Stupendous Stitching

I've been doing an online course through www.craftsy.com called Stupendous Stitching, taught by Carol Ann Waugh.  It's a paid course, so I won't talk through each step.  Instead, I'll just upload some photos of my work through the stages.  At the end of the course, you will have created a stitch bible, then made an artwork by couching, using decorative machine stitches, some basic hand embroidery and then sandwiched and quilted it, before mounting it so it can be hung on the wall.  I really enjoyed the course and would recommend it.
First - Here is the quilt I made for our new couch.  I wanted to make my Stupendous Stitching artwork to match the quilt, so I used one of the fabrics as the base.

Part of the course is about exploring your sewing machine, particularly the decorative stitches.  Here are some of the 'Stitch Bible' pages I created from my Brother QC-1000 Innovis sewing machine.  Lots of fun getting to know my machine better, which was one of the reasons I took the course.

 Here is the beginning - cords, threads and ric-rac couched onto the fabric.

Here is the final artwork - after the couching, it was machine stitched using decorative machine stitches and many different threads (particularly variegated threads).  Then hand-stitching with basic embroidery stitches such as french knot, chain and straight stitch.  Finally, sandwiched and quilted.  I have mounted it on a stretched canvas and now it is in my lounge room.

Coorparoo Quilters Quilt Show 2011

Coorparoo Quilters have a quilt show every two years.  This year, we held it over the weekend of 4-5 June.  We had a Mug Bag Challenge (eg make a bag to put a mug into, to take to class).  The bag had to match the mug.  I had an idea to make a bag like a rose, to match a beautiful mug my sister Lee had given me a few years ago. 

Here are all the beautiful mug bags:

 

I dropped off my quilts and mug bag on the Friday afternoon.  We had an opening event on the Friday evening.  I was walking towards the mug bags with my friend Conny.  I said, 'Someone's put something purple in my mug".  Conny said, "They must have accidentally left something behind".  We went up close to it and it was a Winner blue ribbon!!  What a fabulous surprise.  There were so many fantastic mug bags there.  I didn't even realise that it was being judged that afternoon.   I also received a book and 8 fat quarters at our next quilt meeting, so I was very happy. 

When making the rose mug bag, I had thought about individual petals right through to the middle.  The middle petals were going to be long and kind of come together like the inside of the rose.   It didn't work out like that though.  I found this fabulous fabric in my stash that looks like the inside of a rose and so I made a tube with that for the inside.  The mug sits inside this tube, which has a drawstring at the top.  The fabric is drawn together, swirled and then tucked into the mug.  I also spray starched and curled the fabric petals.

 The is the trade table - many of our group made pretty things to sell.

Here I am with my reversible Sudoku quilt, finally finished!!

Conny is on the right, selling tickets in front of the amazing Raffle Quilt some of our group made.

This is the Joy of Christmas quilt I made from the blocks I won at our Christmas in July retreat last year.  I made the letter blocks.

My sewing room

Welcome to my Sewing Room!

We moved house in late 2010 and now I have a new sewing room.  It is a little wider than my sewing room at the old house, but it has windows on two walls and a built in wardrobe on another.  That meant that I had to do something different to get a design wall, as there was only one full wall in the room and my bookcases had to go there! :-)

One wall was painted bright royal blue.  As you can see, that is now painted a gorgeous deep purple called Chive Blossom.  My sewing desk has been with me since 1974 - the first 5 years, it was my high school study desk and it has been my sewing desk ever since.  My Horn cutting table fits very nicely under the high window - inside I keep the larger pieces of fabric and future projects in old shirt boxes.  I had new lighting installed above the table that is 3 spotlights with daylight bulbs.  In the corner is a nice little sewing chair that has my Ott light very handy.  The big wicker basket holds batting. Also under the cutting table is an old wooden tea trolley with many different boxes on it.  They all hold interesting bits and pieces.

There is a pile of pretty cardboard boxes next to the sewing desk which are full of fat quarters.

