A sewing club project

Hello, everyone. 

The sewing club met this past weekend and, as usual, we worked on a new project. 

This meeting's project was an in-the-hoop pouch with shadow work, appliqué, and stipple. We worked with polyester organza for the shadow work.

The front of the pouch. There is stippling here, too, but it's in white thread on white. 

It's shadow work because the shell and the stars and flowers are all on an underlying layer of the organza. The leaves and the detailing on the flowers, stars, and shell are all added to the top layer of the organza.

The back of the pouch. The stippling is blue. (Just because.) 

I think the next time I do this I might use a white zipper. The tape of the salmon zipper is clearly visible here. 

The pouch was surprisingly difficult to turn out; perhaps more attention to reducing bulk might have helped with this.

DH thought it was pretty, but "kind of small." It's not so small that it's only big enough for a lipstick and a credit card, but it does tend in that direction. 

A new embroidery project

Hello, everyone.  Today's post is to share with y'all a new machine embroidery project: the Quintessential Wallet from Sweet Pea. 

These are the inside of the wallet/purse and the front flap. (Bottom)

The deal with this project is that the various parts are embroidered one by one in the hoop, using the canned programs for each piece. At the end, you move to the sewing machine and assemble the pieces into a whole.

Soooo glad the folks at Sweat Pea have made a pair of YouTube videos showing how to make this. Also very happy that DH was available to help pull the project right side out at almost the end. My hands were not really up to the job.

The plain outside fabric, from stash, is left over from covering barstools for the palapa. The inside, and outside accent panel on the flap, is from  line of Aboriginal Australian prints that are really quite colorful. Though I like better the purple print from that line that was used in the sewing machine dust covers a while back.

The quilting on the outside is part of the computer files.

You need to use a sturdy needle for this stuff, if you use a fainting violet of a tiny one it will break. Just saying. 

Finished a UFO!

 Hello, everyone.

There is a UFO (UnFinished Objects) box in my sewing room. I pulled out something that was at least 80% done yesterday, after finishing the little oblong pouch, and now it is done too. I feel so liberated!

This is from the Sweet Pea online catalog: 

As y'all can see, the Spring table runner was made a while back. Today, after quilting the edges of the blocks and adding an "American Beauty Rose" print fabric binding, the Summer one is also done. It had only been sitting around for at least a year--the first letter was done in an embroidery class at the A Block Away quilt shop. 

I like the instructions that Sweet Pea includes with their patterns, they're clear and have pictures to help with anything confusing. I don't have to open the file in my embroidery software and "watch" it stitch out on screen to try and guess when to put a piece of applique fabric under the needle, and they also tell a good size--even a generous size--to cut the applique pieces out. I'm not likely to start stitching something with too-tiny fabric bits that way.

The one thing I differ with them a little is that I prefer not to trim the batting close on each of these rectangles until the applique is done. It seems to me that my machine doesn't quite stitch as straight going around the rectangle on the first fabric tack down if the batting isn't equally tall on both sides of the previous (batting tack down) line of stitching. It's not like leaving the excess batting there will cause problems, at the end of making each rectangle it comes out of the hoop anyway and that's a good time to trim extra batting away.

A new project

Hello, everyone. 

The other day DH got tired of hearing "honey, what temp do I want for this meat?" while seeing me wave the thermometer around in the kitchen. So I looked up recommended meat temps and digitized a little chart to hang in the kitchen.

It has since been tucked into a frame for hanging.

Thread: variegated blues in cotton, from stash. Sulky? I forget. Fabric: faux linen from stash, stabilized with 2 layers of medium weight cut away in white.

Now I can look at a chart without digging through the cookbook. 

Little embroidery stocking stuffers

 Hello, everyone.  By stocking stuffers, I  mean small gifts that would be suitable for younger children. If y'all are inclined to seek it out, there is a least one old post about little minky-type animals and angels.

Well, Christmas  giving approaches, and it's coming at quite a clip. Also I happened to be looking at the various fleece like fabrics in the stash and encountered some polyester baby flannel, left over from making gifts for babies. 

