Machine quilting with thread waste

After having an obsession with skies, I think I may have conquered it now.  I've painted them with fabric paint, I've machine quilted them and now I've used a technique that has satisfied me.  I read about using thread waste - all those little bits of coloured thread you cut off from your sewing and embroidery - and I machine quilted them on to this sky, which I made by appliqueing "sky" shades onto a foundation, along with a few seagulls cut from the beach/lighthouse fabric.  I had to cover the thread waste with Sulky water-soluble stabiliser first as they kept catching in the darning foot I was using; that worked and when I'd finished machine quilting I just dipped it into water and the Sulky dissolved.  Here are some close-ups to show you how it looks.

I hope it gives you some ideas for yourself.

At http://bird-diary.blogspot.com/ you will find my other blog.

Inkjet printing transfers

Look at this picture from a calendar and you will see at the top of the wombat a mark where the calendar hole was.  This picture is to be printed on an inkjet transfer sheet, a piece of fabric which is made to go through an inkjet printer, because it is for my wombat-mad grandson Pete, to form part of a storage bag for his wombat collection.  Because of the fault in the picture, I scanned the calendar picture in and opened it in the Paint program, after making a copy to save as the original.  Then I had several attempts to brush paint effects over the affected area.  There are sufficient colours available in the Paint program to restore the picture to normal, and when I saved my best effort and then printed on the inket transfer paper I was very pleased - see the next photo for the result.

Try this yourself with a calendar picture.

Crochet

I needed a change of pace so I got out my crochet hook (the big one, 7mm) and a ball of 8ply variegated purple (very pretty) and retaught myself how to make an afghan square.  I've made 4 so far (two came out correctly!) and I'm quite pleased.  My crochet tends to get looser and looser but that doesn't really matter for this sort of project.  Sometimes you need to do something different - have a go, life's not an exam.  There's no evidence of crochet before 1800 which I find interesting.

Thread painting

This tabby cat is one that I embroidered recently, with a technique called thread painting.  After stitching the black outline where I wanted it to show, I threaded my needle with three different shades of grey DMC embroidery cotton, a pale, a dark, and a medium grey.  Towards the end of the tail where you see the shades are lighter, I used two strands of pale and one of medium grey.   Around the rear, I sometimes used two strands of dark and one of medium - and each stitch goes from the unstitched area into the stitched area, in between two other stitches, so that it all blends in together.  That is thread painting.  The background to this is fabric painting, which is another story altogether.  Have you seen my other blog yet?  Its at http://bird-diary.blogspot.com/

Hoping to get the website up tomorrow!

Here are my patchwork mice, though the pink one is not patchwork but felt.  The pair are smaller than the bigger blue one.  I made these last weekend, sewing together lots of squares of fabric to make a larger piece of fabric, then cutting out the mouse body shape and a gusset.  The ears are felt and the tails are felt except for the blue one, that is a piece of string covered with zigzag stitch which was quite easy, just put the feed dogs down on your sewing machine and use a darning foot, then you can zigzag as densely as you like with blue cotton, slowly working down the string.  I made the gusset by holding the 2 body pieces, after sewing them together and turning inside out, and pressing the seam flat,  hold them open over felt or fabric and draw round the wedge shape, cut it out and sew onto the bottom, stuffing before you close it up - also put the tail in before you close it up.  Make the ears from felt, giving them a little pleat when you sew them on to make them look right, and sew on a couple of black beads for eyes.  Add a few stitches for a mouth.  I forgot whiskers but you could use fishing line - they might stand out instead of flopping - I'll have to think more about whiskers.

Getting organised

You can find info on getting organised at my other blog http://filingspace.wordpress.com/ where I will be giving you tips on how to organise various things around your home, including shortly organising your sewing area. If you are making a few notes about what you plan to make next, you might find my ideas useful.

Craft and Quilt Fair

Just been to the Craft and Quilt Fair in Adelaide - had a terrific time, saw some wonderful quilts; I feel full up with the beauty of it all. I enjoyed the traditional quilts but mainly I was drawn to the art quilts, they were absolutely riveting.

I bought a kit to make silk flowers, and some fabric paint that I was looking for - I have learnt the hard way that not all fabric paints can be sewn through when dry, so always ask!

A technique I saw a lot of at the Quilt Exhibits was the building up of layers of tiny pieces of fabric to show texture and shading, e.g. trees, landescape; and the building up of layer of various media for the same purpose, e.g. yarn couched on fabric A, which is then sewn on to fabric B ...

