Sunday, February 05, 2012
Quilting
I have finished my first quilt top:
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tree Of Stitches
Yeah, well, I started another one. This one is Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden. Stitched on a piece of fabric from Kate's Kloths in Threadworx Bradley's Balloons.
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Tempest
Well, finally - I have finished one of my oldest WIP's. I started this in May 2001 and finished it last night.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Some more quilting
See - I said there would be fewer posts.
Although I didn't really stitch much in December I've made really good progress on my pilot piece and hope to finish it shortly which will mean a return to my ordinary stitching and hopefully more frequent blog posts (cos it's really got nothing to do with my procrastination or laziness or anything like that - honest).
Anyhoo...
Quilting - I made this pillow...
... at another Jo-Ann's class, and over the Christmas break my parents were visiting and Mum and I went to a class together and made these table runners:
Mine is the top one - it's a bit hard to tell in the photo but you can just tell that it's got stippling around the edges as well as around the candies which makes that one mine.
One other distraction (sort of) from stitching lately is that I've been making great strides in relieving myself of some of my many magazine pages that I've torn out and kept over the years. I've still got thousands, but I've also put into the recycling bin a very good number and it's such a good feeling to get rid of them even though I'm chucking charts. Gasp, how could I? Actually, very easily it turns out. It was harder when I was thinking that someone else might want them, but now I've cured myself of that notion I don't care anymore and I'm tossing with abandon and it feels great.
Although I didn't really stitch much in December I've made really good progress on my pilot piece and hope to finish it shortly which will mean a return to my ordinary stitching and hopefully more frequent blog posts (cos it's really got nothing to do with my procrastination or laziness or anything like that - honest).
Anyhoo...
Quilting - I made this pillow...
... at another Jo-Ann's class, and over the Christmas break my parents were visiting and Mum and I went to a class together and made these table runners:
Mine is the top one - it's a bit hard to tell in the photo but you can just tell that it's got stippling around the edges as well as around the candies which makes that one mine.
One other distraction (sort of) from stitching lately is that I've been making great strides in relieving myself of some of my many magazine pages that I've torn out and kept over the years. I've still got thousands, but I've also put into the recycling bin a very good number and it's such a good feeling to get rid of them even though I'm chucking charts. Gasp, how could I? Actually, very easily it turns out. It was harder when I was thinking that someone else might want them, but now I've cured myself of that notion I don't care anymore and I'm tossing with abandon and it feels great.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Hugs and Kisses
So Monday night I didn't feel like stitching so I picked up this kit from i-bead.com called Hugs and Kisses and got to work. And here is the result:
Hmm, looking at that photo perhaps I should have chosen a different background colour - it distorts the green of the beads a bit and removes any blue tones - oh well, never mind.
Hmm, looking at that photo perhaps I should have chosen a different background colour - it distorts the green of the beads a bit and removes any blue tones - oh well, never mind.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Phaun
My next update on Phaun:
Monday, November 07, 2011
Phaun
I signed up for another SAL with the HAED BB back in May or June. I've been saving the chart just waiting, and last night I finally started it. It's a long thin piece (like the other one I'm doing - Light of the World), but when I first chose it I decided I didn't want to stitch the cat's haunch as it seemed to dominate the picture due to the thin slice taken. Then when I was thinking about fabric - I knew I didn't want to do it on 25ct again, not that I have any left now - I decided I'd leave out the background too so a nice hand dyed would be good.
After rooting around in my stash I found a solitaire from Sparklies that would work. A very exaggerated mottled blue that I think will work well as the wall paper background. But it was 28ct and only 9x13". So I looked at my chart again and worked out the part I wanted to stitch (top two thirds), and how big that would be stitching over 2 on 28ct. 17". Oh. OK. Maybe not. But it was good fabric, and the next choice was a green fat quarter so I'd end up with a narrow bit of fabric left over, and I didn't want to do that either. So back to looking at the chart. I realised I could cut off about 30 rows from the top since I wasn't stitching the background, so that helped a bit. But it was still too long.
So I looked at the fabric again and started thinking that if I only had a 1" border at top and bottom I could get 11" in there of stitching, which would be 154 rows. So minus the first 30 rows of chart that would take me to about the middle and still be a decent amount of cat. YES, I can now do it.
Then I pulled all the thread, I started trying to just pull what I'd need, but that got difficult, so I pulled everything I had from the list (still got some gaps, but I'll worry about those later) and got stitching. In my eagerness to fit it on the small piece of fabric I left less than half an inch of margin. After finishing my first length of thread my brain caught up with me and I pulled it all out and restarted with an inch of margin.
So here is my first picture of not quite the first length of thread finished. I would have finished the thread again and kept going a bit more too, but we didn't realise that the clock in the living room had reset itself back to daylight savings time (it's one of those ones that gets its time by radio signal and we thought it wasn't working so we adjusted it manually in the morning), and so we thought it was an hour later than it was. Once we realised that we changed the clock to mountain time as we couldn't get it to stay on the correct time. Then this morning it decided to go back to ordinary time again, so now it was an hour fast. So back to the correct time zone it went. Stupid clock.
