Loveandpeas #2

Hooped and on the go!

The second piece of bunting was Blossoms and a butterfly, and this time I transferred my pattern by sticking it to the window and using a fabric marking pencil.  The white fabric I'm using has butterflies on in already, but I used the reverse as it's more subtle.  I would like to say this was a deliberate choice, but actually it was just an accident with a positive outcome!  I've hooped it this time and it's coming on.  For the stems I used some leftover variegated 4ply (from last year's hats) and used stem stitch.  The leaves are and will continue to be backstitch in green embroidery floss, the ones on the stems are worked with three strands in the needle and I will work the falling leaves in the background with just one which will hopefully give a perspective effect, make them go into the background a bit.  The large flower is outlined in chain stitch with two threads of muted lilac embroidery floss in the needle, and the buds the same but either back stitch or single long stitches.  I think the butterfly is going to be gold embroidery floss and the dots and flower centres the golden wool but it may well change...  This is a joy to do, thank you Jenny!

Finished and cut out with 1cm seam

Well, that was Monday 17th March and I made myself sit down tonight and finish it off, I'd done the butterfly in gold 4ply knitting wool, some stem stitched, some couched, and had one flower, the flower centres and the lower falling leaves to do.

So an evening stitching away in front of the tv and it's done, just in time for the next one!  I kept to my scheme and I like the way the gold dots stand out but not too much.  I can never quite manage french knots, no matter how many times I practise!  The little wispy flower stamens were done in five strands of embroidery floss in the needle, two brown, two gold and one white.  Looking at it here I like it.  Now, where is that squirrel.  So many favorite animals, after all this I may even feel brave enough to make up my own corbie design!

And there's a reason why it's on fabric I'm not even using.  This is the wonderful prize I received from Fair Trade Fabric, I could not believe it but I won one of their prizes of fabric bundles and I wanted to give them a big big thankyou.  I will use it for something, I shall just put it on my shelf and stroke it for a while...  It's wonderful to find companies that combine a passion for quilting quality fabric with ethical values

Loveandpeas: a S-A-L

There are times when you have more than enough on your plate and you spot something and decide you need to MAKE space for it.  I could have done this project myself but I doubt anything but a sew-a-long would have made me do it, just the same as it took a KAL (knit a-long) to motivate me to

Stash fabrics, Anchor embroidery flosses and 4 ply wool

make my first large scale knitted project.

I've loved Jenny Blair's work since spotting it last year up at Peel Farm Shop in Glen Isla as part of Angus Open Studios 2013.  I stalked her work to her exhibition at Kirriemuir's Bank Street Gallery and followed her on Facebook.  Last month she announced a sew-a-long making bunting to her designs and I put all my to-read books back in the library and cleared my decks.  For 6 weeks Jenny promised to print a design each week for us to stitch up.

Week 1 covered fabric selection and a Barn Owl Embroidery design.  Thanks to many years doing cross stitch I have a vast range of  embroidery flosses and was able to dive into my fabric and wool stash to find fabrics and threads that came together in my favourite Scottish palatte: golds, mossy greens, browns and muted lilac.  

I thought I knew what a barn owl looked like but worked with a picture on my phone just to keep me in

Back stitch was used for all the lines except the flowers

touch with the colouring.  Because I made life hard for myself and used a dark green for this first flag I couldn't transfer the pattern with in any of the usual ways so printed it out and stitched through.  Never again, the paper was a nightmare to remove at the end and I discovered I do actually have transfer paper so I would use that next time!

Once finished I pressed it, I hadn't put this one in an embroidery hoop as I forgot to and just cut out the bunting shape, luckily the paper stablised it.  I'm not sure about the colours, but I know from experience to leave it and come back to it if I'm still not happy at the end.

Young Embroiderers' Guild book project

This project is one I have taught a couple of times, first as a full day workshop with a group of Young Quilters at the Quilters' Guild Regional Day and then as a two hour workshop with the Young Embroiderers, it was certainly interesting trying to adapt a day long workshop to a two hour one!  

