Unplugged: Improv Flowers

One of the things I would like to learn is needle turn appliqué and planned to watch some videos on YouTube over the Easter break. As I said in this post, our WiFi was less than cooperative, so I started on a non-needle turn hand appliqué project instead which I finished today. 

With only scissors and a regular paint stick at hand, I cut freeform pieces from some scraps, pre-creased the folds, and glued them onto a basted background. The background is a piece of a thrifted shirt with a lovely woven pattern.

I only had a few colours of thread, but practise is practise, so I stitched down one shape after the other, quite enjoying the rhythm and watching the shapes take form. Looking at it, I can tell that I got better at tightening the stitches and smoothing the curves as I worked my way through the pieces.

With so much hand work put into it, I wanted to hand quilt it, also something at which I would like to get better. I outlined the appliqué with heavy weight blue thread, and quilted lines on both sides of the basting stitches before removing them.

The quilt was bound with a flowery grey binding from The Big Box of Binding before diving into my button box.

It was rather difficult to restrain myself from adding too many buttons because they all looked great, but I was good, I stuck to the plan only embellishing the flower heads.

I am very happy with the result of my hand appliqué practise, particularly with the improv quality, and will most certainly give hand appliqué another go.

Unplugged: Colour study

I have been away for a few days visiting my family in Lillehammer. My parents have moved into their new home, and I was very happy to bring them their housewarming gift which has kept me rather busy lately. I’ll post pictures as soon as I upload them.

My little colour study from Easter break is finished though.

It is hand quilted and has a scrappy binding.

I like the rough texture of the thrifted shirt background peeking through the scraps.

I left a 3M hook on the wall after taking down the Christmas decorations, and have been displaying small quilts as I work on them.

I quite like this one, it’s very sunny and bright, and all done by hand except for attaching the binding on the front.

Note to self: Study how to hand quilt properly. I’m sure there are better ways than my sore-fingered-and-quite-slow one.

How do you even put a regular binding on a quilt all by hand??

Colour study: Yellow

Hello there, I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! We got back this morning from 5 days at our cabin with the boys, and it was lovely. Busy and lots of fun. I was planning to do some work and write some posts while I was up there, but the Wi-Fi was overloaded after a recent upgrade, and 3G isn’t really an option in our neck of the woods (literally), so Easter was basically offline at our place.

I had prepared some hand work before we left, and a little fabric play goes a long way. Lighting is an issue, so I brought the rechargeable Ottlite desktop lamp which I don’t need at home anymore; sitting at the back of the couch, it made all the difference.

Scraps from the yellow & orange scrap bin - I use too little yellow in my work and want to use it more in all its glorious tints and shades and hues and neighbours and cousins. This is one way to make friends with the colour yellow, simply use it - cut it, play with it, stitch it, enjoy it.

The “neutral” background – the sleeve of a recycled shirt, layered with batting and recycled backing, and basted by machine.

I had no plan really, but one night when the boys were put to bed, there was a cutting frenzy going on using my rather dull scissors. Many scraps were used as they were, others were cut into suitable sizes. Edges were often left untrimmed, giving some extra texture. Most fabrics are only used once, but wherever needed, I made second cuts to fill in small gaps. 

When everything was in place, the pieces were tacked to the background with a regular glue stick. All good fun and done in a jiffy even though the result looks balanced enough I’d say.

While I had yellow thread i my sewing kit, I decided to stitch them down with hot pink thread. Just stitching basic running stitches through all the layers, one piece at the time. 

The recycled base was ever so soft and easy to stitch through.

While I want to keep the colour mostly on the yellow side, I am planning to do fan quilting with blue thread. I think it will be wise to do some marking first, at least in the very beginning.

I haven’t been doing hand stitching for a long time, and it’s one of the things I’d like to do more; so handy to bring along and to put in some work when you have company.

Thanks for stopping by:)

Prudence

Prudence is the second hand stitched raw chicken sample. 

Her colouring and background is totally different than Trudy’s and the previous samples, which is one of the points of making multiple samples (besides being hooked on hand stitching) – showing how different colours make a different result.

She has a more of an old mother hen vibe about her than of a chick I’d say, but she’s fun enough to wear those Mickey Mouse ears.

She too has been secured with plenty of stitching, and her surroundings likewise.

 

 

I have yet another chick in the making. She started out as a demo sample in class, and now I have to finish her. You cannot lay a half hatched chick to rest, can you?