Another FFO, A New Start, And Sweaty Garden Work

Yesterday I felt the need to complete another project - the triangular scissor case. This involved:

• making cording for the loop closure with 8 strands of the Sulky Petites thread using my Kreinek cording drill,
• cutting and fusing light interfacing to the back of the stitching inside the perimeter stitching line
• cutting the lining to fit about 1/2" beyond the perimeter stitching line
• pinning the stitching to the lining, right sides together, with raw ends of corded loop stitching out of one of the corners
• sewing along the perimeter stitching line, leaving an opening for turning
• turning right side out
• folding two adjacent sides together (with the point opposite the cording) and starting halfway, matching the motifs, stitched to the point. Then stitching in the other direction completing the seam
• sewing on the pearl button at appropriate spot for the corded loop.
• 'blinging it up' on the front with 2mm clear HotFix 'jewels'.

All finished!

I have the urge to make a couple more. It's so easy with the Sulky Petites thread. They make great small exchange projects. The person who received one of them at the first Stitch North I attended came and thanked me more than once when she received hers. 

I began quartering the 5" charm squares into 2.5" squares. I used the dark Best of Morris squares and cut 2.5" strips from the companion fabric.

While on our shop hop, my niece Ana spoke highly of the Stripology ruler. It's a ruler with slots every 1/2" for cutting strips. I already had a similar product, the Shape Cut ruler from June Tailor, Inc.

I chose a neutral companion fabric (shown above under the ruler) and cut 2.5" strips, then laid the strips out, and cut 2.5" squares from the strips. Then took some fusible interfacing and drew 2.5" grid lines with my relatively new 2.5" wide 'quilters ruler'. 

I'm all ready to fuse the squares to the interfacing, orienting properly out from the horizontal centre for the Drop Zone project. Now to cut the lining, also from the companion fabric, and the tabs for the ends. I do need to go out and find a 24" zipper for the project. I could go to either the Ultimate Sewing Centre in Oshawa or Fabricland in Pickering tomorrow (avoiding Friday summer 401 traffic like the plague). I think Fabricland might have a greater selection of colours. 

This morning I weeded the entire, embarassingly neglected side yard. The metre-tall weeds were surprisingly easy to pull out and I filled two yard waste bags. It was hot and sweaty work but I took breaks from time to time and finally got the damned thing done. That side of the house needs a major cleanup - lots of wood, empty plant pots, etc. The subsequent shower felt great.

The wildflower seeds I planted in the back garden are coming up now, baby's breath, some type of cornflower/bachelor button, a lone zinnia, a big marigold (I think) - quite the selection of random plants. I'm still considering discontinuing a couple of the beds - filling them in with sod or grass seed. But if I can successfully grow the wildflower mix, I will do that for another year. 

Once I'm out there, I don't mind the work. It's just been so bloody hot, I really have to pick my days. It was overcast most of the time I was out there this morning. It hasn't rained much so the soil is pretty dry, generally makes pulling weeds more difficult. It's going to be hot for at least the next week.

A Quick Stitch

With one of the new, variegated spools of Sulky Petites thread I stitched another Wildfower Hearts piece from the Caron Collection.  I used 28ct white linen from my stash. It's about 4 1/2" square and will finish to 4 11/16". 

The diagram of the pattern isn't the best quality but I enlarged it to 150% which made it MUCH easier to read. 

I started in the centre with the Rhodes hearts. Around them is a double running stitch. Then did all the, what I call, 'filigree' stitches. I also really like doing the diagonal satin stitch with this thread. It fills in quite nicely and the variegation is evident yet subtle. I think 32ct would provide even better coverage for this thread. I think this is about the 4th or 5th one I've done. The centre part with the double running stitches and Rhodes hearts would also make a great, coordinating scissor fob.

The other specialty stitches are:

1. Rice stitch
2. Square Rhodes stitch over 6 threads
3. Circular Rhodes stitch over 8 threads.

This symmetrical, square piece will be made into yet another triangular scissor case. The only fabric I have on hand that would work with the colour is some whimsical Peanuts fabric (trust me, it is a pretty good colour match),

or plain white.

While rummaging through my fabric scraps, I came across the 15-sided, pulled thread biscornu I completed back in 2018 but never put the beads through the centre part. There were a couple of appropriate ones in my bead stash so I finally, after 7 years, I have fully, fully finished it.

The original pattern was designed by Kathrin Ellison of Gitta's. The instructions were available on her blog. I recall really enjoying the project and I think I substituted a couple of other pulled thread patterns. It was a SAL of hers from back in 2013. I was unsuccessful accessing it from her links just now.

