Tackling Reality

When it comes to crafting, I’m like a kid in a candy store; a very young kid with the blissful ignorance of limitations in the candy store. I see things; I’m sure my eyes light up; I think ‘ooooohhhhh’ and I stockpile the stuff necessary to complete the treasured project. But, like that kid who can’t taste everything without hitting the wall, I can’t seem to finish everything that in the moment I think I’ll just whip out. In reality, I work amidst piles (and piles) of unfinished projects. However, I’ve managed to finish a few things (woohoo!) to share.

The two T-shirts are for someone who signed up for the 2013 Creative Pay it Forward. The recipient does cancer walks and has mentioned she’d like a shirt with a checkbox that says “other” (the non-pink cancer survivors are “other” when they register). Teal is for ovarian cancer.   Purple ribbons are for Alzheimers.

Other items are a little pouch that holds coffee filters on the wall right by the coffee machine; a reader case front (tree), back (it was a dark and stormy night) and pocket (tudor wildlife design); wine charm earrings for a neighbor who pours at the winery; an owl and a dream catcher on denim shirts and an “in progress” Poe phrase raven that I’m planning to incorporate in a laptop case. You can click on any of the photos for a larger view in slideshow.

The details for crafters (non-crafters skip this paragraph): Thin fabrics don’t support dense embroidery designs well. There are many ways around this, for wearables I like to use something like Light and Soft Fuse-On.  

• Determine your design size and placement
• Cut a piece of the fuse on a few inches larger all around then your design
• Follow their directions and iron it on to the inside of your garment

The Light and Soft Fuse-On drapes well with your fabric. A heavier stabilizer doesn’t drape and can look odd. With the T-shirts and blue shirts, I then hoop them with a light/medium tear away and stitch my design (these were Pellon Stitch n Tear). The embroidery designs are from Embroidery Library (Celebrate Life – my glitch on the “C”, Awareness Rose, Dark and Stormy Night, Quill and Paper, Tudor Wildlife, Retro Coffee, Dream Catcher and Owl) and Urban Threads (Poe Raven and Tree).

The glitch on the “C” happened because for that small ribbon design near the neck, I used Sulky Sticky+ – an adhesive tear-off stabilizer in the hoop. Hooping with part of the neck in the hoop, part out, part of the seams in the hoop, part out would have been a mess. You just press the design area of your shirt to the sticky part in the hoop. But, with sticky stabilizers, or even if you use a lot of adhesive spray, you need to use a larger needle. The needle pokes a hole and the thread goes down and up. If the poked hole is tiny, the thread rubs against the stickiness, get gummy, bunches up, and if you’re lucky it breaks, if you’re not lucky things might get more stuck. I forgot to put in a bigger needle until after the thread on the “C” bunched up and broke. The T-shirts took multiple hoopings, three for the Alzheimer’s rose, with a 6 x 10 hoop. You can still see the hoop marks, but those come right off these fabrics. The shirts are deliberately big, loose and comfy. In the photos the designs might not look centered, because if you wear a shirt too big part of the design would end up scrunched by the armpits. I placed the designs a bit more towards center. If I were to do it over, I would have more space between the celebrate life ribbon and the checkbox and the text on that shirt would be white.

 All phrases on these pieces were done with the fonts available on my machine (SanFran for the reader case Go Paperless, Art Deco for the “other”, Bremen for the “I wear purple..”. The reader pouch was hooped with cutaway stabilizer, Warm and Natural batting and linen, and then stitched. Its inner pocket is linen with cutaway stabilizer.  All embroidery was stitched with Sulky 40 weight rayon embroidery thread. I should add that I get zip, nada, zilch for mentioning specific brands, but they are something machine embroiderer’s get excited about.

The next big order of the day is deciding what to tackle first amid the piles of “things I could do”.

This post is participating in Unknownmami’s Sundays in My City and the Gallery of Favorites put on by a Alea of Pre-Meditated Leftovers and April  at 21^st Century Housewife.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!

Wishing you joy, love, peace, prosperity and a magical year celebrating the miracle that is life.

 A few photos of holiday crafting to hold you over while I enjoy my holiday semi-hiatus.   Monsters and bunnies were to donate (nice thing about a rural area is that many nonprofits take handcrafted items to distribute, whereas in the city it’s only “new in package”).  Stockings (with a nice bottle of wine from the lovely town of Murphys in each) met the ‘gold and white’ theme requirement of one recipient and fun little poinsettia pins (courtesy of Embroidery Garden) that were made “en masse”.

