Merry Christmas !!!

For these special days, when we remind the God became a child to show us His love, I wish to you all Joy, Peace and Hope in every day of your life. And of course I wish you also only good stitches :).

Merry Christmas !!!

[WIP] long & short stitching part 2

I've been fighting with cold and illness for 2 weeks. And because of no good results I'm forced to stay at home for this week. And what can you do when you have to sit under the blanket all day? Yes,... you can catch up with blog writing :).

Today, I'll show you some photos with long&short stitching progress. Since the last time I showed it here, I did the outline for all 3 flowers, finished one petal and now I'm working on the second one.

To be honest, it goes so slowly because this embroidery intimidates me. I wanted to try it out and I do want to finish this project, but I'm afraid that I don't have the skills enough to learn it. It resembles painting to me, where you need that talent to choose right colors and match them in right way. I wasn't good at painting, so this one may be tough to me as well.

In Hardanger, which I did a couple so far, it is easy. You know exactly where the needle has to be put. Here I have to ponder for minutes sometimes, where to stitch and even when I decide I'm far from being sure it is right place. But I'm not giving up :).

Cheers and hopefully more progress soon :).

Craft and kids

Looking at some crafty blogs and also knowing this from my own experience, I guess it is always only a matter of time when craft and kids come together. My son is 3 and half years old and recently he started to have some interest in what I'm doing. Of course, I have no idea how this will evolve when he gets older but I hope at least he will learn that it's good to have some hobby :).

One of his plays involves my sewing machine but it is more about moving and changing variety of buttons than the actual sewing (bth do you know it was him changing the settings when I thought the machine was broken?). However, he tried hand sewing recently. He saw me working on the embroidery piece and wanted to try himself. So...I gave him a big tapestry needle (wanted to avoid sharp one), put a piece of Hardanger fabric on the hoop, prepared the threads and off we went. This is the result that I think is still the "work in progress" piece :).

Unfortunately, the fact he had his own hoop didn't mean I could work on mine. There still needed to be someone to hold the hoop, while he was navigating with needle. Well, but it was fun to look at him anyway :).

I'd love to hear of your experience with kids. What was the craft they enjoyed, what was the craft that came up to be a real fun for them? I guess it is a good offer for those rainy and snowy cold days that are coming when you have to spend majority of the day at home. Please, share with your thoughts.

[WIP] long & short stitching

Recent months were hardly productive for me when it comes to stitching and sewing. There's no explanation to it other than - it's just how life goes on. Little duties here and there and after 3 months you realize time passes by and you forgot about the needle.

In July I wrote you here that I was going to learn long & short stitching. I started it a bit during my holidays in August and this is what I did so far. This post is a sign that I may continue working on this :). Today we had a first snow, it became quite cold - in general the weather encourages to stay at home. So, there is a chance my weekends will be occupied with stitching at least a bit.

I also have some plans for another baby quilt as my brother and his wife are expecting a baby in December. Unfortunately, my sewing machine got broke, so I need to have it repaired first.

Ok. Needle, where are you? Neeeedle?

September FNSI - not much done :(

I signed up for the past Friday FNSI and It's so bad I didn't do much then. I had plans to continue this quilt. Unfortunately I had to change plans as Saturday was an early wake-up. I needed to go to a doctor with my kid, and as I'm really bad morning bird, I couldn't sew long at Friday night. So, the only thing I managed to do is to cut the binding for the quilt.

A little better is that I did some sewing on Sunday afternoon. All the sandwich quilt is now sewed and I'm left with binding. Hopefully, the next FNSI will be better.

Cheers, Paulina

Long & short embroidery - getting ready

There's been a lot about sewing here recently and I think it's highest time to come back to roots of this blog, i.e. embroidery. I believe I mentioned once I want to try out long and short stitching. Today, I finished preparing the fabric, the pattern and put it onto the hoop. The fabric is linen (Zweigart), pattern take from Trish Burr book: Long and Short Stitch Embroidery: A Collection of Flowers

To transfer the pattern I used transfer pen from Prym. You trace the pattern on the transparent paper and then iron it onto the fabric. The minus of such pen is that it's not removable, hence cannot be used for each embroidery. But for this one I guess it'll be fine as the thread will cover it all.

I'm a little anxious how I'll handle this type of stitching. It reminds me of painting and I was never good at that. But maybe this is because I used brush instead of needle. We'll see. It's the embroidery I wanted to try for a long time. In fact I just searched through the emails and I bought Trish Burr's book in 2008! Such a long time to start trying. But now it is the right time. In fact I'm starting now :). Cheers!

FMQ tablemat

And the short update to the latest post. I finished the binding for the tablemat I sewed and now it decorates my table. I made this one entirely from the scraps. The grey piece is linen that I bought once to some embroidery project but I didn't do it in the end.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to try free motion quilting and made this tablemat for that. I can tell now that it is very, very hard, but also after a while of quilitng I had a feeling that the sewing machine and the needle starts to listen to me :). So, I guess I'll need to think of some new project for practicing. Maybe, this time some smaller potholders or rug mugs...