As a result of all the browsing and shopping last week, my brain is running on crafty overdrive. I want to do All. The. Things. and am having trouble deciding what to focus on. I keep puttering away in my craft room and tackle little things here and there but it's still organized chaos.

July 30 is World Embroidery Day! Some of us from the Trillium Embroidery Guild will set up some chairs at Lakeview Park in Oshawa to knit in public. Fingers are crossed the weather will cooperate. Then some of us will be celebrating a couple of birthdays at a café in Bowmanville on Friday. I love having stitcherly events to look forward to in addition to my standing Monday morning stitch group.

Road Trip 2025

Since we aren't traveling to the US any more, we thought we'd enjoy a crafty trip of SW Ontario this summer instead. The focus was on fabric, knitting, and stitching shops and meeting up with my nieces for a nice visit while in the area.

Jen1 and Marilyn were able to participate with me. We booked a suite hotel in St Jacobs for our home base. The rooms were very comfortable and had great seating and lighting for stitching at the bar in the kitchenette and seating in the living room.

Rosa, Geri, and Ana

Our first stop was Dancing Stitches in Cambridge. There, I purchased an open presser foot for my Bernina Activa 220 machine. We also saw a neat zipper bag from byAnnie.com called Drop Zone but they didn't have any more patterns. I figured I'd find the pattern at one of the other shops we'd visit.. There was a Long and McQuade music store in the same block of stores so I picked up a couple of oboe reeds for my week at music camp next month. Fingers are crossed I can get them to work.

Then we headed to the Galt house of Yarn. They had an impressive assortment including lots of Icelandic and Norwegian yarns. I think that's where I bought this lovely skein of hand-painted Estelle sock yarn.

Using a coordinating sock yarn from my stash I'm going to have a second go at the Alexia pattern from the Noro Knitting and Crocheting Magazine #25, Alexia. 

It's the pattern I had so much trouble reading line by line that I graphed it. Hopefully I'll have an easier time of it this time.

Len's Mills was our next stop. It is in a HUGE building with the usual panoply of housewares, yarns, threads, notions, snack foods, etc. Their fabric section was vast, up-to-date and very tidy. Then to Mary Maxim in Paris.

We then ventured to the Staybridge Suites in St Jacobs to check in, admire our purchases, meet up with my nieces, go for dinner, and relax after dinner.

The next morning we headed out to Stratford in time for Ye Olde Quilt Shoppe to open. We all gasped when we walked in. The place was packed with every designer's lines of fabrics you could imagine. 

Jen1, Marilyn, and Geri just after gasping

The first things I saw when walking in the door (and after gasping) were some charm squares of the Morris Manor Best of Morris line. I snatched one up and found a couple of companion fabrics in the same line. We gasped a second time when we saw their wall of shelved charm squares.

I inquired about the new Tilda fabric line called 'Merry Little Christmas' 

but it is only available for pre-order as it won't be released until September. The Nordic motifs on the main fabric really appeal to me but I have no idea what I would make with it.

We stopped in Shakespeare at a little shop called 'The Quilt Place'. They were in the process of winding down for retirement and everything was on sale for 40% off. It would be an excellent place for stash enhancement at a good price. Unfortunately there had been a major accident at the main intersection which caused hydro wires to come down and completely block the intersection. We managed to find our way around it as we continued on to Heart N Home Creations in New Hamburg. It is a lovely store that sells not only quilting fabric but lots of home goods and has a huge inventory of Cobble Hill crossword puzzles. After lunch we visited Quilting By Design. Then back to the hotel to meet up with Ana and Rosa for supper at The Cactus Mexican Restaurant in Waterloo.

After supper, we all converged on our suite again and had 'show and tell', admiring each others' purchases of the day, and deciding how we would proceed the next day. Marilyn and Jen1 stitched while Rosa, Ana, and I yakked. Lots of fun!

The next morning we decided to go to our furthest point, Stitch-it Central in London, and work our way back to Durham Region via Cherished Pieces in Tillsonburg.

Stitch-it Central has expanded and has a vast array of stitching patterns, threads, fabrics, accessories, and quilting fabrics. There, we met up with Heather who came from Sarnia to see us, get a framed piece Jen1 was bringing her from Kim and Meagan's , and join us for lunch at the bakery next door.

After bidding adieu to Heather, we made our way cross country to Cherished Pieces in Tillsonburg. Then headed home with Marilyn taking the wheel. The traffic wasn't too bad on the 401 and there was no back-up to the 407, thanks to the fairly new dedicated collector lanes.

