It's been a very busy week

Hello everyone.

The busy isn't finished yet, either.

I did get some Christmas prep done around the house, though.

I recapped the Pinterest idea that was tried last year--added a couple more balls--and it still looks good. (I love a way to use up some ivory tulle!) As there is a picture in the post from last year, and I hadn't made a "save for web" version of this year's one, y'all can look at the photo from last year. It's pretty much the same, and hanging from the same light fixture too.

 Below the hanging collection of gold balls, a table runner that was made last year and something new. The greenery is two pine picks from Hobby Lobby, with a few of the fair sized collection of itty-bitty ornaments we have. The dangling blue and cream star was made from instructions in Bead and Button magazine December 2010 issue (goes to a back issue sale listing), using Delicas and 15 count rocailles and a cabochon instead of the suggested rivoli center. (Those from Fire Mountain Gems.)

The green version, which is on the other side of the little "tree" on the table.

There was also a white version made, but the photo didn't come out. It's on the main tree in front of a light bulb, and the light illumines the translucent beads wonderfully. In person. The camera looked at it and decided to focus on another thing entirely! Oh well.

As the busy time is not over yet--got to finish little gifts for my little angels before their party!--I will cut this post off here.

The little corner of time between Thanksgiving and Advent

Hello, everyone.

I hope all of my US readers had a happy Thanksgiving.

That "little corner" of the title is a week long this year...plus a couple of days. (For my international readers, Thanksgiving Day is always on a Thursday. And, of course, Advent begins on a Sunday.)

We had most of the gang in house for the feast--moved the grandparents' table into the largest room and put in *all* the leaves--even had an extra guest. It was great. And as this was the first time the new graduate and the newly completed graduation quilt were in the same place, she received her quilt.

I used a new (to me) way of binding on this one. I made the double folded straight grain strip and pieced the sections with a bias seam, and then sewed it onto the back of the quilt. Then pulled the folded edge onto the front, pinned it down, and machine sewed it in place on the front. It went fairly well and was a lot quicker than the old way. Plus the corners are all mitered.

As the fabric was almost all from stash, that means much of it was from Fabric.com and some was from Hobby Lobby. The binding is plain black Kona cotton.

Learning something new (machine applique)

Hello, everyone.

At the monthly meeting of Sewing Club (so called here) we learned about machine applique--one of the members had requested it--and carried nascent projects home to complete.

In the process, I learned more about my older sewing machine, a computerized Kenmore that is actually made by Janome.  There was a sampler of stitches made:

View of the front of the stitch sampler, with the stitch numbers written by the rows

The reverse side, with both sets of sample stitches showing.

The sampler's orange-plus-white rows were done first, and the orange bobbin thread pulled up to the top of the fabric. (Also the zigzag row tunnelled a lot because there wasn't enough stabilizer underneath.) Thinking it over, I realized that I'd used shiny embroidery thread on top, with dull regular thread on the bottom, and they just aren't the same weight and stiffness of thread. I switched out to a bobbin loaded with the blue shiny embroidery thread and the stitches were a lot better.

They did still pull through a bit--even though the thread tension on the top thread was loosened.

I settled on the "star" or "snowflake" stitch for most of the work, and one of the "buttonhole" stitches for the part of it that just wouldn't work out well with the stars.

The top side, stars around the ironed-on heart. Note the basting stitches holding the two layers of stabilizer to the underside.

This is how the stars came out on the underside.

 The button hole stitching, apparently, missed its date with the camera. It was put on the edges of the ironed-on letters spelling a name. There were just too many and too sharp of curves on those letters to use the stars.

The actual project, for which I shopped the stash, is a pillowcase. I used quilting cottons. The red in the picture above is a Kona cotton solid. The heart is one of the many, many fabrics in the printed cottons stash.

So this was going to be the post from earlier today

Hello, everyone.

I had planned to do a post about laundry results on book cover fabrics. Unfortunately the camera chip was at the other end of the house, and it was late. So this is that post instead.

The 4 inch square of handkerchief linen shrank to just about 3 7/8 inches as y'all may remember.

It was going to be necessary to do a wash and dry cycle of the remainder of the piece of linen, just to get it ready to work with. And also to see what happened with color. I tucked the half yard of red Kona cotton muslin that was intended for an underlining to the linen, and a bunch of colored clothing that needed to be washed, into the machine on cool cycle. Ran the whole load through the dryer on "knits" which is a more-gentle heat setting.

Then laid the washed and dried--but not yet ironed--fabrics out on a chair to look at.

Left to right: Kona cotton, red handkerchief linen, red poly lining fabric

 As y'all can see, the linen went from tomato-colored to cream-of-tomato-soup-colored. The Kona held its color.

I am faced with a decision: try the linen color against the actual book color (if it matches we wink at the almost-orange shade?) or switch to using the Kona for face fabric. Or possibly another red fabric. I have tried one of the local fabric shops. I may try the other one...but IIRC they mostly focus on the really fancy stuff for formal wear.

I think I'll do a little more test stitching on the poly doupioni before giving up. The French knots came out pretty and were easy to do in a line. Actually looked better than the outline stitching did. Not as hard to go around curves, either.

Fabric testing for book cover project

Hello, everyone.

Y'all may remember that there is an embroidered book cover project being considered.

The other day DH and I went downtown and looked at a new-to-me fabric shop. It was quite nice--good variety of fabrics in a variety of types. Loads of sales people, too. (Unusual for fabric shops, honestly.)

I wanted to buy some sample fabrics to test. Well, it turned out that the shop has a minimum cut size. (And it's not the size most quilters get for most of their fabrics.) I ended up buying enough to do one book cover, probably: 1/2 (almost 1/2 meter) in two red fabrics, a red poly that could be a lining and a tomato-red handkerchief linen.

Poly on left. Handkerchief linen on right.

I am currently thinking that the poly will make a good liner layer for the book cover, instead of using Kona cotton for it. (Kona will still be the underlining layer that is right under the face fabric.)

4 inch square cut and serged for shrink test

After machine wash and machine dry, the 4 inches have become 3 7/8 inches.

Well, any linen or cotton was going to need preshrinking.

Picked up a piece of red Kona cotton, too, at my local Hobby Lobby store. (Don't have any red flannel for the padding layer that is proposed, but that will likely come.) It will also go through the wash before being used.

I think that the project proposal is ready for a presentation of concept package to be prepared. (To include the proof-of-concept cover on a hymnal, embroidery samples on assorted stuffs--I'm just accumulating stitch samples in a Ziplock bag--and the fabric pieces.

Right after I preshrink that red cotton and the rest of that half-yard of red linen.