I'm linking this one to JAQS Made by Me linky party:

June FNSI results

I still don't have the Internet but it won't stop me to post the results here as I promised :). I decided to finish the work on the tablemat. I did all the layers some time ago and pinned them together but I couldn't move on with quilting them. The main point to make this tablemat was to exercise and try free motion quilting. I did some of that on other fabric pieces to get a feeling but still I was worried how it would come out. But, if you don't try you're not going to be better, so finally I started free motion quilting on the tablemat. Last Friday night I finished that all.

SewCalGal blog has the year long event called Free-Motion Quilt Challenge. Each month there a different expert showing how to learn and make various free-motion patterns. In January there was this leaf pattern shown and I thought it would be good to make on my piece:

Here's the centre square sewn together

and the whole tablemat:

Now, I need to make the binding and it will be ready.

June FNSI

This post will be "Excuses and Apologies" one. I signed up for June FNSI and I will be sewing that Friday night. I have two things going on and will work on one of these:

1. Baby quilt I started in May
2. Patchwork tablemat for which I used some scraps

The table mat was made mainly to give a try in free motion quilting. I started this yesterday and it is sooo hard, the needle doesn't always go the way I want to, but it's fun to try it.

Now the "Excuses..." part - unfortunately I won't be able to show you the results on Saturday, as I don't have access to the Internet at home now. My Internet provider did very, very bad thing as they cut me off by mistake and it cannot be fixed that easily. So, lack of internet access will be more than just few days. I'll do my best to post some results over the next week. So sorry once again :(.

Sashico pillow - hanazashi stitch

Here's the second Sashico pattern I finished recently. It's called hanazashi, which means flower stitch. This is the second Sashico pillow I made. I thought of making a pair that would be made the same style, but still remain different. I'm glad how it came out and I think this embroidery is great to decorate the house.

Now, I will make a break with it but it looks great to me so for sure I'll come back to it once and will try other patterns. There are plenty of them and they can be used in many different combinations.

There are a couple books about Sashico, the one I decided to buy for myself was "The Ultimate Sashico Sourcebok" of Susan Briscoe. To me it contains all that book about embroidery should have:

1. some information about the origins and the history of the embroidery - in fact in this book it is very detailed, including many photos of some old things made with Sashico
2. part about tools, fabrics, threads needed
3. various examples and projects where Sashico can be used - coasters, table mat, greeting cards, curtains
4. finally, the list of all the various patterns

If someone wabts to try out these patterns, then this book will be a good source. Though, I had to read the info on how to make the patern a couple times before I figured out all about it. Once I did for one it was fine for the second as well.

First quilt! {drum rolls please}

Ok, here's the last thing from 2011 I'm left to show here and officially tell - It is finished. My very first quilt!

This quilt is not perfect. This quilt doesn't know what it means. And it says - I'm proud of it! And I say - this is my dear, lovely first quilt I made.

As most things it took me a while to have it done. The blocks were made during P2 Patchwork Quilt Along. There was one block per week and somehow I kept the pace, so this piece went quite well. But then, as I decided to make the quilt a bit differently I slowed down ... really, really slowed down. Anyway, it's done now and covers bed in one room.

I'm truly happy with this quilt. I learnt a lot when doing this and I know it's something I enjoy. I thought to make this post as a kind of summary with the mistakes I made. It'll be sort of list "what a beginner can do wrong" :). I'll also be able to check one day if I improved my skills at all or keep repeating the same faults.

So here it is:

1. maybe because of no expierence, maybe because I changed inch to cm but in the end the blocks weren't exactly the same. So, I had to cut some more than they should be

2. definitely not enough safety pins to keep all the layers tightly. This is how it ends with folds:

3. no expierence in moving such big fabric when sewing. The rubber gloves helped a lot but still the length of stitches varies
4. some lines that should be straight were not so in fact...

But, when you don't look into such details it looks quite nice, what do you think :)?

And here are the posts, where the WIP was shown:
Quilting around the House
{After FNSI}
All goes well till the thread runs out
November FNSI

Hardanger tablecloth started

When I wrote about this tablecloth I mentioned I had some more red fabric. Well, to be concise I ordered 10m of it once. For the tablecloth I used 2,5m, which means I still have quite a lot of it. Recently, I started doing another 2,5m tablecloth - this time I wanted to have some border embroidered and this is what I'm working at now. It looks quite nice. I don't know what to embroider in the center of it, yet. Probably, I'll use these stitches as well, so the center matches the border.

Last week, we had a warm, sunny weather - almost summer one. So, I thought it would be good idea to stitch outside. Well, it turned out I didn't do much but I managed to lose the needle somewhere in the grass. The good side of it is that I took these photos, which is - I think - enough compensation for the lost tool.

I realize it looks boring to see new posts that look like the old ones - red fabric, red thread, red tablecloth. But I have some plans to start learning long and short embroidery and to show the progress of learning here. Though, knowing my amount of free time that may not happen as soon as I'd wish. Please, please be patient :).

