Ornaments Past and Present

For the last several years I've made ornaments each Christmas that reflect a new skill I've learned or as a tribute to an artist I admire. I attach these to packages, give them away as favors at holiday parties and as hostess gifts, and keep a few to hang on our own tree.

 

In 2006 I was interested in needle tatting and made little beaded snowflakes and wreaths

In 2007 I was all about crazy quilting as I worked on a Victorian bed sized quilt similar to an antique one that my mother had from her mother. More on that here.

2008 was the year of wet felting. I was crocheting and wet felting everything in sight. If you would like to try making them, here is the pattern

I guess I must have skipped 2009, but by 2010, I was enamored or an embellishment technique I had learned from an article in Quilting Arts magazine. More on this idea here. 

And again in 2011, I totally stole this technique for a large size reverse trapunto quilt and used it for ornaments. Here is the blog post about the technique.

Last year a friend introduced me to Natalie Chanin, the awesome designer behind Alabama Chanin. After looking at her gorgeous apparel, how could I not make hand sewn cotton jersey ornaments. Natalie offers finished product, kits, and workshops, so take a look at her website.

This year I was a bit stumped for an idea, and then right around Thanksgiving I was looking at an email from Sew Daily right before going to sleep. The message included this image.

I'm one of those crazy people that problem solves in my sleep. Well of course I woke up in the middle of the night with an understanding of how I could make these.

It couldn't be easier. Use stiff double sided fusible interfacing and bond fabric on both sides of a sheet. Use a rotary circle cutter (or draw circles and cut them out by hand). I made mine about 3 1/2 inches. You will need a total of four circles for each ornament, but it you fuse up larger sheets, you can cut multiples of one fabric. I fused fat quarters (or scraps from other projects that were about that size) and was able to get  up to 16 circles out of each bonding effort. If you have a sewing machine that can handle a really thick stack, then stitch two of the circles together right down the middle (I used a vanishing marker to draw a line in the center of each circle from top to bottom). Now fold both of those circles back on themselves to make two sets of wings. Match up the remaining two circles with the previously sewn pieces and stitch down through all thicknesses. If your machine chokes on that much fabric, these are just as easy to stitch by hand, and a good "in front of the TV" project. Open out the eight wings. If desired you can hand stitch a small bead between each wing to help them stay open. The final step is to take a 7-8 inch piece of embroidery floss and centering it on the bottom of the ornament, bring it up between the wings. Tie it close to the top of the ornament, and again at the ends of the floss to create a hanger. That's it. Easy-peasey!

Mug Rug Madness

Somehow I've managed to miss being caught up in the mug rug craze that has swept through the quilting world for the past few years. What's a mug rug you ask? Well it's part oversized coaster, part undersized place mat, and mostly an excuse for quilters to use up scraps and make small quilted objects to share like trading cards.

No, not those kind of trading cards, though I will point out that the Atlanta Braves reported for the start of spring training today.

Artist Trading Cards (ATC's for short) are the size of baseball cards (2 ½ x 3 ½ inches) but are handmade works of art. The only real rule is the size and they are often traded in craft clubs - especially among scrapbook folks.

Enter the mug rug. Here there really are no rules. Sewists and quilters have been snipping, stitching, and sharing these small treasures for about three years. I was a bit late to the party, but used the idea to make a fabric birthday card for a special little boy back in March 2011. I had a new machine and was playing with stitches. Not too impressive that. But wait...

Don't you love men that know the roses
don't always have to be red?

If I missed the party, why do I find myself with a table full of them now. Last month a new modern quilt guild was born in Atlanta.  The West Atlanta Modern Quilt Guild held their first meeting in January and decided to swap mug rugs at the next meeting. So here I am making tiny quilts on which to rest a cup and a little piece of something - a piece of candy, a cookie, certainly nothing as healthy as a piece of fruit.

I've played with appliqued hexies

strategic positioning

Small scale wonky log cabin

Embroidery to echo the design in one fabric... too bad that french knot unraveled on me.

They certainly make great practice pieces for machine quilting. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't quilt curvy lines on an old Singer 15-91 (circa 1955) with a walking foot.

I think it might be time to start drawing on the fabric before I quilt it. I have some luscious Copic Markers and a little stack of white, red, and pink scraps that are calling to me from the studio, so I'm off. 

Happy Valentines day everybody!

Update:

Quick and dirty. Lame job on the machine quilting and the binding isn't even finished (just pinned in back) but can't you imagine some fun projects with this. I have an idea for a twelve block quilt with one block for each month of the year. Each block would feature something that is blooming in my garden that month. I think a combination of applique, these markers, and thread painting could make some really striking images. Can't wait to get started!

