neglected to post about. One of the unfinished quilt projects I started in August 2012 from left over quilt scraps has become a quilt in need of a border, and the Rose Quilt that I made for my Aunt M's 60th birthday was finally machine quilted and bound with a lovely scrap binding of fabrics used within the quilt.

And then in October I decided to make a counted cross-stitch embroidery sampler for a dear friend of mine as her Christmas present. I found a delightful Etsy dealer PopSoupSupplies who designed samplers of two favourite movie quotes my friend adores, but alas I was only able to complete one, and not the cushion that I had first envisioned. It became a wall hanging, but turned out pretty elfin good for elle-adhoc sewing. (Picture to follow soon).

So I've only really made one new quilted item since August, and that's the wall-hanging, and then with my job being advertised and the need to spend time writing an EXCELLENT job application, the quilt project I wanted to start over the Christmas/New Year break was delayed until this weekend. But I've started it. It's a 30's print quilt kit that I bought in 1999 from Patchwork Products in Rydalmere, Sydney when I went for my first sole holiday. (I'd like to point out that Ansett collapsed the weekend I flew to Sydney. Yes, my flights were booked with Ansett)


I've spent the day cutting fabric into squares and strips. The good thing about waiting so long to start a kit is that I have amassed a larger 30's fabric fabric stash since 1999. I think 30's fabric reproduction fabrics were only new at the time, so there's a lot of similarity between the fabrics in the kit. Basically the same print in different colours.


But because I've taken so long to start the kit, I can now swap in different fabrics from my stash to increase the scrap variety of the quilt. It's a scrap quilt, after all. I trend towards scrap quilts and scrap styles of quilting. That's my signature I suppose.

A lot of my substituted in 30's fabrics came from St Charles, Missouri when I found a great place when I visited Missouri in 2005 - Kalico Patch, and came away with swarms of 30's and reproduction Civil Wars prints. It was a brilliant experience, and I still haven't used most of the fabrics I purchased so long ago. I think I bought them with the intention to make a Wedding Ring quilt for my Mum as the colours I bought were her favourites; Purple, Yellow and Green. (Needless to say I haven't started a Wedding Ring quilt. Curves are so in the Too Hard Basket!).


And at the end of today I have a shoe box of 2" red squares; a shoe box of 2" strips that only needs the green and blue fabrics cut up, and then I can start on the white background fabric cutting.




Shoe boxes are so invaluable for quilting. Keep them. Don't throw them away. Keep them and use them for your quilting projects. They're an excellent way to store cut pieces of fabric waiting for assembly. Usually they're of a large rectangle size so your fabric pieces don't get folded or warped and need further ironing which can cause them to stretch.

And I've found them to be great as I re-use them for each new project I start, saving the previous projects scraps and leftovers within large ziplock bags which are then stored within plastic storage boxes. (I love the storage section of Big W and Bunnings, I really do!)

 

 And just so you can see one of the 30's fabrics I'm using for this project, to see what fun it is to play with 30's reproduction fabrics, here's one of the red fabrics which is prevalent within the pattern. It's 30's white highland terriers' like my sister V's dog Harry who's a little love bug that likes to bite!

Catching Up

I've been doing some sorting out of old boxes of fabric that I have carried around with me for the past decade and three house moves. And in my sorting I found scraps from some of the past quilt projects that I do not have final pictures of the completed quilt, which spurred me to do something about that.

First Quilt - Green Rail Fence, leftovers cushion cover.

 I found leftover blocks from the first quilt I ever finished, a green rail fence (above); as well as leftovers from a pink and green rail fence I made as a wedding present. Both quilts I didn't take a picture of once they were finished and the pink and green quilt was a tremendous undertaking at the time, being my first queen size, wool batting quilt and I couldn't have finished it without the assistance of my godmother J.

Pink and Green Rail Fence

I found that there were 5 leftover rail fence blocks from the pink and green wedding rail fence, but I had lots of ends from the strip pieced rows that had a couple of inches left. So, I figured I could patchwork all these little bits into a full row, to cut some whole blocks and make enough to create a four-block, rail fence square that would make a great cushion cover so that I had something about me, from this past project.

If you go back to the first picture of the pink and green rail fence square, you can see that in the top left hand block there are a couple of joining seams where that block was pieced together from little salvaged leftover strips. I feel very smug and happy that I was able to reuse these scraps.

From these scraps I was able to piece together two sides of each colour combination, and the goal is quilt them with some Pelon and calico and then join them together for some simple cushion covers. Stand by for this!

In all my sorting I've got a 56litre container of scraps which I need to work out something to do with constructively. So, while I make a decision on this, I distracted myself with another project. Ha! But that's a story for another post!

UP 2012 #1 - Green Chinese Lanterns - the next stage.

And here are the finished Chinese Lantern blocks laid out together to get the right distribution of light and dark fabrics and balance of patterns. And to my surprise! (not really) I have made two halves too many and the layout of blocks didn't match my hand-drawn draft. I've got four whole lantern blocks in each column instead of three that I drafted, but I also have only six columns instead of eight.

And I have noticed that there are some variances with the block widths which might make for some tricky sewing as I continue. Oh well! I've had worse! At this stage it's currently about 57" x 55" in size, which should shrink some with better placement and seam allowances. But it should make for a small double bed size quilt when I add borders.