It was a lot to cover in three days but thanks to the distances between locations being fairly close, it wasn't an extraordinary amount of time in the car. We really enjoyed the comfort of the Staybridge Suites and the opportunity to visit with Ana and Rosa.

After a few shops what I bought where was a bit of a blur so I'm just doing a photo dump of my haul. I have projects in mind for most of the items.

The sunflower buttons will be cute on a nametag or on my sunflower biscornu. The silver-lined, clear glass beads are good spacers on beaded projects. I have a 'thing' for variegated Sulky Petites thread. it's a great substitute for two strands of cotton floss and great for any projects using satin stitch. Barb and I want to make sewn bowls using cotton clothesline and fabric strips so the open presser foot makes seeing the zigzag stitches much easier to see.

The Honeybee fabrics really appealed to me. It was the sunflowers that initially caught my eye so, of course, I had to buy a couple of companion fabrics.

I also picked up a little bundle of black batiks. Some look like the midnight blue of indigo dyed fabrics so could be used as linings or backing for sashiko projects.

Heart N Home had a selection of charm squares. This one would also be great to line or back sashiko projects. They also had the companion fabric cut into fat quarters.

These are what I saw when I first walked into Ye Olde Fabric Shoppe in Stratford. I have a gradient project bag and possibly a Drop Zone bag in mind for this.

Stitch-it Central had an impressive collection of sashiko threads. I also thought this indigo paisley fabric and blue, variegated perle cotton were great accompaniments.

I watched a couple of videos on making the Drop Zone bag.

I'll make one for myself and then have the girls over for a session. We loved how they look like just a normal zipper bag when zipped up,

but open right up when unzipped and have little walls on each side to keep everything in. There are instructions for three sizes in the pattern and a free instructional video with its purchase. Otherwise it's $5US for the instructions. However, I found this video tutorial by Mx Domestic, which explained all the steps. 

I've been taking it pretty easy today but might begin collecting materials for my first Drop Zone bag.

These little, craft-based trips are so much fun. I get a chance to get away from my everyday existence, stay in hotels, hang with friends and loved ones, eat good food, look at lovely craft items, do some shopping, etc.  It's so nice to have events like this to look forward to and even nicer to experience them.

Thanks Jen1 and Marilyn for joining me and thanks also to Rosa, Ana, and Heather for making the effort to meet up with us. I'm already starting to plan the next road crafty road trip of Lambton, Kent, and Essex counties for next year.

Inspired by an Instagram Post

I've recently become intrigued with Sashiko (pronounced: SA shi ko) embroidery. My stitcherly friend, Poppy, brought me back a little kit from her textile tour of Japan last fall. I really enjoyed this kind of slow stitching. 

Through the magic of algorithms, an interesting reel on the subject popped up on my Facebook page and I followed the link to this creator's Instagram page. 

Using some of the fabric I had purchased from Kallisti Quilts, I made this sample project using evagustems instructions.

It involved stitching the horizontal and vertical 'dashes' then weaving through them.

Looking through other videos by evagustems, I thought this triangular needlebook would be fun to do.

The sewn-in felt creates a little pocket for scissors and a couple of flaps for needles.

I don't have variegated sashiko floss and I thought plain white or just one colour wouldn't be exciting enough so I decided to try another stitching pattern using the white floss that I do have. I perused one of my new Sashiko books:

and found this pattern that had the right number of horizontal lines for the lines I had already drawn on the fabric. I think it's called a floral cross pattern.

I had spaced my lines quite far apart (almost 1 cm) so completed the grid accordingly using my new, white, heat-erasable pen (thank you Poppy). The chalk from the chalk pencil I previously used didn't hold up to all the scrunching and manipulation of the fabric whilst stitching. The pen, on the other hand, created a faint line which showed up much better after a few seconds and didn't rub off until I used heat from my iron. Some people use the hot setting on a hair dryer or a flat iron for hair-styling to remove the lines.

I did a screenshot of evagustems's pattern template and enlarged it on my printer to what I believed was the appropriate size. I didn't take any photos in progress of fully finishing it, but this is what I ended up with - a zoomed-in version of the floral cross design.

I used stiff, fusible interfacing on the back of the stitching and this stash fabric for the lining:

When I folded the thing up like the original, it didn't work well and I didn't want to turn it back inside out to take a bit off one of the long sides to make it work better. Instead, I'm folding it this way - the two ends to the middle 

then a fold in the middle.

