A New Wrist Pincushion

Whilst sewing, I find using a pincushion on my wrist to be very handy. However, the elastic on my old one has stretched out and when I tightened it, it was too hard to get over my hand. It can be done but it's a bit of a struggle. I bought this one at JoAnn's a couple of decades ago.

Then I happened upon a YouTube video on making one like a flower. 

I had a bunch of small print fabrics that I bought on Amazon - too thin for quilting but perfect for something like this.

You would not believe how long I agonized over what colours and prints to use for the petals and what to use for the centre.  I used a yogurt lid as a template for the circles. The YouTube pattern calls for 5" circles but mine were 4 1/2" in diameter.

Once I made all the decisions and got the fabrics cut, it only took me about an hour to finish. I even had the 'hook and loop tape' (Nancy Zieman's generic term for Velcro™) in my stash. I used a 2 1/4"  diameter piece of container lid for the bottom of the pincushion, tucking it in after stuffing it and gathering the edges.

It's pretty cute!

I will try using elastic on the next one I make and more coordinating fabric. But in the meantime, this one will be very useful.

In stitching news, I also found some 40ct Vintage Country Mocha fabric in my stash that I will use for the Bluework Pear project. I frequently raid Kimat Designs remnant box as they're perfect for smaller project like this. I hope to get started on that sometime today or tomorrow.

Kimat Designs Stitching Day

 Yesterday Jen1 and I attended Kim and Meagan's stitching day at the Lemonville Community Centre in Whitchurch-Stouffville.

The hall seemed to be freshly renovated/painted with lots of light for us stitchers. There were about 40 of us.

There was a table for Show and Share.

I knew probably half of the people there from my guild, Elim, and various stitching groups in which I've participated over the years. Almost all my Monday morning stitchers were in attandance.

Joanne made a thread catcher in the style of my 'taco'. It was beautifully pieced. However, in my estimation it was too large for a taco. It took me a minute to think of what one would eat in a big, folded tortilla. Aha! It's a 'quesadilla'! Brava!

Basically these thread catchers are circles of fabric lined with batting (for adherence of the threads) and bound with double fold bias tape.  Easy peasy to make and useful to have, even one per project bag. 

Snacks, refreshments were available in the morning followed by a delicious lunch of salads, roasted chicken and potatoes, bread, and ice cream in cup-shaped cones with optional sprinkles, syrups, and whipped cream. Yummy!

Kim and Meagan also had their shop set up. I have been eyeing the blue version of the Redwork Pears the last couple of times I've been in their shop so I finally pulled the trigger and bought it, along with a variegated silk thread that would work well. Better, in fact, than the called-for Dinky Dyes thread. Now to raid my stash again for a remnant of fabric to stitch them on. 

As I mentioned to Jen1 in the car, it is very humbling to have a look through one's stash before attending an event like this. It helps keep the reins on going crazy and buying everything that looks wonderful when you have the vastness of your existing pattern stash fresh in your mind.

After dinner last night, I needed an easy, relaxing project so I started making hexies with the blue Shimmer fabric I had purchased the day before at the Bolts & Bobbins sale.

When I saw this striped fabric I thought it would be perfect for 3/4" hexies.

I got a bunch cut out and mounted onto the templates. Then got three done. There's a metre of fabric so I have lots to play around with. I may make lots of dark flowers and surround them with the two lighter colours that are also the centres of the flowers. 

It has been quite the last couple of days of intense crafting and thinking about what projects to do. So enjoyable...

Bolts and Bobbins Yard Sale

Jen1 and I ventured up to the greater Woodville area today for the Bolts and Bobbins yard sale. They were closed yesterday in preparation for this event which took place out the back door in a covered shed. 

I had no advance ideas about what I would get. Possibly a charm pack or some fabric to go with some of the things I already have.

This is what I bought.

A few remnants which include: a little bundle of a neutral, beige fabric which could coordinate with many patterns I have,

a companion fabric to one of the charm packs I've made into hexies,

an indigo-dyed-looking blue fabric.

a Morris & Co fabric,

another Morris & Co fabric called 'Poppy" which would work well with the rabbit fabric above.

a  charm pack and coordinating fabric from the same line. This is the second Spring Brook charm pack in my stash so now I have enough to make a quilt top, combining the two charm packs and cutting the companion fabric into 5" squares. 