I decided to see how the baby-garment brushed poly works with the angel and animal patterns.

I also wanted to sew more than one at a time, cutting down on stabilizer usage, fabric usage, and time consumed in hooping.

The angels used pink fabric. I had figured out that the angel is an applique pattern, so I used some gold left over from the Camino Trails project and a lace sample that was also in the stash.

The stitching time according to the embroidery machine for a pair of angels was 61 minutes. This doesn't include thread changes, fabric preparation for the back side (it needs a turning opening), turning and stuffing, and stitching the opening by hand. The texturing on the wings takes quite a while to stitch out.

The fish, on the other hand, have fewer color changes and no texturing on the fins, so they take about a fourth as long to complete a pair. I used mint green brushed poly for them.

In the picture,  for an idea of scale, I included the small trimming scissors that is usually used for cutting out projects and trimming off excess fabric from the in-the-hoop appliqués. 

The fish are from an OESD pattern set. The angel is from the Janome blog some while back.

These little things are fun to make and fun to tuck into a stocking, pouch, child's purse, or to use as party favors.

Christmas is coming

 Hello, everyone.  Christmas is indeed coming, and the approach of the season was signaled for my by our most recent Sewing Club project. 

This beauty is from the Anita Goodesign Christmas cookie pattern set.

In doing this I learned how to incorporate craft foam sheets into an embroidery project.

I like the white on white look on the felt "cookie". Some of the other ladies in the club did ornaments without the contrast applique fabric. They were gorgeous!

Trying out new designs

 Hello, everyone. 

One of the things being done around here is testing the best way to use various purchased embroidery designs. 

My software was recently upgraded by the maker (Hatch) and an automated laydown stitch was included on the new version. 

This photo shows both versions of it: plain coverage vs coverage that clings more to the stitches and skips over blank spaces in the design.

In the event, I  liked better the one with the holes. (Test fabric is an old towel that is now used as a rag.) The design is one of the Hatch freebies, with a different letter in the middle. 

This next one is testing a cactus design on a coozie. 

Yes that is the same T design, this time not optimized for the terrycloth. The new one is the prickly pear arrangement on the other side of the blank.

It's so much fun making things on my embroidery machine!

A little travel accessory

 Hello, everyone.

Taking a break from road trip notes, because it looks like I need to track down more pictures.

There was a short rest at home before running up to Houston for a family event. A chance to relax by doing a little embroidery project! I was looking at the Hatch free embroidery designs, which like a number of other free assortments help me to learn new techniques for my embroidery machine.

This was the result:

The patchwork design is one of the Hatch freebies. It's a sample design from LindyG, a bit of Victorian style "crazy quilting." There was an open spot for a monogram, I put a flower there. It came out a little too big, next time I try this I will think ahead and pick something else.

The original was for a notebook cover, very pretty, but I don't have much use for them. I used it on a lingerie bag for travel instead. Call this a trial run for Christmas giving!

It's important to think about balance when choosing the applique fabrics and placing them. The method is in-the-hoop applique, like many of the blocks in the Kimberbell Jingle All The Way quilt that I attended a Block of the Month class to make. (Actually, the JATW quilt isn't quite finished yet. The top is done, except for the decorations that go on at the end, but it needs to be quilted and bound.)

Printing out an extra copy of the template is recommended, so you have an example of how they will go together even after you cut out pieces of paper to label your fabric chunks with. This is a good pattern for non-busy scraps.

I used a poly duck fabric and backed the embroidery with Polymesh for stability. (Removed the extra Polymesh at the end.) There is a lining as well, some quilting cotton, to cover the stitches.

Zipper was from stash, as well as the various colored bits of quilting fabric for the applique and the threads.

A finished project: the Spring Table Runner (updated)

 Hello, everyone.

As the title says, the spring table runner is now finished.

When the class met, I had in mind to turn the rectangular panels into a hanging banner 2 panels by 3. In the end, laying the panels side by side after the applique and embroidery was finished, it just didn't look right. I laid them out side by side as a long runner instead and that worked fine.