Also texture was shown with "clumps" of beads, and different types of stitching on the same piece, next to each other, such as areas of close machine quilting next to open hand quilting.

I'm ready to experiment!

Free pattern

You can now get a free pattern for a Crazy Patchwork bookmark, from CQMagazineOnline, in the article I wrote for this online magazine. This mag has some delicious photos in the Showcase, including my green vest(waistcoat), but lots more besides, and will wet your appetite to make some crazy patchwork yourself.

UFO's

UFO's, in textile terms, are "unfinished objects", those craft items that we started, ran into a problem with, and put away to finish later. I can't bear to leave these UFO's hanging around for too long; it's all too much clutter. So I get them out again, and have a fresh look at them. It may take a few months to do this, but I can't leave them for years like some people do. Often, a break means the brain has had chance to come up with a way to tackle the problem, or I may need to research how to do it. If I can't see any solution that I am prepared to actually do, then I either put it in the charity box for some hardier soul to have a go with, or - yes - I may well chuck it in the rubbish bin! It is only stuff, after all, and if I can't make use of it then it is no good to me. The quilt I am sewing in my photo on this blog is one of my UFO's which I had half-completed, having finished the patchwork, then put away for some months while I psyched myself up for the quilting. I just couldn't get the enthusiasm to finish it until I read the idea of using fleece as a backing, instead of a layer of batting and a backing layer. This is much simpler, quicker, and it quilts really easily too by machine.

Sewing machines

Here is an interesting snippet about a basic - the sewing machine. This photo is courtesy of Wikipedia, thank you.

We all know the name of Singer in relation to sewing machines. He was an engineer, and when he saw a rotary sewing machine (an earlier type) being repaired, he decided he could make a better one. He mounted his needle vertically and included a presser foot, so that the cloth could be held in place. Combining elements of earlier machines, he gained an American patent in 1851. After some legal jockeying with earlier inventors, he joined forces with a lawyer named Edward Clark,
and together they formed the first hire-purchase scheme to allow people to buy their sewing machines in an affordable way. Singer Sewing Co invented the first electric sewing machines in 1889, with the motor strapped on the side, as most homes did not yet have power connected.

Embroidery techniques

Master Embroiderer Helen M Stevens tells us about "opus plunarium" which means literally a work of feathers, describing a form of embroidery developed over the centuries. She believes it originated in Anglo-Saxon split stitch. Opus Plunarium is similar to satin stitch but it changes direction so that it gives a three dimensional appearance to the stitching. It is achieved by gradually changing the angle of the satin stitch as you work around a curve or change in shape of the motif, by slipping the next stitch beneath the previous one, about half to two thirds of the way down, so that effectively you have worked half a stitch at the wider end of the motif and none at the narrow end.

I don't have a photo to show you but Helen Stevens does, in her books, which feature the most beautiful embroidery.

Website

At last - my website is ready and I am just waiting for my son Brian to give me a hand with the web server stuff - nothing like having a family member who knows what they are doing! My favourite page actually has my daughter's patchwork cushion on it - it is a page for people who have not got a blog or website to show their work on, they can put it on this page of mine for free and their family and friends can then visit the page to see their latest creative efforts. Angela doesn't do a lot of sewing but this cushion cover came out so well I put it in as the first entry. My plan is to have the website up and running by 1st November, and once I have the URL I will post that here as well as everywhere else I can think of. I'm going to update at least the information boxes (a prominent part of the site) every month, and I have another pattern I have just started typing to add as soon as I can, hopefully in December. I've been doing quite a bit of embroidery too but the patterns are lagging behind the sewing!


A small preview of Angela's cushion cover is shown above.

Embroidery - grading your shades

(Shiny satin doesn't photograph too well, but I wanted to talk about grading shades of colour)

This embroidery was stitched in stranded cottons on black satin. I wanted to embroider a bird (as I often do) and the owl begged for a nighttime scene.
A cat had to go in somewhere, so that outline was on top of the wall - just what you might see dimly in the distance. The moon was to one side, so I
graded the colours of the tree leaves - dark furthest away, then a shade lighter and lighter again on the side closest to the moon. I had scope to use
gradually changing shades of the strands in my needle. The shading of the tree actually shows up better on the photo than the owl, which I was so proud
of, as I followed the colours in my bird book as accurately as I could. There are hundreds of shades in stranded cottons, you can always find a match
for whatever you are stitching.

By the way, I have altered the name of the stitch I used in the last post - the leaves were not cretan of course, but fly stitch.