I was looking for some 'handmade' metal bag labels in silver or gold but they only had zipper pulls. I bought a couple of them.

On the way home we stopped at Marwan's Global Bistro for lunch. It was just the right temperature to eat out on the sidewalk patio. After delicious chicken tinga tacos, and a trip to Hank's Pastries, Jen1 drove us back to Whitby. 

It was a lovely day - great company, fun shopping, and good food. Tomorrow several of us going to Kimat Designs' stitching day in Lemonville. It will be a full day of stitching, shopping at the Kimat pop-up shop, eating, and generally having a great stitcherly time with enthusiastic, like-minded folks.

Embroidery Hoop Box

Vonna Pfeiffer had an excellent blog post about constructing a box from embroidery hoops.  

    Photo by Vonna Pfeiffer

I was inspired to make one, too. Obtaining  a 5" wooden base from Michaels and six 4" embroidery hoops, I set to the task. As mentioned in a previous blog post, I borrowed some stain from Marilyn and Poppy and settled on Early American 230.

After glueing the inner hoops together in a stack, I sought out and began stitching a design for the top: an adaptation of A Quaker Seasonal - Winter from 'The Gift of Stitching' digital magazine, Issue #16, May 2007, using my favourite DMC 115. I finished stitching it last night.

I cut out a sizing template for the top of the lid so I could see how well everything could fit in its parameters. I added a couple of little motifs on the bottom right, my initial on the top right, and mounted the piece with some batting on a piece of foam core. 

Attaching the hinges was the most difficult part. The screwdriver was very 'wee' (as Jen1 would say)  and I couldn't get a good grip on it. I enlarged the pilot holes with a drill and my smallest bit, put on a leather glove for better grip, and got those suckers screwed in.

Then I glued the mounted stitching onto the top.

I haven't decided what stitchery (if any) I'll put on the inside of the lid so for now, I'm just using some coordinating fabric.

I am very pleased with the results.

I'll take it for Show and Share at our guild meeting next week and see if any folks are interested in doing this for a guild project next year.

I also like Vonna's idea of making a second one with holes in the top for scissors. So handy.

Photo by Vonna Pfeiffer

For the box, the bottom could also be lined with felt or fabric or even all around the inside with little pockets. 

I used very cheap inexpensive bamboo hoops. If one wanted to spend the extra bucks, they could purchase high quality wooden hoops. For now, I'm happy with my rustic one.

Scrappy (Ugly) Placemats are Finished

I finished quilting the last two placemats then started in on sewing on the binding. I got to practice doing the tricky joining of the two ends of binding and sewing them on a diagonal. The first time I tried this successfully was at our class last week but our teacher set it up for me. With the placemat bindings, I got to do it myself and more or less internalize the process. 

I sewed the binding on the wrong side of one of the placemats. I didn't discover it until I was half done sewing down the folded binding on the other side. I wondered why there was black thread on the checkerboard side. D'oh! I was supposed to sew the binding onto the dark side. Then after folding it over to the lighter side, sew the binding down with the dark thread showing on the dark side. 

After ripping all those seams out, there were lots of little bits of thread so I stuck a strip of masking tape along the area I ripped out and all the little threads stuck to it. Yay! I saved myself a lot of tedious picking.

Once I got the second placemat done, I whizzed through the other two. Skip had already had his lunch using the placemat I finished last night.

After a final pressing, here they are.

It was a pretty fun project and I got to hone some more quilting skills.

One thing that was very helpful was the batting I used. Neither Fabricland nor the Ultimate Sewing Centre had fusible polyester batting so I bought a large piece of cotton batting, fusible on both sides. Had it only been fusible on one side I could have used basting spray on the other but having both sides fusible made it a lot easier. 

I'm going to take a break from making placemats. However this project would lend itself nicely to using fat quarters or jelly rolls in coordinating colours and a complimentary fabric for the solid back.

I may have found a pattern to stitch for the lid of my embroidery hoop box. It's a winter pattern meant for stitching white stars and crosses (snowflakes don't have 8 points) on a darker/natural-coloured fabric. It's Winter from digital magazine, The Gift of Stitching, Issue #16, May 2007. 