The original plan had also included pink for the outline. But the fabric choices kept going to jewel tones and intensity--in the end the green was the only choice.

All fabrics are from stash. 

Updated to add: The Blogger system informs me that the "follow by email" widget is going away. If you are following my blog by email with the widget, thank you so much!, you need to make a bookmark and check in instead. They say it will disappear in June, so there is time. 

Getting ready for Easter

 Hello, everyone.

Easter decorations are beginning to be assembled. Butterflies, besides being emblematic of the return of flowers and sunshine, are also symbols of the Resurrection: from a dead-looking cocoon comes a beautiful flying insect. Very poetic!

This is, I think, an OESD free standing lace pattern. It fits twice in the 5x7 hoop, as y'all can see, and in the next photo the Mylar will show better than in this one. (I am currently in a phase of liking the look of a Mylar layer in free standing lace. The opal colored Mylar reflects light without looking heavy.) 

 

Here is the whole flock of butterflies. I am currently thinking of adding them to a lacey cover, possibly by using beads along the butterfly's body covering a piece of wire that goes through to the back and through the substrate fabric and is twisted to hold in place. The beads will of course have to be lightweight...gold? iridescent ivory? we shall see what works.

First Color Play of the New Year

 Hello, everyone.

This color play got started when DD1 asked for some placemats. Of course, stash was the first place to look. The only thing about stash is that, when you suddenly need a bunch of 2.5"x18" strips, all the lovely things in the stash are square or triangular or smaller rectangles. So I decided to try out a stash usage demonstrated in a Youtube video. Placemats being much smaller than lap quilts, there are fewer parts to each pieced square.

I started with 18 pieces of purple prints and 18 pieces of green prints, being careful to use as much of the Mardi Gras masks and beads print as possible. It was hard to cut through that many layers of fabric with my 45mm rotary cutter, but with care it was doable. If I decide to keep doing these kinds of stack-and-cut-and-combine projects, I might just get a larger cutter.

There are now a bunch of 5 inch squares, but not enough to completely build the placemats. Therefore a non-pieced area will be part of the design. This gave an opportunity to try out using the pre-programmed letters on my embroidery machine, and one of the pre-programmed border designs. (Base fabric for the embroidery here is also from stash, an off-cut from the fabric used to make the Lion Purse last spring.) This is the trial-balloon version of the Carnival design.

The project completed

 Hello, everyone.

It's been busy around Ye Olde Homestead these last few days--is it ever not busy at Christmas time?--and some of the busy was finishing up the embroidery project from the last post.

This is the front of the tote bag. There are a variety of different skills that were used to finish the embroidery. The new one for me was the multi-hooping technique of embroidering something that is too big for the hoop. The program came with a step for match points, both on part 1 and part 2, which were later picked out as not part of the design.

I elected to box the lower corners. The bag as set up was basically flat and it didn't seem as useful as a bag with boxed corners. So I added that at the end. This bag broke 2 needles, and stalled the motor on my regular-duty sewing machine. It had to be finished on the HD-3000 with a size 16 topstitch needle. 

I think that, while the bicycle as digitized is more conceptual than realistic, I might make another tote bag with the design. Possibly omitting the cute words at the bottom. There is a good sized chunk of beige twill cotton in the stash and it might work out well as a tote bag.

(Of course some of that twill is already going into another bag. But there's a lot left.)

We had a day of Grandma Camp also in the last week, and DGD wanted to make a Christmas ornament.

We did a felt one, using freezer paper to get the cutting reasonably smooth, and she chose beads and stitched them on to the felt. 

This was her first time stitching beads onto a piece of felt, not in an embroidery hoop, and she designed her lines by herself. There are two kinds of seed beads here, a pink/clear blend and a gold.

We glued the back to the front as time was running short that day, with some Tacky Glue. 

A new embroidery project, almost completed

 Hello, everyone.

My local quilt shop has classes, both quilting project classes and embroidery project classes. I have been going to the embroidery classes to learn how to work with my Janome embroidery machine.

Yesterday we worked on a tote bag project. It was a Kimberbell class, so we had a tote bag to embroider on. Today I finished the stitching on the decorative design.