 Bunnies are a “freebie” embroidery design from Urban Threads (I could fit two of her large size in a hooping). Green Cyclops is from Urban Threads Monster Factory set.

For both the bunnies and lil’ Cyclops guy, I like to attach batting to the front before stuffing, as I don’t have a clue how to get a smooth front otherwise (batting stuffed pieces always look lumpy to me or they’re stuffed so hard as to be a rock). I  put thin batting in with the bunny hooping, but had to hand stitch (gasp, oh no!) my heavier batting to the inside front of Greenie. You’ll notice his arms, horns and legs are already stitched down and visible during the in progress monster part sandwich.

No shots of the fully stuffed and sewn guys before they headed out the door (and do forgive my inattention to lighting). The bunnies without pompom tails are perfect for infants and tiny ones.

Linking up to Sundays in My City and Gallery of Favorites this week.

Stitchin for the Kitchen

Finally mailed off a packet of gifts and it’s been received – so sharing with you won’t ruin any surprises. Two different styles – like me, the recipient avoids kitchen curtains to maintain a wide open view of the world beyond. With neutral walls and cabinets, you can simply change the color of a few items to have a completely fresh look. Next up – this Salt and Pepper for me, I just love it.

For both sets, it’s purchased placemats.

• Designs are Embroidery Library Vintage Salt and Pepper shakers.
• Napkins are hemstitch from Napkins Online at eBay. 100% cotton, best to iron them damp from the dryer. I have some friends and family who prefer polyester for this reason. I’m a fan of the cotton or linen, but never gift them without checking if the recipient would actually iron napkins first. At least with all the new front loaders – things come out of the dryer wrinkly.
• Yellow fabric from JoAnn as is the Sulky rayon 40 weight embroidery threads.
• Placemats from Bed Bath and Beyond.
• Light design, so used a medium weight tear away stabilizer under the towels and napkins.
• Rectangle border that anchors the yellow fabric was created in 4D Embroidery – I made a solid rectangle actual size in PowerPoint, saved as a picture and set my embroidery program to satin stitch outline the shape (might be an easier way to do it – this worked for me).  
• A bit of spray adhesive made it easier to hoop the towel plus fabric.
• Once stitched, I trimmed the fabric leaving a bit less than half an inch all around
• Frayed the edge of the yellow fabric
• Napkins – first iron and starch
• Then, note borders are not precise – for placement of the salt & pepper shakers, I just iron an X corner to corner on the napkin for my vertical placement line, then measure up from the hemstitch for my perpendicular cross line that marks the center of the design.

 

My machine sometimes hiccups in two places. One, with purchased pre-wound embroidery threads, you’ll find when starting a new one it will sometimes not feed smoothly – unwinding about a yard long piece of thread from the bobbin usually fixes this. Two, the machine doesn’t always pick up the bobbin thread with good tension at the very beginning of a design.  When this happens, I grab a long piece of bobbin thread plus the top thread and hold onto each with the machine set to slow or medium speed to start the stitching of the design (tricky when then finding a spare finger to hit the go button). When you get that nesting of threads as above, cut all the threads from the bottom then pull them out with tweezers, and start that section over. A piece of sticky stabilizer stuck to the stabilizer already hooped on the bottom of the hoop will aide not punching through the fabric in that spot.

• Designs are Embroidery Library 3 inch Floral Heirloom Letter H and Grape Bunch –Sheer  (colors edited on both designs)
• Sulky rayon 40 weight embroidery threads
• Light design again, tear away stabilizer
• Napkins –always iron and starch first
• Placement of the design – same as above

Light designs stitch up so much faster -I always pause before tackling densely stitched embroidery. Before buying my machine, noted that an article on Martha Stewart  stated “this pillow takes about 6 hours to stitch out” – huh? It wasn’t a solid 10 by 10inch – it was a medallion. So, I knew what I was getting into.  It’s best for your pricey little machine that you’re always in easy earshot – if it does have a problem (like the nesting above) it won’t overheat and you can shut it down and remedy the issue. Additionally, many of the densely stitched designs require 25 or more thread color changes (done by hand, the machine stops – you go thread the new color and start it again). If you’re out of earshot, you won’t know when to re-thread. I do LOVE having the machine, but have been buying up more of the ‘quick stitch’ light patterns so I can complete projects even though I hold down a job (and have a garden, and friends, and family and things to do …). Densely stitched designs are beautiful – they’re all I purchased when I first got the machine. I’ve quite a few gorgeous ones on the ‘to do’ pile that I will get to. First up is something for me, the beautiful Art Nouveau Nativity I stitched up for my sister last year. Not today though.

