December Projects

As is our usual tradition, we opened gifts on Christmas Eve night.  Which means, I can finally show the projects I’ve worked on this month.  It has been several years since I did many handmade gifts and this year I made up for it.  First up is the whole cloth quilt I made for our quilt group gift exchange.  The color isn’t quite right on the screen — it is a red, red.  The quilting designs were derived from some Hawaiian fabric.

We only exchange gifts with extended family if we are together.  My sister and her family came here this year.  So for her I made this Handbag.  The Pattern is “The Large Angled Pocket Handbag” from Dixons Designs. (The fabric for my purse came into the store this week 😀 )

My sister and brother-in-law have a foster daughter who is 11 months old today.  For her I made a baby doll from a “Dinky Baby” pattern.  I used Doll Skin fabric rather than the craft velour called for by the pattern.  I think the velour would have been easier to work with.  The pattern directions come on a CD so there are loads of pictures which means the instructions are pretty easy to follow!  The real baby’s first reaction to the doll was to rip off its hat and bite it on the top of the head.  We think maybe she considered that a kiss.  LOL.

I was cleaning out Jesse’s outgrown clothes a couple months ago and there was a large stack of T-shirts.  I was ready to donate them, and it suddenly struck me I had about enough to make a T-shirt quilt.  I stuck them in the closet and forgot about them.  I remembered them at the beginning of the month.  I bought the stabilizer for the shirts on December 4.  I didn’t have as many T-shirts as I needed to make the quilt the size I wanted, but I did have the backs.  So I digitized video game titles and images on 7 squares.  I was clearly reminded of the fact, I dislike auto digitizing.  However, I had to live with it as I didn’t have time to manually digitize and finish by Christmas.  I also didn’t stitch out samples.  All the embroidered blocks are the first try.  The boys got out of school on December 20 and I managed to finish the binding on the 21st early in the morning.  Thankfully they are fairly typical teens and slept in. There is Dr. Suess flannel on the back and wool batting.  It all paid off when Jesse pulled it out of the box and proclaimed he LOVED it!

For Guy I made a turtle police car pillow from one of the blocks in Amy Bradley’s “Traveling Turtles” pattern.  He had seen a picture of the pattern and asked me to buy it.  He said he would make a pillow from that block if I would help him.  I just saved him the trouble.  I think this pattern is a hoot, and after making this am considering a whole quilt.

I made pillow cases for both Nolan and Jesse.  The pattern can be found by searching either “Hot Dog Pillow case” or “Burrito Pillow Case”  I used this pattern.  Nolan got Converse like shoe fabric because he has a pair of bright yellow ones exactly like one shown in the print, and Jesse got cats, because he has been crazy about them for years.

Finally a new wall hanging for Guy’s office.  He has two already and this is to rotate out with one of them.  The Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs postcard blocks are from Olde America Antiques Vintage Quilt Blocks.  The pattern comes with the blocks but is also available free from their website.  I still need to hand stitch the hanging sleeve and will probably get to it today.

Whew, I should be tired just looking at this, but I’m ready to move on to the next project, or three.

Mark Another One Off the List

I wondered when I listed all my unfinished objects over a year ago if having that list would motivate me to finish some of them.  It has been a huge motivator.  Looking at the list on the sidebar it doesn’t look like I’ve made much progress.  However, many of those projects are now to the point where they are just waiting for quilting.

I’m not sure why this project came to mind today.  It was put away in a trunk, but it popped into my head this morning and I pulled it out and finished it.  Perhaps it came to mind because it didn’t need to be quilted.  This bell pull is from a digitizing class I took not terribly long after I got my embroidery machine and software.  We digitized the design from a very small piece of Dover clip art.  We also split the design for hooping (This design was done in version 3 of the Bernina software before multihooping was part of the software package).  I think it was also the first time I used my mega hoop.  I couldn’t remember exactly when I did the embroidery so I went searching for the embroidery file on my computer.  Yeah for computers automatically adding the date created to files.  It was April 9, 2003.  So a little over six years later it is finished!  You think someone will coming to my beck and call if I pull on it? 🙂

Does the Proboscis Matter?

I’m going to an ornament/gift exchange on Sunday.  I could have purchased something, but I always prefer handmade items so out came the embroidery machine again.

The designs for these fellows came from the Machine Embroidery Snowmen set by The Stitch Connection.  They are made from scraps of batting.  Is it possible a longarm quilter has batting scraps?  I couldn’t find exactly the buttons I wanted and settled on these for the noses.  They are a little large and my boys have told me they look more like penguins than snowmen.  So in this case the proboscis does matter, and I made snow penguins.  Both boys also asked why I gave them a crown of thorns.  They aren’t buying that they are holly and fir halos or wreaths.   I guess that is what comes from living with a house full of males!

Carving Out Creative Time

Around grading and lesson plans, I carved out a little play time during the last couple of days.  This is the result.

The faces were embroidered on the embroidery machine.  The designs are from a “Quilted Ladies 2” pack, which I bought from Sprinkles Sewing Center in Pueblo during their moving sale in April.  The designs are by Bonnie Colonna.

Each of the crazy ladies I made is a little different.  There are only 3 face designs in the pack, but I left the glasses off some and also mirror imaged the designs.  The pattern pack included little quilts that looked like they were shirts to me.  I decided adding them made the whole thing too big for my purposes.  I added pin backs so they can be worn or put on a tote bag.

Guy looked at them and asked if I would wear one. I told him I would and his response was I’m turning into an old lady.  Humph!

