Stitch and Bitch

This is happening tonight.  Have you considered starting something like this in your own community?  It's worth it - friendships form, collaborations evolve, inspiration abounds, laughter erupts, stimulating and sometimes lively discussion happens.  It's one of the best things I've ever organised.

How to machine quilt around hand embroidery.

Recently I've been quilting a secret-squirrel project.  I think I'm safe showing you the snippet above, but you'll have to wait to see the whole thing, sorry.

I included a little bit of backstitch embroidery and thought I'd share a few things I've learnt about machine quilting around hand embroidery.

• Don't quilt over your embroidery.  Just like beautiful appliqué is spoilt by an all-over quilting design, so is stitchery.

•  Use a complimentary design.  A vine and flower design is good for floral quilts, but a square spiral might look a little odd.  Stippling and other filler designs work well to push the background back and highlight your embroidery.

• Quilt through the design if appropriate.  You can see in the photo above that I've quilted the inside of some letters but not others.  The ones I haven't quilted stand out and I'll need to go back and fill them in or they will draw your eye when the quilt is on the wall.  

• Go slow when you are getting close to your embroidery.  You can run your quilting line down along your embroidery edge and then move back out rather than stopping and starting your quilting every time you get to the embroidery.  You can even use a stiletto to gently move your embroidery stitches out of the way if they are not too small and tight.

• If you do accidentally quilt over your embroidery, an appropriately coloured fabric marker is your best friend!  Use a white gel marker if your embroidery is white or cream and your quilting thread is dark.

What about you?  Have you ever quilted around hand embroidery?  Do you have any other tips to add?

RED 12 x 12 Challenge quilts

One night a week I head off to my quilting buddy's house for a night of stitching and chatting.  Last night I took along my camera for her to have a look at as her camera has died.  I didn't realise she snapped a pic of me, but I'm glad she did.  She's moving back to the UK soon and I'm going to miss our quilting nights SO much.  Doesn't it look cozy?  And what was I working on?  Hand stitching down the facing on my last RED 12 x 12 challenge quilt.

Here's a snap of all four of them.  They are finished and waiting for the postman.  Here's a link to the RED 12 x 12 challenge if you want to know more.

http://www.aotearoaquilters.co.nz/events/red-12-by-12-challenge/

Ready for your close up?

I can't show you the quilts I'm working on at the moment.  It's frustrating.  I've never had to do that before, but I guess rules are rules.

I want to enter them into the exhibition at Taupo Symposium and the rules state that they cannot be shown anywhere before.  And that includes blogland because it's public.

I'm new to the 'virgin quilt' rule and I think it's a fairly new rule for New Zealand, but I'm sure it's common practice in big quilt shows overseas.  I guess it makes for a fresh and interesting show because none of the quilts will have been seen before, but it does take away some of the joy of sharing my process.  What do you think about it?

So instead, I'm going to show you random pictures that I've been taking with my NEW camera!

We have a rewards card in NZ called FlyBuys and I redeemed some points for a flash new camera.  It was high-time - my old one was about nine years old and was a 3 megapixel (!).  Now I have 14 megapixels to play with and a much better macro function.  It's still a compact digital camera, but just so much better.  Bliss.

I have to resize them to upload them or they take forever.  But the quality is still fantastic in comparison.  Check out the grain my chicken is picking up from the ground.  They move so fast when pecking that I never could have captured that before.

See?  I can get really, really, really close!  Hmm.  Actually, I don't know if I want you to get that close to my stitching!

Have a great day.  I'm off to do some more playing with my camera quilting to meet my deadline!