Lockdown Day 30

Three little dickey birds. I'm wondering what to do with these? Should I turn them into applique designs? Or what about embroidery designs?

I'm considering putting together some sort of embroidery kit with my own drawings, my hand-dyed threads and hand-dyed background linen. It'll include simple instructions, a hoop and a needle. And maybe I'll put it all in a little bag made from my own hand-dyed thread.

What do you think?

School holiday stitching

I'm sitting at the local public swimming pool watching my kids burn some energy.  It's school holidays, the two week break between the third and fourth term, and it's shaping up to be a busy one.

I should be at my house, sorting and packing, but there is only so much of that the kids can take before they drive me nuts, so the pool is good for all of us.  They get some entertainment and excercise, and I get some hand stitching time, which is highly therapeutic to my stressed and tired brain.

I'm embroidering on little squares of cotton batting that I hand dyed.  The threads are silk and stranded cotton and are hand dyed too.  Just little circles of different stitches, I guess it's a sampler really. Whatever it is, it's helping me keep my zen.

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?

Crafting While Camping

I like to have my hands busy.  Sitting still is hard for me and I get itchy if I haven't sewn something for a couple of days.  Anyone else like that?  So camping for three weeks without my sewing machine was going to mean a grumpy me if I didn't have a plan.

I saved up all my hand binding projects, I took some of my hand-dyed threads and an embroidery hoop, I planned to learn how to hand spin and knit and my mother in law took her spinning wheel.  I also planned to take my hand-cranked sewing machine.

Well, best laid plans and all...

Belinda, my hand-cranked machine, just WOULDN'T fit.  So I thought I'd come home again (we don't camp far away and I come home every now and then to do washing and check animals etc) and collect her once I'd finished all my other work, but I never got finished!

We couldn't get the spinning wheel going.  We think it's warped out of alignment as the wheel and the bobbin wouldn't line up and the cord that runs between them (I'm sure it has a name) kept jumping off.  So that wasn't happening either.

And the knitting didn't even get a look in......maybe next year.

But the embroidery got started and was fun.  I loved seeing the colours form up from my hand-dyed silk/cotton threads. It went slowly though because every time I started I had four little nieces wanting to stitch too.  I got them all going on their own little projects (they are all getting embroidery hoops next time I see them), but had to spend time re-threading needles, tying off, and just a bit of untangling!

The hand-binding projects kept me satisfyingly busy and I'll show pictures of them separately as they were mostly samples for my beginner quilt making classes.

And I found a photo my MIL took of me hand spinning with my spindle!  I think I've got the hang of it now.  My yarn is looking less like dreadlocks and more like yarn, but I'm far from finding it relaxing!  I aim to spend a few minutes spinning each day to try and build my skills....I'll let you know.

Thanks for all your comments on my hand-dyed thread giveaway.  It's neat to read what everybody plans and hopes for 2014.  Remember to leave a comment by this Saturday if you want to win some threads - as you can see above, they stitch up into loveliness!