All it needs now is soaking, to get the dissolvables out, and finishing the bag.

There is a bit of colored chalk to come out. After the chalk is cleared up, I will drip dry the fabric and complete the bag.

It was fun to  learn new things and try something different. This one was a multi-hoop project that was designed to be sewn in stages.

More Christmas stuff (Updated)

Hello, everyone.

Having finished a gift for DS2, looked around and didn't like any of the on-hand options for wrapping. Aha! says I. There's all this fabric in the house!

 Decorating the gift bag with an embroidered Nativity tree in silver and green.

Owing to the troubles experienced when making the owl pillow, also embroidered on Kona cotton muslin, I followed the suggestion of my friend Diane, an experienced machine embroiderer, to float the fabric instead of trying to hoop it. This worked out well.

After embroidery,  the bag was sewn and the bottom corners boxed. Then it was soaked to get the wash away Sulky Sticky Solvy out, drip dried, pressed, and had its ribbon ties added.

Update: the finished bag

Embroidery for Christmas season

 Hello, everyone.

It's been months now and still there are new things to learn with my Janome embroidery machine. There are so many different things that can be done with machine embroidery!

These are free-standing lace ornaments.The top left is the same pattern as the bottom left, but it has Mylar gift wrap sewn into the design. (This is the shiny stuff people use to fluff the tops of paper gift bags. It's actually thin shiny-coated plastic.)

The Mylar gets enclosed between two pieces of tulle...gosh, a way to use up some of the oceans of tulle around here!...and laid onto the wash away stabilizer. Painter's tape or embroidery tape is used to stick the edges down to keep them flat. And I like to use the automatic tack down box in my machine as well. At the end of the stitching, the ornament is carefully clipped out of the hoop and the remaining bits of stabilizer are soaked away. I like to finish off with a bit of Fray Check too prevent any untoward happenings later on.

I think the hearts and angels, being in the 2 to 5 inch range of sizing, could be added to a wreath as well as being hung on the Christmas tree. They all fit into my 5x5 hoop.

Starting to think about Christmas

 Hello, everyone.

It's getting toward on Christmas if you're thinking about making things for people! Or making new decorations to expand what you already have.

I tried out a new embroidery pattern. (Thinking about doing it with Mylar shiny stuff but wanted to try it out just as it is first.)

This is a free-standing lace heart. It's being done in red, because Christmas, and it came out nicely. One little thing, though: if you're patching together the good parts of used pieces of wash-away stabilizer, you might not want to use those patched pieces for the free standing lace items. The patching stitching shows between the stitches.

But it's not super obvious.

My other new discovery is that stitching on the mylar stuff dulls the needle really, really fast.

Sewing Club is Resuming

 Hello, everyone.

For the first time in a bunch of months, our sewing club is going to meet.

Our project for the meeting will be a wall-hung holder for rolls of embroidery stabilizer. (Seeing as how so many of us have embroidery machines now.) It was supposed to be a project for March, IIRC, but was put on hold when the store we met at was made to close for the duration. 

This meeting will be at our local quilt shop instead, as the other place hasn't opened its classroom space yet.

This will be the decorative panel at the top:

It has a filigree-style sewing machine, a couple of flowers at the sides, and the label STABILIZER at the bottom. (The Hoop Hangout label turned out to be almost invisible on the hoop holder, so this time I made sure to have a solid fabric for the background.)

The mint green is Kona cotton. The mesh pockets will be made of ByAnnie's white mesh and will have white binding. I'm all about increasing the amount of light available in the sewing studio!

A small catch-up on sewing this last week or so

 Hello, everyone.

As it's August in South Texas, projects that can be done inside, in the air conditioning, appeal more than others.

Besides, Christmas is coming. (All y'all that think I am making things for you, close your eyes.) 

The Flowery Bull is making another appearance. 

Pinning the facing (outside facing) onto a new garment.