I drew a circle on the pattern on the areas to be stitched, omitting the letters. The 36ct fabric should fit the lid exactly.

I'm using my favourite DMC 115 a variegated garnet/red thread.

About The Gift of Stitching Magazine... it was a digital stitchery magazine which ceased publication in 2012 because of Internet piracy. All 72 issues or individual back issues are available for download here. I return to this treasure trove of patterns frequently and highly recommend the investment of about $30USD or $40CAD for over 2000 pages of stitcherly goodness. 

Quilting and Glueing

I finally picked the backing fabric and binding for my scrappy placemats.

I have several yards of this fabric.

I was going to do the binding where the back is 1" larger all the way around and the excess is folded over twice and stitched on the front but I thought I needed a neutral, somewhat solid binding. I selected a grunge black/grey fabric for the binding. I cut out the 2 1/2" binding strips and sewed them into one long strip last night, ready for pressing in half.

Tonight I got the quilting done on two of the placemats. Originally I wanted to do quilting lines 1/4" away from the stitched lines but I couldn't be bothered to do all that sewing. I decided to do 

a simple 'x' through the white squares. Using the Frixion (heat erasable) pen, it was easy to draw the 45° lines. I used white thread on the checkerboard side and black thread on the other side.
I have the lines drawn on the other two placemats and will quilt them tomorrow. Then I'll get the bindings done on all 4 mats, sewing them onto the dark side, then folding over to the checkerboard side and sewing down by machine.

I've had all the materials for the embroidery hoop box project for ages. Today I finally got going on making it. Marilyn and Poppy both gave me some stain to try out. I selected Early American 230. The dark walnut was too dark and the other colour  was too light. I thought I'd varathane them but won't bother this time.

These are 4" hoops mounted on a 5" wooden base, however any size hoop would work. I suggest finding a wooden base first then hoops that will fit on top.

I have some adjusting to do on the screw mechanisms on the front and some hinges to attach. I think it's going to look very nifty. I think some of my guild members might be interested in making one for themselves. The bottom could also be lined with felt or some fabric or even another piece of stitchery. A magnet could go inside the lid to hold needle. So many ideas to make it one's own.

This project was inspired by Vonna Pfeiffer, the Twisted Stitcher. Here's the link to her tutorial on the subject.

Now to decide what stitchery I'll use for the lid...

I bought two charts on a Facebook destashing group. There are three patterns in this book.

and Autumn Spice featured in Cross Stitch Quarterly.

The shipping within Canada was under $4 and they came in two days.

Nothing in Common

I watched a YouTube video the other day on the topic of stash busting. The creator suggested using a bunch of different fabrics and laid them out in a checkerboard fashion. I woke up this morning thinking of a stashbusting project I could do that would be something useful for our home.

I have many fabrics which I have no idea what to use them for so I grabbed a bunch of bright ones and a white fabric with antique printed motifs. I have no idea what possessed me to buy an entire yard of this. I think I thought it would go with some vintage-looking Parisian-themed fabric I had purchased at another time.

Some of these were from random fat quarter bundles purchased at either WalMart or JoAnn Fabrics early on in my sewing enthusiasm.

I decided to make a set of placemats for our kitchen table that won't matter what gets spilled on them.

I cut 2 1/2"  strips (2 widths of each fat quarter) and sewed light and dark strips together into sets of two strips. I then cut the sets into 2 1/2" widths.

I started laying out the doubled squares thinking I could just flip some upside down so darks and lights would alternate. However the script on the lighter fabric would have been upside down. 

I then had to pick some apart and reposition, and resew them, then continued laying them out in 6 rows and 9 columns. The placemats will be approximately 18" x 12".

I tried to keep the different dark fabrics scattered so the same print wasn't too close to it's twin. I wasn't always successful. I started sewing the pairs in columns.

I got to the layout for the last placemat and realized I had not cut apart a double strip of of one of the dark colours. Not wanting those two fabrics to dominate in that one placemat,  I had to rework the layouts for the other 3 I thought I had completed. This involved picking apart some of the columns I had previously sewn. It was like doing a puzzle. And I wasn't completely successful (looking at the bottom two rows of this one).

But it is good enough for this exercise. 