Australian native flowers

Once the website is up and running, I intend to stitch embroideries of all my favourite native flowers and plants. I have already embroidered the Cootamundra Wattle, and just need to type up the pattern. I have done several on a crazy patchwork wall hanging that I made a few years ago. This photo shows the bottlebrush tree flower. The stitches were stem stitch (for the stem!) and cretan for the leaves, with straight stitches gently loose for the flower, and beads at the ends of the flower stamens to show the gold tips. Do try it for yourself. Copy mine, or look in a book of Australian plants.

Sewing machine maintenance

Yes, I know, how boring - but if you don't clean out the lint from your sewing machine from time to time, it can jam up and cause problems. Check your sewing machine manual from instructions on how to remove the bobbin holder and shuttle race. I have only had my new machine for a year and decided to clean these two places out, as I have done a lot of quilting this year. I found a very solid piece of lint inside!

Here is an interesting web site with free sewing patterns including a bag to hang from a walker or wheelchair.
http://www.sewing.org/index.html

Cootamundra Wattle

Here is the picture.

Website construction

At last I am underway with my website construction. Not without incident. After typing up enough patterns to launch my website, I downloaded some programs from the internet to use to set it up. Unfortunately, they interfered bigtime with my husbands PC games, so I uninstalled the website programs and bought a laptop computer! Now I can dedicate it to "Business", so I'm off again.
Here is a pic of a beautiful Cootamundra Wattle tree - watch out for an embroidery based on it.

Hexagon Quilt

As you can see, I have another article printed in Ezine - click on the button to go there.

Ezine articles

As you will see, I now have some articles published on Ezine - if you click on the link button, you will go directly to Ezine where you can type my name into the Search box, and a list of articles by me will come up. Click on the one you want to read.

Embroidery threads

Here is a small sample of some of the lovely threads you can use to create different textures.

Cotton – 6-stranded such as DMC or Anchor; can be separated into 1 or more strands.

Perle cotton, comes in different thicknesses, with the higher the number, the finer the thread.

Silks – floss silk such as Madeira. This is untwisted with a high sheen. Can be separated into 4 strands.

Synthetic threads – come in a smaller range of colours than cottons but are shinier.

Metallic threads – come in different thicknesses, but thicker threads need to be couched, as pulling through fabric causes them to splinter.

DMC threads have have a great website at http://tinyurl.com/lehgvg, it is well worth a browse.

I have just had an article published at http://tinyurl.com/njryhs - hope you enjoy it, it is a lighthearted look at learning about patchwork and quilting.

More on embroidery design

For anyone interested in all the textile arts, I recommend this website I found this morning, I have a tinyurl for it which is http://tinyurl.com/olywmv

More on embroidery design.
Think of the threads you are going to use -some like silk, some like stranded cotton – silk shines, cotton gives a matt finish, so you may consider these points.

Think too of the scale. If your design is farly large, you can include lots of detail. If small, you need to simplify – pick out the major points such as eyes, and just suggest smaller details with a few stitches, e.g. spot on fur can be a few small stitches.

Add notes on your final drawing about colours, stitch direction and any other things you may want to refer to later. This makes your embroidery pattern more useful to you as a working plan. But expect to change your mind – it makes life fun!

Also consider being innovative – you don’t have to only embroider or only applique for instance – combining techniques can give a highly original look and I will give you more ideas on this in future blogs. This is commonly known as Mixed Media.

Designing your own embroidery

Many embroiderers don’t want to design their own embroidery patterns, but for those who can’t find what they want, or have an idea in their head they want to embroider, it is a satisfying process.

First, know what embroidery style you are comfortable with. For beginners only just discovering surface embroidery, patterns for a stumpwork design are too adventurous. Wait until you have tried a style before designing for it.

Second, draft a few sketches on paper. Try different placements for the elements in your embroidery pattern, moving them around till they appear balanced – not evenly spread necessarily, but till it “looks right”. For example, if you have a bird on a branch to the left of centre, try a flower to the right.

And remember the basic rules of perspective – items closer to you will be larger, and lower in the picture. Items further away will be smaller, and higher in the picture.

To see the Collection Showcase of the UK Embroidery Guild go to this website:
http://tinyurl.com/lmtp6s
I am now using shortened URL's to make addresses less cumbersome, I get them shortened through tinyurl so you can be sure they are genuine.

More on embroidery design next time.

Crazy Patchwork

I love crazy patchwork. I sew it the traditional way, with the raw edges being covered with either ribbon, braid or embroidery, because I can make the patches irregular and place them where I want to. I know many people now prefer to use the sewing machine, but this looks to me like a modified log cabin design and I am more interested in the freedom of irregularity. I recently made a waistcoat which I show you here. It is velvet, satin and heavy Chinese satin, kindly donated by my cousin Jan, and I enjoyed making it, though it is quite heavy and hot to wear.