Here is my design wall - I covered the two doors of the built-in wardrobe with BlockButler.  Rather expensive but a very good use of what would have been otherwise unused space.  The BlockButler is thin enough that both doors slide past each other, even with blocks attached.  Though at the moment the quilt top I am working on is too big for one door, so it is attached to both. So I have to pin one side back to open the doors. 

Inside the wardrobe is rather full.  Lots of boxes with patterns, charm squares, fabric strips, fun stuff for art quilts, packets of pellon hanging, big boxes of fabric, a bag of batting off-cuts and much more....

Here are my lovely bookcases.  These replaced two smaller bookcases from the old house.  I was only going to have one in my sewing room, but we couldn't get the other to fit in the study, so now I have two.  And they are fabulous!  So much room for books and other knick knacks. :-)

In the corner, next to the bookcases, is a wooden 10-drawer CD cabinet - it is full of fat quarters - a different colour for each drawer.

And finally, here is my view from my sewing desk - trees in the distance - my local park.  (just as well you can't see the weeds directly in front of the window!!) :-)

Quilting retreat July 2010

I attended the Coorparoo Quilters annual retreat at Mt Tamborine last weekend.  We all arrived on Friday afternoon and left on Sunday afternoon.  The theme was "Christmas in July" and we each had to make a block with the challenge fabric.  The blocks were divided into groups of 6 blocks and I was lucky enough to win one lot of blocks (the best group, I think!).  We also had to bring Secret Santa gifts - I made a little jewelry roll and also a pencil roll out of pretty pink & green batik.  I received a nice table topper in Christmas fabrics in a log cabin design.

All in all, it was a fun weekend.  We all worked on whatever projects we wanted.  I took along a foundation pieced table runner - a pineapple design with lots of small pieces (what was I thinking?)  I didn't finish it over the weekend - got through 10 blocks and have 4 more to finish off.

Sudoku quilt - reverse side

Here is the reverse of the Sudoku quilt - obviously in black & white. 

Now I just have to put the two sides together! 

I'm thinking of tieing the quilt in case each side is different in size. 

small projects

Last weekend, I finished off two small projects - a bag and a cushion.

The bag is made from 4 fat eights of book theme fabric.  I had bought the fabric a long time ago, intending to make a bag from it.  A librarian I worked with is retiring tomorrow, after 44 years in our library service.  She is a very lovely gentle person and so I have made the bag as my gift to her.  I only used the four fabrics - it is about 30cm square, fully lined and padded with fusible pellon.

The cushion started as a project in my quilting group a fortnight ago.  To participate, we needed to bring in our buttons, plus a piece of fabric lined with pellon, or an item of clothing.  We then drew the hearts and sewed buttons in the heart shape.  I wanted my button heart to look sumptuous.  I had a collection of leaf buttons from a Button shop in The Rocks, Sydney.  The fabric is left-over scraps from Tegan's Year 12 Formal outfit.  The buttons are mostly plain shirt buttons - I've used pearl buttons on the leaves and also several fancy flower buttons.  I finished it off with ruching and it is for our spare bedroom.

Painting fabric

I bought some textile inks in spray bottles at the Textile Fair last year - the brand is Moon Glow. These iridescent inks are in powdered form and are mixed with hot water.                                             I bought several bottles, not knowing quite what I'd do with them. I bought 2 Starburst Sprays: Cathedral Pine Green and Red Hot Poker Orange.  When sprayed, they leave a starburst, as seen left and below.  I really liked these effect, especially as they dried very glittery.                                          Anotherer type I bought was Moon Shadow Mist: Moonlit Mulberry.  I was disappointed in this brown colour.

I also tried using the spray inks on a quilt top I had made from a birthday block swap.  I was bored with the quilt top and wanted to see if I could jazz it up.  Here is the quilt top before any colour went on.

You can see some of the starburst colour on a block below, but overall I wasn't fussed with the result.

Next I'm going to use some of my iridescent PaintStiks on the quilt top as well as the other fabric piece, to see if that will be more interesting.

The fabric and quilt top got caught in a heavy downpour and some of the colour came out.  Then the ultimate disgrace - one of my daughter's puppies decided that pulling the quilt top off the clothes line would be a fantastic game.  So now one border has got chew holes in it.......