And the full fabric:
I'm hoping to work on this each week slowly to make progress. I really need to work on Light of the World too, but I really don't like doing over one on 25ct, it's just irritating.
While looking for the fabric for this I was also looking for a piece for Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden on the Stitch Specialists yahoo group. My original plan was to use overdyed threads and use a brown for the trunk, green for the leaves and pink for the blossoms - fairly standard really. But then I found the *perfect* bright pink fabric for it, and I'm not sure my colour scheme is going to work any more. So I'm now ruminating on thread colours to use for that. Perhaps I should go with a thread like the old Needle Necessities Calypso - although that might be too busy - I'll have to see.
And lastly - there are going to be fewer stitching updates than normal for a while as my main piece now is a pilot project that I can't share with you yet.
After rooting around in my stash I found a solitaire from Sparklies that would work. A very exaggerated mottled blue that I think will work well as the wall paper background. But it was 28ct and only 9x13". So I looked at my chart again and worked out the part I wanted to stitch (top two thirds), and how big that would be stitching over 2 on 28ct. 17". Oh. OK. Maybe not. But it was good fabric, and the next choice was a green fat quarter so I'd end up with a narrow bit of fabric left over, and I didn't want to do that either. So back to looking at the chart. I realised I could cut off about 30 rows from the top since I wasn't stitching the background, so that helped a bit. But it was still too long.
So I looked at the fabric again and started thinking that if I only had a 1" border at top and bottom I could get 11" in there of stitching, which would be 154 rows. So minus the first 30 rows of chart that would take me to about the middle and still be a decent amount of cat. YES, I can now do it.
Then I pulled all the thread, I started trying to just pull what I'd need, but that got difficult, so I pulled everything I had from the list (still got some gaps, but I'll worry about those later) and got stitching. In my eagerness to fit it on the small piece of fabric I left less than half an inch of margin. After finishing my first length of thread my brain caught up with me and I pulled it all out and restarted with an inch of margin.
So here is my first picture of not quite the first length of thread finished. I would have finished the thread again and kept going a bit more too, but we didn't realise that the clock in the living room had reset itself back to daylight savings time (it's one of those ones that gets its time by radio signal and we thought it wasn't working so we adjusted it manually in the morning), and so we thought it was an hour later than it was. Once we realised that we changed the clock to mountain time as we couldn't get it to stay on the correct time. Then this morning it decided to go back to ordinary time again, so now it was an hour fast. So back to the correct time zone it went. Stupid clock.
And the full fabric:
I'm hoping to work on this each week slowly to make progress. I really need to work on Light of the World too, but I really don't like doing over one on 25ct, it's just irritating.
While looking for the fabric for this I was also looking for a piece for Tree of Stitches by Abi Gurden on the Stitch Specialists yahoo group. My original plan was to use overdyed threads and use a brown for the trunk, green for the leaves and pink for the blossoms - fairly standard really. But then I found the *perfect* bright pink fabric for it, and I'm not sure my colour scheme is going to work any more. So I'm now ruminating on thread colours to use for that. Perhaps I should go with a thread like the old Needle Necessities Calypso - although that might be too busy - I'll have to see.
And lastly - there are going to be fewer stitching updates than normal for a while as my main piece now is a pilot project that I can't share with you yet.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Serpentine
Here's the latest photo - all the basic stitching is finished. I'm now adding the stones and the double-fans-doubled over the top of them, then the beads and I think that's it. I actually finished this part a few days ago but didn't get the chance to post the photo so I'm halfway through the stones now. Next photo when it's finished completely :)
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Long time, no pictures
Sorry about that. I kept meaning to do a couple of updates but just never got there. Though that means that the good news is that I get to share a finish instead of just WIP pictures :)
This is my latest quilting class (well, actually two as we did the piecing and layering in one and the binding was another class). I'm not showing the back as, well, let's put it this way, it's a learning piece, and one thing I learnt was I need to get a walking foot for my machine (or a whole new machine, but that's another debate I'm having with myself *). I'm also thinking a 1/4" foot would be good too as I make my seams too narrow resulting in squares being bigger than they should be and then points get cut off. So having the quarter inch marking above and below might be beneficial. My current machine is metric so has no inch markings at all.
Anyhoo... the pictures, that's what you really want isn't it?
The finished product:
The squares before I sewed them together:
And just because I'm feeling generous - my latest progress on the pirate quilt - not much more than last time, but I have only stitched one more session on it due to various things (including the above quilt), and now that my machine is in the shop for three weeks and the Friday morning quilting bees are having a break it might be a few weeks before it gets any further either.
Now for those of you who think I have stopped stitching - IT'S NOT TRUE :) And here is proof.
I have been working hard on Serpentine, I was hoping to get it finished before the end of September, but I don't think that's quite going to happen. The reason(s) I wanted it done by then is I have a pilot class to stitch and I promised myself I'd start that at the beginning of October, and also because Serpentine is a class and I'd like to hit the assessment window for it (which is early October).