This modification will change how I attach the felt inside as I want one of the folds to act as a flap over the felt scissor pocket. I still need to find some appropriate felt in my stash and sew on a dome fastener.

I have ordered some sashiko templates so will stitch some smaller scale designs when they arrive.

It is quite surprising how much time I spent thinking, planning, selecting a design, selecting a fabric, and problem-solving for this project before even starting to stitch - several episodes of my 'The Gilmore Girls' binge-a-thon.

This project satisfied a lot of my favourite things:

• an easy sashiko pattern
• a useful item
• another opportunity to try a different design
• using materials I had on hand
• an attractive item as a result
• more ideas for future projects.

Not Much Stitching This Week

 This is where I left off this piece at Monday morning stitching:

I had to remove the bee's antennae because I somehow had them too far to the left. Now that I have that particular foxglove bloom done, I can put the antennae back in. 

I wasn't a big fan of this flower's colour. I'm not sure why. I'll be glad when it's finished. I sure hope I counted the white border correctly because the triangular area above it needs to be perfectly placed.

There are several other bees in the other 'windows' of the greenhouse. Some are red and some are green. They're probably botanically (apiarily?) correct but I'm considering doing them all yellow and black. I may do more on this tomorrow at stitching.

I also got started on what I'm calling the Welcome Spring project. I stitched the Spring Floral Sampler  (minus the alphabet) earlier this year as a gift for my neighbour and wanted one for myself.

Because it's on 32ct platinum fabric, it's relatively easy to stitch while watching TV. So far it's gone pretty well.

I hit a bit of a snag when outlining the iris flower on the right. See these diamonds?

I happily stitched them with DMC 745 Light Pale Yellow.

It didn't look right. What the heck! Looking farther down the chart I noted another symbol with 4 little diamonds. It was supposed to be DC 3746. Sheesh! (Have another look at the chart to see what I mean). See why I screwed up?

So I had to pick out all those stitches and re-stitch with the Dark Blue Violet. I was not amused. It looks WAY better now with the only yellow on the iris being the pistil (or maybe the stamen).

Other that that, I haven't done much stitching this week. 

I've been binge-watching 'The Gilmore Girls' and am up to Season 4. There are 22 episodes in each season so it's a LOT of TV time. I really can't bear watching news these days. I'm so sick of hysterical  headlines from the US president every day. That being said, it seems like the worldwide boycotts of the US, its tourism, and products are creating a significant 'Trump Slump'. Money talks in that country and most of us are spending it elsewhere.

Pick N' Mix Clutch - Finished

I added a couple of extra rounds of the background colour before declaring 'finished' on the stitching on the Pic N' Mix Clutch. I wanted to use the line between rows and columns as a stitch guide when sewing the zipper and the lining. It worked really well. It's unfinished in this photo but the finished item had 3 colums and rows of the background colour out from the circles. One row/column would be in the seam allowance. I wanted two rows/columns to show once finished.

Once finished sewing everything, I decided to not use the little thong included in the kit for a zipper pull. Instead, I fashioned one from the beads in my stash.

I think it looks splendid in place.

The fabric on the back is like a canvas - very durable and matching the heft of the stitching on the front. The topstitching along the zipper is visible.

To make sure the zipper went in evenly, I hand-basted it in place first. It made sewing inside the first row of stitches quite easy. I didn't bother removing the basting stitches as they'd be forever hidden in the seam allowance. I also stitched inside the first columns of stitches down the sides and along the bottom. I kept a seam open on the side of the lining for turning. Since I didn't have matching thread (orange) I glued the opening closed - in the seam allowance.

To cut down on the bulk on each end of the zipper - canvas, zipper tape, lining, backing - I pounded the bejeepers in those areas with a hammer and a block of wood protecting my washing machine (my work area for this task).

I love the result and am now thinking of how to make others using mono canvas and all 6 strands of DMC floss. 

Years ago, I did a little sample this way. I was trying to emulate a Kaffe Fasset pillow design I had seen somewhere. The 14ct fabric worked very well with DMC floss. I still might have more of this canvas in my stash.

This piece hasn't been blocked so skews because I used a basketweave stitch 

rather than crosses which would have balanced out the stitching. A good, wet blocking would certainly square this up nicely. 

This is what the back looks like: (see why it's called 'basketweave'?)

It would be pretty easy to transfer any design onto the monocanvas using a Sharpie and a window or lightbox. Now my brain is whirling with ideas to create my own stitched piece to make other clutches.