Close ups of the Grove stitchery

I completed the wool and fabric stitchery yesterday and these are a couple of close ups of it. 

To finish it I just stretched it around a piece of foamcore board.  It finishes at about 10" x 30".

I had used linen for the background of that which was okay.  But of course now I have to try another piece using an off white felted wool. 

So I've started a smaller piece that is going to be a vase of flowers.

Now for the stitchery part.

Something new

Something that I don't do enough is to play with fabric and stitching in a way that isn't related to the store. I do so much sewing of samples and writing patterns that it takes up a lot of time.  Then it seems like whenever I have time to so I work on something that is for the store.

 However the last few days I have consciously been trying to do something that is just playful exploration. I was very inspired by the work of Nancy Nicholson who is a British person who does a lot Of machine stitching on fabric she has a blog and a Facebook page. (Sorry not to include links to these pages, I am writing on my iPad which is a little more limited with that sort of thing.)

She has beautiful stylized images and a wonderful sense of color putting things together. For myself I am a bit more timid and have more conventional imagery. Well, it's all about the process isn't it.

This is part of a longer piece which I will hopefully photo graph later after it is finished. At the moment I have to stitch more on some birds. 

here's to trying something new, enjoy your day.

Quilt labels

So recently we got in an order of quilt labels. These include the embroidered ribbon style that you sew on and also a type of color your own labels. I thought these were sort of interesting, and there are four different panels you can get. 

 I decided to try some out and because I haven't done much coloring on fabric I thought I would sample a couple of different types of fabric markers. the two styles I tried are a brush style tip and the traditional marker style tip.

I think that something I will do next time is iron a piece of freezer paper to the back of the panel fabric to stabilize it and make it more like colouring on paper.   I would also like to try a couple of other colouring media, such as wax crayons, and maybe watered down acrylic paint.  

I think the idea is that you can color in your label with similar colors to the fabrics you used in the quilt.

I think it would be a fun activity to involve a child into the making of a quilt. Maybe while you're sewing on the quilt you could have your child or grand child coloring the label.

Another project

I have been working on another sample for the shop.  It is really pretty, and the pattern is really easy.  It is called Pegs.  I am at the quilting stage now,

I was a bit stuck when it came time to putting on the border. I was leaning toward the gray fabric but then I went to the shop and Decided to use the gray patterned fabric that was already in the pig blocks.

I did quilting the ditch around the edges of the design and in the patterned fabric rectangles I'm just quilting a big daisy, inspired by the fabric itself. The background I'm just putting a big meandering line.

I'll add the borders later after I have the main part of the quilt already quilted. That's a trick that I learned some time ago so that I can maneuver quilts more easily when I'm quilting.

Well I hope you all had a good quilting weekend. Tomorrow's Monday, so it's time to start all over again.

Housetops, block one

Today is the first block pick up for the Saturday surprise sampler! This is block one called housetops.

It's a really good block to check that your quarter inch seam allowance is right on. Each of the bars should measure exactly 1 inch across when you're finished sewing.  If they aren't exactly 1 inch across then you have to do something to make sure that they will be in the future, whether that means pressing it better, or moving your needle position, or stitching just inside the edge of your sewing presser foot. It's a lot more common to Sew a seam allowance that's too wide than  too narrow.  

Well good luck with your sewing, it's really feeling like autumn today so we are back to quilting season.

I am stitching a binding on to a quilt  that I hope to take into the shop on Monday so that's pretty exciting for me.