Granny's book of quotes, painting is also by her

Spine detail from Granny's book

I learned how to make books at the wonderful courses I went on at Springfield Creative Arts and used this knowledge to recreate a now rather tatty little book made by my beloved grandmother Peggy James to keep quotes in, one which has guided me since youth is one she wrote down in 1934:

If you have two loaves -

Sell one and buy a lily

The book is constructed from a back piece and a larger front piece which wraps round the back to form the spine.  The back cover is punched with eyelets and treasury tags threaded through to hold the hand cut pages.

The first version I did of this was just in cardboard, but with the project I have taught twice the cardboard is covered with fabric to make neat little books containing A5 sheets of paper and card.  I use one to hold knitting patterns when I'm carrying them out and about, Caitlin has one with card sheets that she uses as a scrapbook for her completed origami creations from one of Klutz's ever fabulous books Origami Fashions

My front and back covers from the Young Embroiderer's workshop. 

The version I did as a mockup for the most recent version was fabric from my mum's stash, I'm fairly sure it dates from the 1970s and was a skirt, great patterns for playing around with.  On the front cover I followed the linear pattern and did a line of beading and a line of pekinese stitch in wool and tapestry cotton.  On the back I followed the mad psychdelic paisley with beads and metallic threads.

So here are my instructions.  For the day long workshop (about 5 hours in total) the Young Quilters were able to embroider their fabrics before putting the book together, but for the shorter workshop I made up the books to the end of stage 5 without decorating and they had to sew through cardboard, which wasn't easy but they made light work of it!  For the Young Embroiderers project as my boards I used thin cardboard thoroughout, but for the Young Quilters' project I used 3mm greyboard for the back cover, this sturdy book board is impossible to stitch through so any embroidery would have to be made up before glueing.

1. Choose 4 fabrics for front cover, back cover, front lining and back lining.

2. Cut the fabrics:
Front cover 18.50cm x 28.00cm
Back cover 18.50cm x 24.00cm
Front lining 15.25cm x 24.75cm 
Back lining 15.25cm x 21cm 

3. Cut the boards
Front cover 15.50cm x 21.50cm  - score two lines parallel to the short end, one 2.50cm in and one 3.50 cm in (these form the folds for the spine
Back board 15.50cm x 21.50cm

4. Decorate - embroider, applique, glue, stick, paint, draw...!
5. Glue front fabric piece to front cover, and back fabric piece to back cover.  Apply the glue to the board rather than the fabric, and work well in.  I use a stencil-style brush with a squared off end to work the glue well in.  I used craft pva for these everyday books, it dries flexible, usually clear and you can stitch through it.

6. Glue the linings in place and finally bend the front cover along the creases of the front cover.  Glue it in into place either inside or outside the back piece, nestling them closely together.  Clip together, either with clothes pegs or the clips you get on the end of trouser hangers, and if possible leave to dry.

7.  Punch holes in the back cover.  I use an eyelet making kit and a hammer though this is hard work and eyelet punches are available

8. Cut paper/cardboard to A5 size and use a hole punch to punch holes in the shorter edges.  With a piece of thread, wool or anything of the sort thread a lace through and tie the pages in place.

I've used various things for my laces, ribbons, even an old pair of earphones with the earpieces cut off.

Front cover beading from a red-themed multipack

Small paisleys embellished with blue metallic thread

My very first commission!

A little horse that just wants to be a unicorn!

My 9 nearly 10 year old daughter wanted to embroider a pillowcase for her horse mad best friend's birthday and it ended up being a commisson instead, it took me three or four days to finish so it would never have got done in time.  She did, however, do the stitching of the tie around the head so she can genuinely say she contributed.  She is a fast learning embroiderer, crocheter and knitter in her own right.

The design is called I Want to Believe and is from the wonderfully awesome Urban Threads, an American online provider of machine and hand embroidery designs that is certainly not traditional.  They have a huge range of steampunk designs, I am currently embroidering a shirt with an outline version of their steampunk raven but it got put aside to make the pillowcase.  They do the cutest interpretations of the gothic I have ever seen, chibi type zombies and vampires are typical.  The only problem is I want to make them all and would need a few more days in the week to do so.