Working with Stablizers: The Embroidered Gauze Shawl Revisited

Remember the gauze shawl I was nattering on about back at the beginning of May? Well I finished it a couple of weeks ago. Of course now it is far too warm in Atlanta to even think about a shawl, but it will be ready for fall. Wish I had a pretty model to help with the photos - or even a dress form for that matter, but alas, I don't.

I did end up sewing two pieces of fabric together to cover all the ugly knots, and to keep from catching threads on rings and things. And, since the fabric has a really nice ravely selvage, I decided to leave the piece with a raveled edge all the way around, which gives it a really soft look.

As I mentioned in the earlier post about this project, when working with something as flimsy as gauze, stabilizer is essential. There are three basic stabilizer types for embroidery. First there are sheets of paper-like fabric that is intended to be torn away from the stitching after the project is complete. I decided this would be a problem since the tearing with such a lightweight fabric and delicate stitching could stretch everything out of shape.

The other two alternatives are a water soluble roll of fabric that is layered on the back of the piece and washes away by soaking in water or machine washing, and a spray-on type of stabilizer that also washes out after the piece is finished. I decided to try both – one on each end of the shawl. For the spray on I used PerfectSew liquid wash-away stabilizer, and used Sulky water soluble roll stabilizer on the other. My conclusion is that I far prefer the liquid spray on product. The Sulky roll does stabilize well enough, but if you aren’t very careful it will bunch up and shift around. With PerfectSew you simply spray it on to saturate the fabric then wait for it to dry. You can accelerate drying time with a blow dryer. Once you iron it with a dry iron to remove the last bits of moisture, you are set with a stiff piece of fabric ready for the hoop.

The particular fabric I used is called bubble gauze, which means that it has been treated to shrink up and be really crinkly when washed. However, the washing did some interesting things to the stitching. Since the fabric shrank up and the thread didn’t, what was a tight row of stitches is now quite loose and a bit loopy. I’ve decided I like it, but let me know what you think.

Next up? I have a beautiful piece of red bubble gauze. I think I’ll try some machine embellishment on that. Metallic thread would make something pretty for the holidays.

Doing What You Should Do and Doing What You Want To Do

Yesterday I did what I should do. I wrote up a pattern, published it on Etsy.com, promoted it on Facebook, twitter and this blog, blah, blah, blah. It’s the price of underwriting my hobbies by selling patterns. Of course I also did the laundry, washed dishes, cooked dinner, and walked the dog. These are the things I have to do. Somewhere in there though I found a little time to do something I wanted to do.

I’ve had an idea for a lightweight gauze shawl or scarf rattling around in my head for months. I even bought gauze in a couple of different colors. My idea was to somehow embellish the scarves with thread painting or embroidery. Then a funny thing happened.

I was shopping online for an outfit to wear to a wedding. One outfit had a recommended wrap to go with it. I didn’t examine it too closely, but it was navy and appeared to have some sort of design on both ends. I ordered it and to my surprise, when it arrived it was navy gauze with same color embroidery designs. Hmmm.

I know. It’s a terrible picture, but hopefully you get an idea of what it looked like. Of course the outfit didn’t fit and I ended up wearing something else to the wedding, but after that shawl went back in the mail, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would do something similar but unique.

So I prepped one of the gauze pieces. First I washed it and thankfully I washed it separately and in cool water because the color ran like mad. After it was dried and pressed, I split the piece lengthwise and sewed it end to end to make one long piece (about 72 inches by 26 wide) and hand hemmed it.

Next I sat down with a sketch pad and started to draw design ideas. This is the rough design I came up with

It’s not a great image because my scanner isn’t at big as the sketchpad I was using, but you get the idea. The solid dots were to be French knots and the open dots would be beads. I even had some beads that I thought might work.

Initially I just used a large embroidery hoop and started stitching, but it soon became apparent that, gauze is almost as stretchy as jersey knit.

So I ripped all of that out and started over with some Sulky water soluble stabilizer backing it up. Oh, and I always split a 6 strand embroidery thread in two and work with three stands at a time. It makes a more delicate design and is easier to get through the eye of the needle, but some might object. At any rate, yesterday afternoon I finally found a couple of hours to sit down and work on the embroidery, and here is what I have so far.

Like many occasional embroiders, I’m a knotter. I have never mastered the art of making the back look as good as the front, and my stitches aren’t nearly small enough, and, and…. Anyway, because this fabric is so light, I expect I will sew two pieces back to back to cover the mess, but who knows when I will get around to that? Now I’m off to order flowers for the Mother-in-law. Something I know I should do.