At this point I will walk away and do something else and periodically come back to check the placement of blocks and make any adjustments until I'm entirely happy that all these blocks can stay where they are permanently. This advice I pass along from the lovely ladies who ran Mad About Quilting at Morningside, which is sadly no longer there. Layout your fabrics and then walk away to refresh your view.  Come back and check things out in different lights, angles and try different fabrics, which can be a delaying process but it makes for no regrets after things have been cut and sewn and quilted. Well, in most cases.

Unfinished Project #1 for 2012 - Circa 2000

Okay, well since last post I've fallen out of interest with my project involving the reuse of old embroidered doilies and resurrected a project that I started back in 2000. When I started this project "Chinese Lanterns" from Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine Vol 8. No. 1 I had made three quilts and all of them I had given away. And with this pattern I had found a design that appealed to me and I was making this quilt for myself.

But I hadn't until this time used a pattern based on templates. Cue music of doom. I didn't have the skill or experience to work with templates under my own steam.

Hence why this project has been packed away throughout the past 12 years; even though I have collected green fabrics over the years with the intent to be incorporated in the quilt.

I loved the picture of the blue lanterns on their cream background, but in my head I saw them as green lanterns, green being my favourite colour, so I started getting together some green fabrics. (Like I needed the excuse to buy more fabric, but it helps with the rationalizing if you have a specific project to use as an excuse).

And I went about collecting my materials at Mad About Quilting, Morningside, where I found a lovely floral green dot-print on cream background that I would use as the quilt background and was going to use 36 different green fabrics for each lantern. Until I started making the blocks.

Cutting with template plastic is not fun or easy or quick. You need to know what you're doing. And I didn't. At all.

And even when I got advice from the lovely Caroline at MAQ, I couldn't seem to improve the way I pieced together my blocks. So as my frustration mounted with each block I assembled, coaxing the strips to align in vain I felt it was best to put everything away until I knew better.

That took 12 years.

But I have been doing well these past few weeks over the Easter break, and I've got about twenty blocks now, with only a few more blocks to make to complete a rectangle big enough to maybe fit a double bed with borders.

The best thing has been that I found some green fabric leftover from my first ever completed quilt and I have got a green lantern made out of it to go within the quilt. This is going to be a sentimental memory quilt for me.

My aim for this year is to complete my unfinished projects. At least one every three months. And I've got a few to go.

New Project - Reuse Recycle Reenjoy

Well the Mighty Rose Quilt of 2011 is finished and waiting for some professional quilting to happen.

It's weird but I've known about professional quilting services and long arm quilting machines ever since I first started patchwork sewing and I've always dismissed it as being too lazy or too expensive for me to consider. And all the quilt fairs, quilting & patchwork stores I've wandered through over the past ten years have been littered with plenty of notices and adverts offering professional quilting services high and low. But now when I actually know that I cannot handle the quilting of a quilt, I cannot line up anyone to get it done. Amazing!

I was checking out a site last night whose pricing included how a formula to calculate how many sq feet are in your quilt @ $9 per sq feet. The Mighty Rose Quilt is almost 45 sq feet. Aie-Currummba! That's expensive. Anyways, hopefully someone will call me back and we'll have some quilting organized before Ma'nPa make their way down south for Easter.

So today, while the heavens were saturating Brisbane and the environs I got to thinking about some of the languishing projects I've put on hold (or shelved) while THMR quilt was being created, and I've started working on a Doily Quilt.

Last year or the year before, a friend's friend created a wonderful quilt of 1930's fabrics and doilies which absolutely inspired me. It was fantastically creative and brilliantly inventive. I hadn't seen anything like it at all. It knocked me on my a*se as I should have thought of doing something like it, which isn't meant to sound as stuck-up as it looks.

I mean I spent all my time growing up in second-hand and charity retail stores searching for fabric and vintage styles that weren't available commercially and then collecting all my finds around me like a demented and colour-blind bower bird. I remember when Ann St in the Valley was just full of charity clothing stores and I often scoured through them scoring heaps of old tatty dress patterns which I would make up and wear to college. When they would fit. I wasn't great with measurements.

Since I encountered the Doily Quilt, I have been collecting some great doilies with the idea that I'll create a similar quilt. And today I started on an idea that has been percolating for a while using the doilies put together like a crazy quilt.

I thought about replicating the quilt I saw with using 1930s fabrics and sewing the doilies onto the fabric keeping the crotchet edging, but being a patchworker I didn't like the idea of layering the fabric needlessly.
I saw a magazine article where someone had created a bag out of old doilies but they had only used squares of the embroidery rather than the whole doily.

I have this idea of four corner blocks of doily embroidery sampled together haphazardly, joined together with a unifying fabric. I think it will be simple but effective and a lovely way to recycle these neglected household items of a bygone era

I often wonder about the creator of the doily, thinking about if there was a purpose why they spent time selecting colours and patterns and then toiled over it for hours to place it with pride in their home for all to see. Was it part of someone's trousseau? Or was it an obligatory chore to appease someone? Did they agonize over purchasing the threads or was it the last doily they created after a lifetime of sitting and sewing for relaxation.

And then I feel a little sad that there are bins filled with these gems selling for $1 a bag in dozens of charity stores around the country.

It feels good to reuse them.

It is finished - well the quilt top.

It's Wednesday the 14th March 2012. And the final outer borders have been sewn on and ironed flat. The quilt top is finished.