May FNSI results

For this month's FNSI I decided to start sewing a baby quilt. Some time ago I bought cute fabrics Fox Trails from Riley Blake Designs. It waited a long time for me and finally thanks to FNSI I got motivated to use it.

I knew I'd want to make the quilt from simple squares but over the past week I came with idea on how to put them together and did all the cutting. I had some orange and turquoise solid fabrics and decided to make use of them as well. Last night I placed the squares together and started sewing.

Here is the photo on how I put the squares together:

And more photos on where I am now :):

Today, I had busy day in my garden as the garlic, raspberries and wild strawberries needed some rescue from grass. Tomorrow I'll have to wake up early as we're going on a walk to nearby mountains. This all means that I won't be able to see the results of others work over last night. But for sure I'll be checking this soon. I'm always curious what nice things all the ladies came up with.

No, we didn't go to the mountains. The weather is beautiful but we were too lazy to get up early :). But in turn I'll rest and do some embroidery in the garden. Perfect the same!

May FNSI - baby quilt to sew

A short post to spread the word. This Friday I'll be participating in FNSI. I haven't done that for a while so it's highest time to commit to some sewing. I started cutting squares for a baby quilt, so FNSI is a good way to speed up. Please join with whatever sewing you might have on your mind. Here's the place to do that:

I'll postsome photos of "Work in Progress" over the weekend. Cheers!

Little cool gadget for embroiderers :)

Recently, I long waited parcel knocked at my door. Here what it had inside. I don't use a lot of different colors in my embroidery yet, but I just had such a strong wish to buy a Color Card that I finally did it. It's the DMC Color Card. I mostly chose this one because I wanted to have all the Pearl Cotton colors that are available. It always took me while to decide on the color only looking on the websites. Now, it will always take me a lot of time, to choose among such a huge amount :).

Along with the Color Card, 12 lovely DMC pearl cotton balls came in. I bought them for hand quilting but I guess one day I'll try them in embroidery as well.

First sashico pillow ready, second to go...

This is so very wrong - there are two things I made last year that I still haven't shown here. You can think of some punishment to me for such a delay. But...to not make bad even worse I'm showing the first thing now.

I finished Sashico embroidery for my pillow and put it all together, so now I can have this beautiful piece in my room. Now, I'm working on the second Sashico pillow, as two are better than one :). There are so many variations of Sahico patterns than one can do it a long long time and still create something different. As I read the book about Sashico I could see lots of pictures where a couple of different patterns were used for one thing and it looks just amazing. It's something new I tried and definitely I'll do more Sashico stuff in the future.

As for the "technical" sort of information :): when you look at some pages dedicated to this embroidery you'll see there are specialty fabrics and threads for this, but I just worked on the ones I had at hand and the results are quite good. I used cotton blue fabric that I bought for the Roman curtain and white Petra DMC thread no.8 (similar to pearl cotton). The only "professional" piece I used for it were the Sashico needles.

I also decided to make my own buttons for this pillow with a small pattern on it. Some time ago I saw the button kit that you can make customized buttons with. Why not another cool gadget to my sewing stuff - I thought. It came out very well, though the fabric was quite thick and I had to play a while to make the button. Here's the kit in case you haven't seen such. It can be bought on Etsy and there is variety of sizes to please everybody ;).

On the next post I'll show you the quilt I finished last year. I need to make some photos first. Unfortunately, the weather isn't very pleasing now (no sun:() but hopefully I'll manage this somehow.

Blogger's Choice Bundle

I don't have much experience in buying the fabrics, so most often when bying them I was choosing one collection to be sure I'll get the ones with coordinating colors. But when I saw the contest on Quokka Quilts I thought it might be a good fun to create my own bundle. Or at least to try :). Here's the one I came up with. My favorite color is still turquoise, so I searched for some fabrics with this one and then played around other colors that might fit as well. I ended up in turquoise - brown - yellow palette.

The fabrics are as follows:

Piccadilly Brown Bubble Dots (Quilting Treasures Fabrics)
Kona Cotton Turquoise (Robert Kaufman Fabrics)
Piccadilly Brown Button Dots (Quilting Treasures Fabrics)

Peacock Lane Turquoise Falling Flowers (Michael Miller Fabrics)
Me and My Sister Favorites Turquoise Dots (Moda Fabrics)
Essential Dots Turquoise (Moda Fabrics)

Emma Chocolate Twirling Daisies (Northcott Fabrics)
Kona Cotton Corn Yellow (Robert Kaufman Fabrics)
So Sophie Blue Petal (Riley Blake Designs)

Peacock Lane Yellow Sprinkle Dots (Michael Miller Fabrics)
Piccadilly Aqua and Brown Stripes (Quilting Treasures Fabrics)
I Heart Blue Garden (Timeless Treasures Fabrics)

Treasures and Tidbits Turquoise Starbursts and Florals (Robert Kaufman Fabric)
Kona Cotton Sable (Robert Kaufman Fabric)
Stitch Organic Lagoon Double Arrows (Robert Kaufman Fabric)

All these fabrics are available at The Fat Quarter Shop.