Skipped a cute border on the towels – she needed something to really use every day for drying and cute cotton borders can require a hit with the iron to look good. Embroidery Library has all sorts of flourish designs that go with the floral letters and I came very close to adding a border, but omitted it here. The placemats will also wash up well (much better than the black will, no spaghetti for hubby on the black). Maroon matches the living room (quite visible from the table), grapes match an image by her stove and she also likes a hit of yellow on things. Trés parfait.

I don’t go into detail here as Embroidery Library does have free fantastic instructions to follow for hooping, stabilizer, needle choice and more.

This post is participating in the Gallery of favorites hosted by April at The 21st Century Housewife and Alea of Premeditated Leftovers. Also, Seasonal Sundays at the Tablescaper and Sundae Scoop at I Heart Naptime. and Skip to My Lou’s Made it Monday.

Handmade Christmas Victorian Santa Stockings

More Victorian – My sister’s town does a Dickens Christmas event (which I think must be so cool!). Used their “proper names” to go along with the times. I might try to make the exact same set for myself for next year – Love them!

Osnaburg (poor man’s linen, a sturdy 100% cotton) is the base, heavy duty cut away is the stabilizer, Sulky embroidery the threads. Stitching the fabric to stabilizer around the design before embroidering (on my machine it’s “fix”) is something I highly recommend.  You remove the basting stitch when it’s done. The designs are from Embroidery Library  (Victorian Santa and Victorian reindeer 1); the lettering for the name is from my machine (Husqvarna Viking).

Pieces were stocking front and back, cuff, lining front and back. (There are oodles of free stocking patterns on the web if you need one). An upholstery weight micro suede (faux suede) is the cuff with a light Christmas cotton the lining (I didn’t want anything that might show through the osnaburg, light color and light design deliberate for the lining).

Using both red and burgundy lets them tie together their new home color and their existing holiday reds. You’ll note I didn’t want a seam along the “front” stocking edge of the cuff, but used one long piece to wrap around.

Stitched the top inside edge of both the stocking (right sides together) and lining (right sides together), then stitched the cuff (right sides together) to the lining and the cuff to the stocking (right sides together).

Fold lengthwise with right sides together and stitch all the way around, leaving a gap large enough for your hand on one of the lining sides. You can see my gap on the calf back.

Pull the stocking through the gap to get it right side out. (Stitchers - are you admiring my collection of embroidery threads in their handy, closable (read dust proof) cases that I pick up on sale (or with coupon) at Joann you get a glimpse of in hte background?)

Then push the lining down into the stocking and allow the cuff to fold  a bit into the lining side as well.

I leave the heavy duty stabilizer in so they’ll hand nicely when empty. I also didn’t stitch the gap in the lining closed – it might be easier a few years from now to press them inside out. If these were for children, I would’ve stitched the gap closed. Next time I’d flare out the stitching for the cuff a tad.

Finger smooth and press the cuff, use an iron to smooth and lightly press the stocking now that it’s right side out. Wrap.

Hoping you’re all having a lovely holiday season! A free stocking pattern is here at Moda Bakeshop. This post is participating in Made by You Monday at Skip to My Lou and Metamorphis Monday.

More Handcrafted Christmas – Felt Ornaments

If you can’t sprinkle in some cute at Christmas, when can you? The gingerbread folks are from Urban Threads and the Bear and Elf candy cane holders are from Embroidery Library.

As usual, I don’t exactly follow their instructions for making one at a time but search out a few shortcuts to do a sheet at once. You need to be careful with how you paste and color sort in 4D Embroidery – you can end up stitching out one at a time (arggh – thread changes). I “faked out” the program by inputting odd colors (like magenta) for the back stitch down while knowing “magenta” meant load up brown thread again. This way I could color sort so that all 6 candy cane holder tops stitched and stopped allowing me to take it off the machine and add the back felt, then have all six bottoms stitched on. With the gingerbread men, I’d stitched just the tops, cut them out, glued to felt backs with ribbon at head to hang and cut out again. Still faster than doing one at a time.

