Bags of fun….

I recently made a little appliqued bag for one of my cousins little girls, but wanted to make a second for her older sister. The bag was based on an original that I had seen at Flutterby patch.

Front

If you are interested in how I made this bag you can read a more detailed account here . I decided to make the second bag slightly bigger – so added 1″ to the bottom section of the bag and 1″ to the width of all the fabric pieces. I also included a little ribbon tie at the top of the bag and extended the bobble trim around the back.

I added another appliqued figure in the window at the back of the bag.

The front of the bag.

The back of the bag.

Here are both the bags as comparison…

Front

Back

I was really quite pleased with the results, and hopefully the girls will be too!

Happy stitching one and all….

 

 

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SAL 3 – Adding glitz…

Hi there, where did that month go to? I have made some more progress on my ‘Christmas Baubles’ by Kate Barlow. Last time I had completed all the padding and my embroidery looked like this…..

But I have since added the metallic leather over the top of the padding and now the baubles look a little more colourful…

I then couched silver Japanese threads at the top of each bauble and made a start on couching the little green bauble. Japanese threads have a metal outer coating over a thread core. Now my embroidery looks like this…..

Next time I hope to have finished all the Japanese thread work.

Thank you for looking in on my SAL progress, there are many more of us in the group so please check out the fabulous stitching that they do. If you are interested in joining us you can contact Avis for details.                                                                                               Happy Stitching.

Avis , Gun, Carole , LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Sue, Constanze, DebbieRose, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy,Helen , Steph, Linda, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Tony, Megan, Catherine, Connie

Jenny Wren comes together…

Now that I have all the elements of the Etui completed I can start to put my little Wren together.

As part of the kit you are sent a preformed bird shape with bronze beak and legs. Onto this 3d shape you stick the embroidered tale and then the whole bird is covered in felt. A little thimble liner is sewn together and stuck into a preformed hole (this is being held in place by my pink thimble!).

All the elements are then pinned and sewn onto the birds body. I really enjoyed this part as the little Wren began to develop a character of it’s own!

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Finally the wings were secured to the body and the bronze legs stuck in place. Et voila, here is the finished little Wren. I am not sure (now it is complete) that it is a Jenny Wren,  I rather fancy my Wren is more of a Lenny!

I would recommend this little kit by Jenny Adin-Christie to anyone, it has been challenging in places but great fun to stitch, with so many different techniques covered.

Now all I need to complete is the mossy hillock that the little Wren will stand on.

Happy stitching everyone!

Jenny Wren’s ‘back’….

Last week, after so much heat this summer, the garden got a welcome break in the weather and a well earned drink! This meant only one thing….time to sew!

I decided to tackle the next stage on my Jenny Wren Etui by Jenny Adin-Christie;the needle lace that will be stretched over the birds back. I had been putting it off for a while as it is a technique that I have not tried before. The needle lace is worked over a pattern piece and stiff Vilene. It is very labour intensive and time consuming – but I really enjoyed the process. This is how far I got after about 5 hours….

The stitches used were: (a) – corded button hole stitch      (b) – corded buttonhole variation

(c) – buttonhole scallops       (d) – tied buttonhole stitch       (e) – ardenza point

I had to give up at this point as I then made a mistake on the next line – believe me, needle lace is very hard to unpick without damaging the previous stitches. I also found that my shoulders and neck really started to hurt as my posture when sewing was obviously all wrong!

Here is my progress after 12 hours work (spread out over three days)…

Stitch tension is vital when sewing needle lace. I normally work with a very tight stitch tension which was fine for the more dense areas, but the loops were harder for me to get consistent in size. It is not perfect, but I would definitely try needle lace again.

The stitches on the bottom half of the lace are:  (a) -padded buttonhole      (b) – pea stitch

(c) – buttonhole wings

All I have to do now is cut all the tacking stitches, knots and thread ends and remove the lace from the backing.  Nerve wracking times after the all the hours it took to get this far! Just hope nothing unravels!

Happy stitching!