Now I'm also going to give you a little peek at Tempest since I have been slowly plodding away a few stitches at a time during swimming lessons. Suddenly he feels like he's actually getting somewhere.
I've been thinking about taking the squares in the bottom right corner out as I'm not sure I want them right around the border, I think I'd prefer to leave it with just the single line of stitching. However, they have been there so long I'm a bit afraid of what the fabric will look like if I do. So I'm leaving that decision until I really need to make it.
Oh and I mustn't forget St. Petersburg. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I've been taking this piece (and O' Jerusalem but you can't really see any change in that so I'm not bothering with a photo) to the first Friday stitch-ins at my LNS since it (they) are nice and portable. It does make me want to stitch more of it.
And lastly - I'm taking another finishing class on Saturday (before heading straight off to an overnight camp with the kids - I feel exhausted already) on stand-ups with Susan Cluck. I've gone through my finished pieces and there aren't really that many that fit the bill. So I'm going to take Charlie's First Landing and Twas the Night Before Christmas (although I think that would be better with the cube or flat method we did last time. I think Charlie is going to be it).
*I'm not thinking of a new machine just because I want the extra feet or the inch markings. It all started because I was making another dress for DD, this one with button holes down the front, and the button holes came out funky so I showed them to my tutor (who also teaches sewing and some other crafts) and she suggested I take the machine into the shop to get looked at. So I took it in and they went 'hmmm' and are assessing it at the moment. They did tell me the basic service will cost around $90, and if there is something that needs fixing it will be more. So I started wondering what a new machine would cost as mine is also a 220V machine which means that I can't take it to classes (I have to use a transformer) and so have to borrow a machine there. I started out looking at a Brother online for ~$150, but when I went back to the shop I think I now want to spend 10x that amount and get a Bernina lol At least I know I have no interest in machine embroidery so that cuts out a lot of the really expensive all singing, all dancing models.
This is my latest quilting class (well, actually two as we did the piecing and layering in one and the binding was another class). I'm not showing the back as, well, let's put it this way, it's a learning piece, and one thing I learnt was I need to get a walking foot for my machine (or a whole new machine, but that's another debate I'm having with myself *). I'm also thinking a 1/4" foot would be good too as I make my seams too narrow resulting in squares being bigger than they should be and then points get cut off. So having the quarter inch marking above and below might be beneficial. My current machine is metric so has no inch markings at all.
Anyhoo... the pictures, that's what you really want isn't it?
The finished product:
The squares before I sewed them together:
And just because I'm feeling generous - my latest progress on the pirate quilt - not much more than last time, but I have only stitched one more session on it due to various things (including the above quilt), and now that my machine is in the shop for three weeks and the Friday morning quilting bees are having a break it might be a few weeks before it gets any further either.
Now for those of you who think I have stopped stitching - IT'S NOT TRUE :) And here is proof.
I have been working hard on Serpentine, I was hoping to get it finished before the end of September, but I don't think that's quite going to happen. The reason(s) I wanted it done by then is I have a pilot class to stitch and I promised myself I'd start that at the beginning of October, and also because Serpentine is a class and I'd like to hit the assessment window for it (which is early October).
Now I'm also going to give you a little peek at Tempest since I have been slowly plodding away a few stitches at a time during swimming lessons. Suddenly he feels like he's actually getting somewhere.
I've been thinking about taking the squares in the bottom right corner out as I'm not sure I want them right around the border, I think I'd prefer to leave it with just the single line of stitching. However, they have been there so long I'm a bit afraid of what the fabric will look like if I do. So I'm leaving that decision until I really need to make it.
Oh and I mustn't forget St. Petersburg. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I've been taking this piece (and O' Jerusalem but you can't really see any change in that so I'm not bothering with a photo) to the first Friday stitch-ins at my LNS since it (they) are nice and portable. It does make me want to stitch more of it.
And lastly - I'm taking another finishing class on Saturday (before heading straight off to an overnight camp with the kids - I feel exhausted already) on stand-ups with Susan Cluck. I've gone through my finished pieces and there aren't really that many that fit the bill. So I'm going to take Charlie's First Landing and Twas the Night Before Christmas (although I think that would be better with the cube or flat method we did last time. I think Charlie is going to be it).
*I'm not thinking of a new machine just because I want the extra feet or the inch markings. It all started because I was making another dress for DD, this one with button holes down the front, and the button holes came out funky so I showed them to my tutor (who also teaches sewing and some other crafts) and she suggested I take the machine into the shop to get looked at. So I took it in and they went 'hmmm' and are assessing it at the moment. They did tell me the basic service will cost around $90, and if there is something that needs fixing it will be more. So I started wondering what a new machine would cost as mine is also a 220V machine which means that I can't take it to classes (I have to use a transformer) and so have to borrow a machine there. I started out looking at a Brother online for ~$150, but when I went back to the shop I think I now want to spend 10x that amount and get a Bernina lol At least I know I have no interest in machine embroidery so that cuts out a lot of the really expensive all singing, all dancing models.
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