Saturday, January 18, 2014

A Wooly Day

I had a fantastic day at a wool applique workshop today!  Jill Buckley, aka The Quilt Rat, was our fearless teacher and 23 quilters soaked up as much wool applique and embroidery knowledge and inspiration as we could!   Jill used to belong to the London Friendship Quilters Guild and she was our speaker at our January meeting where she told us her sewing and quilting story as well as showing us her beautiful and inspired quilts.

Today, we each purchased a kit from Jill with needles, some threads and wool pieces as well as a pattern for today's project. We each brought some of our own material, embellishments and threads as well. Jill "pounced" the design onto my black background fabric for me and I was off and running!



Here is my project with the wool pieces laid out on it. They are all hand sewn down with matching sewing thread so they will stay in play while I do my embroidery. The stem was done with embroidery thread (3 strands). I have lots of embroidery thread from back in the days when I did a lot of counted cross stitch. Now, I have a new use for all that thread!


Next, Jill showed us how to do several embroidery stitches and showed us how she had used them on a recent project which won honourable mention at the Grand National in Kitchener.


That is a piece of a silk tie with the dots on it.


Jill's amazing quilting is visible in this picture.

Close up of some of the embroidery Jill did on her project.

So much inspiration!

Here is Jill's class sample:


We did not get to the wool circles today on our projects.

I got quite a bit of stitching done today. One leaf is done.

I did blanket stitch on the flower. I have not decided what to do next on this part.

I like what Charlene did with her flower!

This is Jacqui's leaf. It was fun to see how everyone's projects were different even though we all started with the same basic flower pattern.

This is another class sample made by Jill.

It was hard to pack everything up and head home at the end of the day. The day went by too fast--I was wishing we could stay longer and keep sewing.

Jill took a class picture before we left.
Show and tell at the next few guild meetings should be interesting!


Thanks Jill, for a great workshop!

16 comments:

  1. WOW! Great post Gail! It was a terrific day....I am SO incredibly impressed with everyone, there were some fabulous ideas emerging in those stitches. Hope all enjoyed the day....I KNOW that I sure did!

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  2. This was a LOT of fun to see...really enjoyable; so much eye candy! :)

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  3. Looks like a fun day, the stitchery is fantastic!

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  4. What a fun workshop this must have been -- your project is coming along beautifully. I hope you have an opportunity today to 'slow' down and do some more stitching on it!

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  5. Wow! What a great project! I just love the little wool projects you see everywhere. Someday I hope I have the time to try at least a tabletopper. I think a kit is the way to try something like this.

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  6. Great post! Love the London guild=)

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  7. What a great project! Fun for me to see some familiar faces :)
    This is a great hand stitching project... thanks for all the great detailed photos.

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  8. Beautiful wool project. As many ideas as they are stitchers!!

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  9. That a great day you all had. Will look forward to seeing the finished product!

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  10. Beautiful work!! I have been wanting to try those beautifully embroidered wool leaves and flowers. Thanks for the inspiring post.

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  11. I love the look of wool applique and these are all just lovely. Thank you for sharing.

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  12. Beautiful! And it seems it was a great workshop!

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  13. Gorgeous wool felt project! You are so lucky to have such an amazing workshop in your area.

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  14. What a great post! It was indeed a fun day and everyone's projects were incredible.

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  15. Love the wool applique with embellishments. Very nice.

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  16. Oh my, aren't you lucky you got to take that class with Jill, I am a huge fan of her work from her blog way down here in the states. Glad to hear your finger is healing and you will be back to hand sewing soon. I've had a lovely visit to your blog on this icy morning in coastal Carolina where we have been told to stay off the roads too.

    Happy Sewing

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