SAL 2 – Adding the padding..

I have made a little progress on my ‘Christmas Baubles’ kit by Kate Barlow, and as it is  goldwork embroidery, padding is everything. Felt is used as padding and the kit came with pre-marked felt that simply needed to be cut out and applied to each bauble.

I started with the largest bauble which needed 4 layers of padding…..

The second bauble needed three layers of padding…..

While the final bauble simply needed two layers….

And that is as much as I have managed to complete (simply because my mind wanders onto other projects). But at least now I can start on the fun part of adding colour and sparkle.

I am just starting my journey on this SAL, but if you want to see more experienced members – Please check out the fabulous stitching that they do. If you are interested in joining us you can contact Avis for details.

Avis , Gun, Carole , LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Sue, Constanze, DebbieRose, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Helen, Steph,  Linda,  Heidi,  Jackie,  Sunny,  Hayley,  Tony,  Megan,   Catherine, Connie

Sewing hit…

Spent a wonderful couple of weeks in Cornwall and Devon catching up with family and friends. The weather was lovely and a good 10 degrees lower than at home so we could get out and about walking with the dog during the day.

I did take a little bit of hand sewing to work on, but by the end of the first week I was looking for a serious sewing hit! This meant a visit to a little shop just outside of Mylor Bridge called Coast and Country. They stock a lovely selection of materials and sundries and also run workshops – and I was in luck as there was 1 place left on a quilting workshop.

Now, I don’t really know much about quilting and so thought this might be a good opportunity to find out more. We were going to make a cushion with a pinwheel design on the front. The original looked like this…..

I hadn’t quite realised the significance of colour choice, so my cushion was much more muted in colour and the pinwheels less obvious. Our first job was to cut and sew 20 squares together in five rows and then add a border all around these. We then used a ‘twist and stitch’ ruler to cut out smaller squares from the main piece of fabric.

I then thought that we would twist the remaining fabric in some way (I can hear all you experienced quilters thinking, ‘what is she talking about!’) – but no, we ordered the smaller squares and discarded the remaining fabric. You can see the pin wheels beginning to form.

We now had five rows of five squares which were sewn back together and then a border was sewn around the outside again. I used the 16 small squares from the discarded fabric to make the little patchwork squares at the four corners of the cushion.

Wadding was hand quilted to the back of the cushion before adding a lining and a back. Here is the end result…

I am not convinced that I like it and you can tell that I am no quilter when you look at how inaccurately I have sewn each of the patchwork corners – but I did enjoy the process of learning something new. If I do make another cushion I would definitely think more carefully about the colours I use.

If you are in the area, look in on Coast and Country –  they have a fairly large choice of fabrics and their courses are reasonably priced and really worth checking out. After this little sewing hit I went back to walking along the beach with the dog!!

Happy stitching in the sunshine!

SAL ….Hi everyone!

Hello everyone and thank you for letting me join in with the sew along. I have been watching some of your progress for quite a long time now and finally decided to take the plunge and join in. I have a few projects on the go at the moment and lots of unfinished and un-started kits stashed away, but often get distracted by daily life – so thought the SAL might focus my mind a little.

But what to choose? I thought at first that I would post progress on the Wren Etui project by Jenny Adin-Christie that I have been working on – but then thought I would like to start at the beginning and see something through to the end. So I got out my kits and found a lovely goldwork project by Kate Barlow that I had bought last year and intended to complete by Christmas – it didn’t happen – so maybe I can finish it by this Christmas.

 

This is what is inside the box….

Now I just need to get started….. See you all next time!

I am just starting my journey on this SAL, but if you want to see more experienced members –   Please check out the fabulous stitching that they do. If you are interested in joining us you can contact Avis for details.

Avis, Gun, Carole, LucyAnn, Kate, Jess, Sue, Constanze , DebbieRose, Christina,  Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Helen  Steph, Linda, MaryMargaret, Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Hayley, Tony, Megan, Timothy, Catherine, Claire

 

Happy stitching and I promise to read all posts when I am back at home!