I transferred the design to the fabric using dressmakers carbon paper, the fabric was too dark to trace through from underneath and I don't have a lightbox.  I used the yellow paper and the line showed up well on the turquoise, it did not come off at all but was still a nice fine line that was easily covered with stitching.  I put the sewing in a hoop when I was stitching, just an ordinary metal and plastic spring embroidery hoop, it did still pucker a bit and I think I would use a stabiliser next time.   I stitched using DMC stranded cotton embroidery threads and a metallic gold.  The gold was a right pain to sew with but it's worth the effort, you just have to use short lengths and lots of paitence!  I used a single thread of this for the horn and body band with two or three threads for the outlines on the body band and wings.  I used two threads of the DMC on the face, ears, mane and string on the head, three on the wings and body and four on the tail using two colours in the needle, the body colour and a slightly darker colour.  The eyes are french knots in four strands, two of the darkest purple and two of a dark indigo.  The writing is two threads of DMC cotton as well.

I really enjoyed using a sort of long and short stitch following the contours of the wee horse with my daughter's favourite model horse beside me to check on coat hair directions, it's really not what I would have thought had I not looked at it!   It was worth the work and I think it's just so cute, and am dead proud of my first ever use of full on hand embroidery, I'm always so nervous starting a technique for the first time but all those years of precision with cross stich have paid off, particularly knowing how to unknot a thread and hold it up to untwist it before sewing.

Quilters Guild Scottish Monthly Challenge

The Scottish area challenge for this year on the Yahoo group is a block per month using certain colours.  April was red, May is yellow, June will be blue.  And I've just finished my May block, in my defense I have been working on it and it's just time that ran out...  I don't think these will be completely the end, I was at Bank Street Gallery in Kirriemuir yesterday at Jenny Blair's wonderful exhibition, Jenny, I love your work!  I particularly loved two stitched art pieces, 'Queen of the trees' featuring those most irrepressable of birds, blue tits, and 'wondering' which just has a lovely feel.  So I will probably do more hand embroidery on both but the groundwork is done.

March was Red - the block warmer than the weather

I decided to use the theme of flowers and hand piecing, it's an economic stash busting technique!  I had loads of hexagon templates left over anyway from my Chinese Whispers Quilt (more on that one later!).

I like darker gothicky shades of colours but needed contrast, so the red poppy background was a piece I had from a Seattle Quilt Company sale a while ago.  The flowers and pots reds are from various bits of stash including the first ever fabric I brought for my first ever quilt (a Lynne Edwards cathedral window work) bit from my mum's stash, and the red satin I used to make the cloak for my daughter's Snow White costume.  Dressmakers I salute you!  I've quilted this one but am going to take it apart to do more embroidery on it.  The flowers are straighforward grandmother's flower garden pattern: 6 hexagons in a circle around one central one.

For May I had yellow fabrics but they were a bit peely wally, so I took a gold organza printed with

Why is it upside down?!!!  No idea

gerberas I bought in Austria a few years ago and bondawebbed it on top of a paler pastel yellow print.  The ribbony yellow strips are part of the organza.  It took a bit of patience and unsticking the iron as the glue came right though the organza but I'm happy with the result.  I pieced the daffodils from central hexagons surrounded by hexagons with one point extended, or alternatively diamonds with one point cut off, depending on how you look at it!  I embroidered over with threads from my stash, it's hand worked running stitch but the threads are a variety of machine embroidery thread and DMC cross stitch thread.  It needs more but it's a start.  The stems are chain stitched wool from my stash, a pretty variegated green called Rico Designa Superba Chinee 4ply in #008 green.  I toyed with crocheting and all sorts, thinking chain sitch would be too thin but with wool it works fine.  The yellow for the daffodils was the remnants of Evie's Quilt.

So onwards, just trying to get my sister's blanket finished off and I will feel better then!