I always use Sulky embroidery threads  (40 weight) – I can get them on sale and haven’t had any problems. If you stitch them one at a time per instructions – the edge overlap stitching would be at the edge. Stitching in groups like this, I have the bit of felt on the outside edge.

 You can see the white cut away stabilizer in the sandwich of felt middle as I’d started using my white cutaway (need to get black cut away). I used a brown marker to go over the bits of white that poked through.

The bears went off without a hitch. You do need to be sure to get “skinny” candy canes as I had one box that was just a tad too big to fit through the buttonholes.

Back to creating gifts and baking ……  This post is participating in the following linky parties: Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Creek Cottage,

Creating a few Masks

Having fun creating some masks lately. I’ll begin the post with the ‘finished’ versions so that those of you who don’t want the down and dirty of how to do them can skim the instructions. ‘Finished’ is in quotes as I may come back to them. One consideration is to do more of the Venetian thing and attach them to decorated pieces of dowel.

This is how the Dragon mask stitches out – they are beautiful “as is”. Each of these is an Embroidery Library design.  

I’m able to stitch out two of the half masks at once. Fitting them in the hoop and redoing colors to fit my whim is done on the embroidery program. I haven’t stitched out the mask on the left yet as I substituted that with the raven.

The machine does the work. With mine I have to stay close enough to change thread colors or hear if the stitching pace signals a problem such as the threads getting all knotted up (called nesting)  or thread breaking, running out of bobbin thread and such.

These were stitched with Sulky embroidery thread on black craft felt using two pieces of black stabilizer, Ripstitch # 15 from Allstitch.

The masks are pretty cool as is, but I was inspired by Niamh’s example at Urban Threads to do just a bit more (check out her steam punk mask tutorial). If I planned ahead, I would’ve shopped feathers first and then chosen my thread colors to match. Joann’s didn’t have a large selection of feathers and I was lucky to find a few within the mixed packet that would match my Dragon.

To match ring colors on the chain, I simply undid pieces of the larger chain as my rings. They’re stitched to the back of the mask with a dab of glue added for extra security. The feathers are glued with Aleene’s ‘Okay to wash it’ fabric glue. I created a sandwich gluing the feathers to a piece of black felt and then the feather plus felt combo to the back of the mask. This prevents the pokey end of the feathers from scratching your face or eye.

The small holes on either side of the mask for inserting elastic fit precisely over my glasses in the dragon mask so I can use about half inch pieces on each side. Don’t want to lose the masks themselves in too much decoration, so I’ve been reigning in the desire to add beading or other trims. Had been playing with red and black beading in addition to the chains on the bat mask, or complementary beading on one lower edge of the dragon mask, but nah. If I change my mind, I’ll post updated pics. If I attach them to dowels, I’ll glue a craft stick (think Popsicle stick) to the back of the mask for added strength.

Have one other Halloween themed embroidery project I need to finish up and post. For local folks, I don’t sell but Bandera does embroidery and would be happy to stitch up an Embroidery Library pattern for you.

So, how do you spend your Sundays? Check out Unknown Mami’s Sundays in My City to see what other folks do on their day off in their neck of the woods. The majority of the folks there are fantastic photographers so it’s a beautiful stroll.

This post is participating in Show and Tell Friday at My Romantic Home, Frugal Friday at the
Shabby Nest, Fridays at Remodelaholic, Saturday Night Special at Funky Junk Interiors, Sundae Scoop at I Heart
Naptime, Show and Tell Saturdays at Be Different Act Normal, Fridays at Remodelaholic, Sunday
Showcase at Under the Table and Dreaming, The Tablescaper, Gallery of Favorites at 21st C Housewife, and Frugalicious Friday at Finding Fabulous linky parties.

Thanks to Alea of Premeditated Leftovers and April of The 21st Century Housewife for featuring this post on their weekend blog hop: Gallery of Favorites.

Primitive Macabre from Urban Threads

Urban Threads has some of my favorite designs – they call them quirky and offbeat, designs you’re not going to find on the mainstream sites. Designs are offered as a digital stock art (for paper crafters, mod podgers and more), hand embroidery designs or for machine embroidery. Their blog shares attention-grabbing examples of tattoos many followers have had inked from their art (in addition to projects and contests). I’d shared one of my all-time faves, their Queen of Hearts design, here.

Now, I am breaking a promise to myself to post some craft or topic other than machine embroidery; folks new to the blog may not realize that there are other items I blog about (just check out categories folks). After an extended break from machine embroidery I’m back and gung ho stitching up a few things the week.  