About pressing: I pressed the columns before stitching them together, pressing to the dark fabrics so that when I sewed the columns I could nest the seams. That worked quite well. When I finished sewing the entire placemat, I pressed the vertical seams open so there wouldn't be a lot of bulk at the intersections. Then turned it over and pressed with my 50/50 mixture of MaryEllen's Best press and water. I use an atomizer bottle purchased on Amazon.

I'm not that thrilled with how this first one turned out but I will carry on. Skip likes the randomness of it. I'll find another weird fabric in my stash for the back and binding. I'll probably quilt the placemats, too.

As I also have a somewhat vast stash of batting, I won't have had to purchase anything to complete the quilt.

In retrospect, watching another video someone made on making a quilt for under $20, I could have turned the white fabric over. The print would not have been so obvious, would have made the darker squares 'pop', and I could have flipped some of the sewn pairs upside down after all.

After doing 4 big loads of laundry today, including queen sheets and 3 pillows, hanging them all on the clothesline, a bunch of shopping at 4 stores, planting our geraniums, re-planting the tomatoes that the effing bunny ate, going back to the store for more dinner ingredients, and preparing and cleaning up after dinner, I didn't have any more energy to start sewing the other 3 placemats together. Hopefully tomorrow.

If I squint, I kinda like the look of them, too.

Project Portfolio Class

Yesterday, Marilyn, Jen1 and I took a sewing class at Quilter's Cupboard in Uxbridge ON where we made project portfolios to contain our stitchery projects. 

The prework was fairly extensive - getting all the fabric and vinyl cut and labelled in preparation for the class so we could get right to sewing. I also quilted the outer parts of the portfolio which also took a lot of time.

Tami provided us with a list of things to bring including a working sewing machine with a new needle. Right off the bat, I had trouble getting my machine to work properly. It skipped stitches and wouldn't sew evenly. I rethreaded it and the bobbin several times. I finally put in yet another new needle and that solved the problem.  It was frustrating and I had to catch up to the others but it turned out OK.

I had a few other 'issues' - like having too much on the cutting mat when I went to trim something and I cut through one of the fabrics for the small pocket! Oh well, I fused it to the interfacing and put that damaged fabric on the inside of the pocket. Crisis averted.

Honestly, I've never had so many problems with my sewing before. I'm sure Tami thought I was a rank beginner with all my issues.

We also decided to do the small floss pouch differently by using a fabric on both the back and front instead of batting on the back to use as a thread catcher. I had made thread catcher 'tacos' for Marilyn and Jen1 and will make one for myself.

The quilting in the prep phase took quite a while but I used the lines on my cutting mat for the first line - using a strip of masking tape. Then stitched the other lines 2 1/2" apart using the spacer thingy on my quilting foot. The closure tab was the piece I had so much trouble with my machine malfunctioning so it looks a little ragged. Will fix with some coercion and glue.

I liked the magnetic closure but hook and loop tape or even a tab over a button would work, too.

I decided to hand-sew all the bindings as it gives a much neater finish. It took a long time doing sewing around the small pouch and the periphery of the portfolio but I like how polished it looks.

I made a mistake cutting the binding for the small pouch - only cutting a 2" binding instead of 2 1/2". I ended up really liking how the narrower binding looked after all.

There is a vinyl pocket on the right (shown above), and an open pocket on the left.

There's also a smaller pocket on the larger pocket, and a scissor pocket in the corner.

I'm very happy with the binding I chose. It just makes the greens 'pop'. and the blue zippers worked out well, too.

Here is the back of the smaller pouch - using the outer fabric instead of thread-catching fleece.

I was pretty pooped after making the little pouch and knew how to do the needle case so I packed up a bit early and did a bit of looking around the shop before heading home. 

I did the hand-sewing of the bindings last night. It took a long time but the results are pleasing.

Even though it was an all-day project, I would definitely make another portfolio. This time, I would have the zipper on the vinyl pocket go from top to bottom (I defied the original plan and went bottom to top so it would be opening left to right), so any decorative zipper pull would hang down into the pouch when the zipper is closed rather than below the pouch as it is now. I would probably also make a pocket all the way across the smaller pocket (from the scissor pocket to the entire width of the small pocket) with dividers for small tools or needle packs.