Embroidery and Hand Quilting

This week, I added the last of the embroidery stitches to my wool applique project from a workshop a year ago. Those are French knots in the bottom circle and the top green part. 

I dug through my batik stash and found some fabric with green leaves on an orange background that was just calling out to be a border around this project!

The colour in the first picture is truer to how it really looks. 

I found some backing and a scrap of batting and basted them together.  I have only just started the hand quilting in the orange border. I have a plan for how to quilt the middle part and the outer border and hope to have some time tomorrow to add a few stitches.  This is my 4th hand quilting project in the last year and I am quite enjoying the texture that it adds to my projects. I am using a light green thread for the quilting in the orange border and will likely use black thread for the rest of the quilting. (It is hard to see my quilting in this picture..sorry!)

 

My aunt in Scotland sent me a china thimble for Christmas--it is not going to be used when I stitch but I will be admiring it as it sits on the shelf!

 

 

Happy Slow Stitching Sunday!

Hexagon Table Topper

I have been working on a hexagon table topper (pattern by Julie at Jaybird Quilts) for my aunt this week.  (She does not read my blog.)  I pieced it when Christine was over last night for sewing time and tonight I quilted it and did the binding.

I decided to use one of the decorative stitches on my sewing machine to quilt this project.  I used some nice green thread that matches the green in the quilt. 

These fabrics were found deep in my stash.  I can't even remember when or where I bought them.  They are perfect for a Spring themed table topper, though.

Here is the finished topper. I just completed the binding so it is completely done!

I will be delivering this to my aunt next week...a belated birthday gift.

Until next time...

Elgin Piecemakers Heart Blocks

The Elgin Piecemakers met this past Thursday.  What a fun and supportive group!  This month, we each made a red and white heart block for this month's chemo quilt.  There always is lots of variety in our blocks.  The one block that does not have a heart on it is made from material that has hearts on it.  I can't wait to see this one done!

Meanwhile, Beth and I will be getting together soon to work on the house block quilt.  I received the last two house blocks at Thursday's meeting so we are ready to get this quilt top together!

Wool Applique project brought back to life...

About a year ago, I attended a wool applique workshop with Jill Buckley, aka The Quilt Rat.  Somehow, this project got put away into a plastic bin and disappeared into the dark hole that is my sewing room...never to appear again until this week.  I wanted to do another hand stitching project and remembered that this project was still not done.

I am just using my stash of embroidery floss for this project.

I still have a bit more to do on the middle part of the flower. I hope to finish this up tomorrow during Slow Sunday Stitching  time. 

I decided that I am going to do my own thing to finish this project off rather than follow the pattern that Jill gave us.   I have dug out some batik fabric for a border.  I will likely had quilt this one since all of the stiches have been done by hand so far. It will not be very big so it should not take too long to do the quilting.

The colours are a bit washed out in this picture.  I will try to get better pictures of this when the sun is out, which is not very often lately...

Down on the Farm

Life has been very busy for many reasons lately so I have not had much sewing or blogging time.  Finally, the stars aligned last night and Christine came over for some much needed machine time for both of us!

I worked on the farm quilt that I started a while ago.  This will be a baby gift.  I made the flying geese units on the weekend during a 2 hour window of free time on Saturday.  I added them to the quilt:

I found some more black and white fabric for the next border.

For the last border, I decided to sew random lengths of the fabrics used in the quilt together in a long strip and added a final border.

The quilt was all ready to show tonight at the Elgin Piecemakers Guild meeting.  I will have to find some backing fabric now and then I will be organically quilting it myself.

Catching up...

I had hoped to do a 2014 wrap up post...but that did not happen.

I had hoped to do a 2015 goals post, but life got in the way...

I have not done any sewing for at least 3 weeks, until tonight when Christine came over. First, I made a pillow case for the local "Inn out of the Cold" shelter for the homeless. The Elgin Piecemakers had their annual Christmas dinner last night and we were all to bring in a pillowcase--I had forgotten about it completely so I promised to make one and deliver it to Debbie by the end of the week.

At our regular January meeting, everyone is to bring a red and white heart block.  I did a free pieced string heart for my block.

I also dug out the farm quilt and sewed the little blocks onto the centre and added a second black and white border.  I have an idea for the next border...stay tuned. 

I have been working on catching up on our family Christmas Scrapbook. I have done a two page spread of pictures in this book for every Christmas since my husband and I got married 25 years ago. About 5 years ago, I quit doing the pages each year for some reason and recently was the brunt of some heckling from my daughter and her cousins about the book stopping in 2009...  Since Christmas, I have finished up the pages for 2010 and 2011...2012 is well underway and the pictures are printed for 2013.  I hope to get this project caught up within the next week or so. I vow to keep it up from now on and not get so far behind again!

Santa and friends were good to me again this year...that is a new cutting mat...my old one had seen better days--it was over 25 years old!  I used my new pincushion tonight!  I also received some gift certificates from my favourite quilt shops...now I will have to do some shopping.

Here is my (late) final stash report for 2014:

Fabric used since my last stash report: 11.6 yards
Total fabric used this year: 98.95 yards
Fabric added to the stash since my last report: 7.25 yards
Total fabric added this year: 80.15 yards
Net fabric used this year: 18.8 yards

Not bad---I ended up in the black. I want to know why it doesn't look like my piles of fabric have diminished!