And a pair of "Woopsies"--The top stuffy was embroidered onto the reverse side of the minky-style fabric. (He doesn't look too bad, but all the lovely cuddly fuzz on this one is on the back side.) I may give the birdie away to someone...well, as I'm too old for lots of toys, all the toys are give-away items. And if you don't know that his front is on the wrong side of the fabric, he's fine. Perhaps some folks prefer him the way he came out!

The bottom stuffy was an experiment with a free design. The directions called for felt, which I used. The photo with the directions online didn't show felt as having been used, it showed something in the linen or cotton woven zone. There is a reason for that. The felt fabric doesn't have a lot of strength to resist pulling, such as the pulling involved in turning a tiny pillow right-side-out through a 3/4" wide hole. In the event, I widened the hole some, and used needle-nosed pliers to *carefully* pull out as much as possible. The pointy bottom of the heart was not going to come out at all, as it's just too narrow at the bottom. Then I stuffed it and closed the opening with red thread and ladder stitches. 

I guess the heart is good for a bowl filler piece. It's about palm-size.

A new sewing project under way

Hello, everyone.

I have begun a new sewing project--well, it uses a previously sewn orphan block, so it might be called stash usage instead.

This "chenille" Christmas tree block was made by mistake when I was at the Jingle All The Way class at A Block Away. (Selected the wrong size in the pattern choice screen. Oops. there are a LOT of items in that set of patterns, it's important to read the size and check the book before starting to sew it out.) As there isn't any place for the small chenille tree in the quilt, and none of the bonus projects seems to have a spot for it either, the block has languished in my sewing studio. 

I noticed a round pillow form, likewise languishing in disuse, tucked into the tub of "things" and after some mental experimentation concluded that the tree block needed to be a round block to make it look nice. And as the pillow form is 14 inches, there will be a surrounding gathered bit to connect the tree block fabric to the side seams of the pillow. Whether to put a bit of piping in is still up in the air.

This required a nice round circle to be made on the block for trimming. Also for seaming, of course!

Enter my Janome circle sewing guide.

 

Above right, the cute little gizmo almost ready to do its thing. The black bit sticking up is the protective cover on the *sharp* tack point. This is the trick that makes the fabric go in a pretty circle with no divots or bobbles in the line.

Above left, the tack cover was removed and the tree was centered on the tack. I placed the tack cover GENTLY on the point as I'm not fond of bleeding on the work. 

Left, the back of the package, showing where it goes on the machine. 

This worked out very well.

I gathered the border strip in the usual way with a row of long-ish stitches and gentle pulling. It's currently in the process of being basted onto the seam line y'all see in the top left photo. After the basting (hand basting, don't faint, sometimes it's the only way) is done, I will stitch the ruffle down, make the two parts for an envelope closure on the back, and assemble the pillow. 

A little project, embroidered and sewn

Hello, everyone.

Recently I noticed that the poly lense wiping cloth that came with some pair of glasses or another, and lives in my purse, had lost its clear plastic case. It was just sitting there, possibly collecting grit to scratch the lenses with. That won't do.

There is an assortment of poly satin fabric in the stash. I picked out a color and decided to embroider a small motif onto the small bag. (Wanted to have a larger one on the front and a smaller one on the flap.)

There is a small flower in the included files of my Janome MC500e and I decided to do it in red, white and blue on navy blue satin. I used iron on woven stabilizer as the sole stabilizer, and topper on the surface. (Pellon Shape-Flex, which is iron-on, stable, and light weight.) Possibly there should have also been some cutaway as well? there is a bit of rippling.

The front of the pouch. 

Inside view with the cleaning cloth.

View of the flap from outside. The flap design was shrunk a bit in the planning stage with the software.

The hem was done with a decorative stitch on my (made by Janome) Kenmore computerized sewing machine. 

The project came out reasonably well and would make a nice stocking stuffer. 

This sewing machine is one of the older computerized type, where there is pre-stored info that you select from, but no availability to add more via computer cable. 

It works well, but it has no adjustment for the presser foot pressure. "It's automatic!" as the trendy marketing people say. (More like, it's preset to one level and you had better like it.) Other than that quibble, I like it. This machine was why my newer sewing machine was also made by Janome: HD3000 not in some cool color but in the basic white.