These images are from their primitive macabre line. My current plan is table runner. They’re stitched on the linen remnant I have from a different project. When setting out to embroider, you can always change the thread colors on your designs. I dragged out my Halloween runners and apron and chose thread colors to match.

Of course, the moment I step away my project overseer comes in to check out how things are going. Amazingly, the male cat never comes near my projects.

I really wish their color changes had let us choose to have ‘Pumpkin Man’s’ outer jacket, hat, face and pants in different colors (they’re all set to one). When I have the time, I might try and fuss with my software and see if I could put the color stops in the right place (you have to think in terms of one stitch at a time, a few stitches off and blech). As these are dense designs, I use a cutaway stabilizer. Mentioned before, starch the linen like crazy before hooping.

I do love these designs. From the ‘I should have thought this out better’ category I jumped right on taking the machine basting rectangle out of these for the photos. But now I want to put decorative stitching in a rectangle around them and I could have used the basted stitch as a perfect inner guide. Plan is to fringe up to the decorative stitching rectangle and then tack them to either a black or dark purple runner with a few other designs added in. Ah well, I’ll just have to get out the disappearing ink pen.

Our exceptional local fabric store, Country Cloth, has a few designated workshop spaces where you can simply bring in projects to work in a community environment. As the first embroidery machine I got was so temperamental and I’m so relieved to have one that works well now, I won’t travel with my machine. I’ll drag my cutting, stuffing, hand stitching or sewing with my old clunker to the classroom space. So, stocking up on a bunch of embroideries to attach to projects later isn’t a bad thing. If I can take nab few hours off work, I’ll grab my project bag and head down to Angels Camp.

For step-by-step instructions, visit Embroidery Library’s Tutorial on Linen.

This post is participating in Skip to MyLou Monday , Tutorial Tuesday at Hope Studios and Tuesday at Coastal Charm, Wednesday at Blue Cricket Design, Wednesday at SewMuch Ado, Tuesday at Tip Junkie, Wednesday at Someday Crafts,  Catch a Glimpse Thursdays, TransformationThursday, Today’s Creative Blog, SomewhatSimple Show and Tell Saturdays, Saturday at Funky Junk Interiors and Sew Cute Tuesday at the Creative Itch.

Getting my Groove Back

Finally getting back my crafting groove. The Celtic raven embroidery broke the log jam – I absolutely love how that piece came out. Had not turned on the embroidery machine for more than a year! Having to refresh my memory on a few key points. This morning’s endeavors, although lovely, reminded me of settings that I don’t want to forget. So, for Embroidery Library “it’s not you, it’s me” in this design.

Their sale ends Tuesday night – what I call their uber Christian designs. A bit preachy for my taste, but with a sale price of $1.49, editing out parts and keeping other bits of the design is time well spent. Grab a locket to add to steampunk style stitching (skip stitching the Bible verse) or beautiful flower panels that also easily stitch out sans verse. The two angels are part of their echo series. I decided to simply stitch out ‘color one’ for the toile like angel and delete the rest of the design. Considered a more traditional toile color as I have thread that exactly matches a toile spread in the guest room. But, decided these would be great for the winter holiday and red would make them pop. Did make a mess of things when the bobbin thread ran out (oh yeah, always check the bobbin thread before you begin). I usually back up a few stitches when restarting after replacing bobbin. Oops, hit prior spool not prior stitch. Unfortunately, my machine can only go forward or back one stitch at a time. It doesn’t remember where its last stitch was. That one mistake meant I had to sit and backtrack the design over 2,000 stitches – hitting the little button and letting it register over 2,000 times. When the design stitched out, it was missing the lower right corner. I was off in my stitch back up (arrggh). Thinking I can still use this piece as the center for something like a crazy quilt square where I’ll angle fabric over that lower right corner to cover my boo boo, or play with trying to stitch something into the space.

These were stitched out on a remnant of linen from another project. Starch like crazy. I chose tear away stabilizer as the design is light. Fix (the baste feature for my machine) tacked the linen to stabilizer – a step not to be ignored as my leftover piece of linen didn’t fill the hoop.

Overall, I’m pleased with them. I may put a charm of a Christmas wreath in the one angel’s hand or embroider something. They’ll either be pillows or center panels for patchwork Christmas stockings. That decision is to come.

I’ve begun stitching out some fun Urban Threads designs, so stay tuned.

This post is participating in the parties linked below.