Embroidered galah (Australian bird)

The galah as promised.

Texture in Surface Embroidery

One of the loveliest things about embroidery is the textures we work to create. Smooth, fluffy, bumpy - so many different textures, all of them interesting and tactile.

As a textile artist, embroidery has long been one of my loves. I have given away many of my creations (I'm a "process more than the product" person) but I will show you one of those I couldn't part with. It portrays a variety of textures.This is not my design, I took it direct from a book by Lalla Ward called the Countryside Embroidery Book. Unfortunately it is no longer in print; it is a most beautiful book showing 12 scenes, one for each month, of British birds, flowers etc. The ducklings in this pic are fluffy, being worked in Turkey stitch/Giordes knot, which is basically a long looping stitch that is then cut to produce the fluffy effect. This contrasts strongly with the poppies, which are in smooth satin stitch. The butterfly has a fluffy body and smooth wings. The borders are first, padded satin stitch, stem stitch and blanket stitch.

Another way of creating texture is with the stitches themselves. For instance, in my galah, the bird is actually painted with fabric paint and them embroidered with detached chains. This gives the texture of the feathers quite well.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to upload this photo so I will show you next time!

Patchwork Piecing

Today I have a few hints on patchwork piecing. I'm thinking about it because my husband has picked out a patchwork quilt for me to make, and it contains hundreds of squares cut into triangles. A couple of posts back I gave you my idea for using glad snaplock bags for categorising the various sizes and shapes. Another idea is to use fleece as a backing instead of the usual batting and fabric backing. This makes for a light quilt, better for summer use, or if it is going to be a throw rather than a bed quilt. I have machine-quilted on this very successfully - the walking foot goes over the two layers like a dream with no rucking-up of the patchwork layer.

As far as the piecing goes - there is a tradition that you have to build in a mistake because only God can achieve perfection. I like this rule because I can excuse my mistakes by saying they were meant!

I do use a rotary cutter for large amounts of straight cutting, but I am a philistine really because I prefer scissors - anyone else out there who shares my feeling?I found this pattern in a magazine several years ago, before I started designing my own patterns, and as I have a great affection for a cup of tea, I made it straight away.

Back to embroidery next time.

Newly published crazy patchwork

Yes, I now have a photo of my original crazy patchwork wallhanging published on the following site
http://cqmagonline.com/vol08iss03/showcase/index.shtml and I hope you go and have a look! Look for "Christine Linton".

Also for more beautiful embroidery, go to Helen Stevens website http://www.fritillary.co.uk/ and you will have a feast for your eyes.

I do applique too - see this apron.

More soon.

Yet more makings

This is a photo of my Mixed Media pic, made of velvet, velour and white card. It is called "Dusk".
I can now also be found at http://www.quiltingarts.com/members/Christine-Linton/default.aspx

This is a photo of the Crazy Patchwork Bookmark that I made recently. It was really easy and was inspired - wait for it - by the card inserts in a box of teabags. They are the right size for a bookmark, but being Christine, I had to "make something" so, as I do love the look of crazy patchwork, I decided this would be an ideal quick project. I will have the pattern available for free once I get my website open - still working on that, lots of typing of patterns.

A tip for those who do lots of patchwork piecing. When you have to cut lots of small squares and triangles for one of those intricate designs, you can avoid enormous confusion at the sewing machine by separating each type, e.g. 2" triangles, into different Glad snap-lock bags, with a brief note to tell you what the size is. Takes the nightmare into a good dream.

I had a long gap between posts because I couldn't get on the internet - traffic jams I suppose!

Hi to everyone, this is my second blog (not counting twitter). My blog is going to be all about textile crafts, this is my favourite subject.

One of my favourite pieces of embroidery at the moment is two Gouldian Finches and a Ulysses Butterfly, I designed this and used Madeira silk thread. It is all set to go on my new website which I am in the process of creating. I show you here a pic of the butterfly.



I recently discovered a great product called Gutermann Sulky; it's not new except to me, it is water soluble. If you draw your embroidery or quilting design on the rough side, pin it on your fabric, sew along the lines - so easy, it just rinses away in water. Use a water soluble marker; I made the mistake of using a felt tip pen, which worked, but left marks on the fabric. I ended up machining extra lines to cover them so all challenges can be solved.

http://bit.ly/xFAW8 is the shortened URL for my other blog, which is called http://embroiderypatterns.iiabblog.com