Oh Bobbie … I’m finished

My friend Bobbie made this quilt in a guild class a few years ago.  She wanted to add some thread painting, but was unsure how it would look.  She asked me about embroidering a design on it instead.  We looked through the designs I had, and decided to use this Hibiscus from the Bernina “Floral Beauties” collection.    I enlarged the design as much as I could while still having it fit the hoop. (By the way those designs are supposed to look sketchy, enlarging did not affect the density.)  Bobbie wanted the flower to be done all in greens with a touch of yellow.  This project has sat here for at least two or three months, but I finally stitched out a test on some of her scraps last month.  I was starting to feel a little guilty and so hooped the quilt and stitched it out.  This quilt appears to have been a quilt as you go project so it already had batting and a backing.  It has enough body that I was able to load it in the hoop and stitch the design without a stabilizer.

Bobbie is supposed to come over tomorrow to work on something else, so unless she reads this tonight it will be a surprise that it is finished.  As long as she can get here.  A “lovely” Spring storm started a little while ago.  The picture is out the back door and after maybe 45 minutes. Color class has been postponed for the night.  We are supposed to get up to 5 inches between now and sometime tomorrow morning.  Monument’s prediction is 8 inches, so I’m happy to not have to drive home from there in the dark tonight.

 

Tetrad … Check

I posted  last week about the start of my Tetrad project.  I pulled out my nicely quilted piece this morning and started using inks to color it in.  I wasn’t getting the effect I was visualizing so I switched to paint.  In my opinion, I completely ruined it with the paint.  It was putrid!  I won’t even show you how it looked.  I was back to square one.  I was thinking about colored pencils at this point.  I traced the same picture onto fabric again.  I have customer quilts on both longarms so decided to do the quilting free motion on one of my domestic machines.  I still had embroidery thread sitting out from one of my last projects so decided to use that instead of the fine white thread.  I started putting details in with the embroidery thread and it just went from there.  I ended up with a thread painted project instead of using any type of pigment.  I held it up for my oldest son when he came home and he thought it was painted, so I guess I can call that a success.

Here is the final product — the colors in my tetrad are red, green, blue violet and yellow orange.  Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Multi Hooping

It occured to me while I was writing last yesterday’s tutorial, some people may not have familiarized themselves with the multi hooping portion of V.5 Bernina Embroidery Software.  This feature was one of the main selling points for me when I upgraded to V.5.  There are other very nice additions in V.5, but just this feature would have sold me.  I did software club on this subject some time ago and created a video that was a little over an hour in length.  I’ve pulled a couple of portions from that video and uploaded them to my YouTube account.  This should give enough information to get someone started with bigger embroidery designs.  This portion of the video does not talk about rotating and deleting hoops, but those are certainly options.

I showed some pictures in yesterday to explain how to stitch out the files after using the multi hooping feature.  I had an explaination of that in my CD also so I went ahead and uploaded that short video.

The feather shown in the first video is one I drew and digitized especially for that class and to use on a sample for Embroidery Club when we were embroidering on fleece.  This is a picture of that sample.  By the way, it would have been much easier to load the fleece on my longarm and stitch that feather than it was to digitize it and do all the hoopings.  However, it made a good educational tool.

I’m adding the embroidery design file to the Free Embroidery download box on the side bar [The application I once used for sharing documents has disappeared from my sidebar at some point over the years. So lets try this click on the name at the end of this sentence, and it should get you to a zipped folder of designs LARGE FEATHER].  It is not split, because it would need to be split for whatever size hoop you plan to use.  As usual I can make no promises for formats other than ART.

Applique in the Hoop

It feels like it has been three weeks rather than three days since I’ve posted.  I did get some time in Monday and early this morning preparing for today’s embroidery club.  We digitized Applique in Software club last month and we chose to stitch some applique out for this month’s club.

I’ve prepared a brief photo tutorial on the process.

The first stitch out is a design from the Cuddlesome Critters collection available from Hatched in Africa.  I used it as an example of a typical commercial design.  There are variances between designs, but this provides a general idea. 

1.  Hoop the fabric with a suitable stabilizer.  For this design I used two layers of light weight tear away stabilizer, there are many other good options — a cut away, wash away, etc.  Place the hooped fabric in your machine and usually the first color change will be the placement line for the applique fabric.  If there are design elements that are behind the applique those would stitch out first.

2.  At this point I remove the hoop from the machine and place it on a flat pressing surface.  I find that my applique looks better if I use a small amount of glue on the base fabric to hold the applique fabric in place.  Elmer’s Washable School Glue is inexpensive and works well.

3.  Next I select a piece of applique fabric large enough for the design and place it over the placement lines.

4. I then use an iron to press the fabric over the glue.  This dries the glue immediately so there is no need to deal with wet glue on the needle.  I was in a hurry this morning and just used the regular iron, however, I usually use some type of craft iron.

 

5.  Return the hooped fabric to the machine and the next color change should be some sort of tack down.  This color change can take different forms depending upon the designer.  In this design the tack down was a simple straight stitch, others might include a triple straight stitch or a zigzag.  After the tack down color change finishes, I remove the hoop from the machine again and place it on a flat surface.   Then I trim very close to the tack down trying to avoid clipping through it.  Keep the hoop on the flat surface while trimming to avoid shifting the fabric in the hoop. The Havel scissors shown in the picture are my favorite for this task.  I also sort of lift the applique fabric away from the base fabric as I am trimming.  This helps me to get fairly close to the tack down stitching.

6.  Here is a picture after all the excess fabric has been trimmed away.  In this case there was only one applique object.  However, if there were more there would be more placement lines and more tack downs in the color changes.  Depending upon the digitizer all the applique pieces may be placed prior to the cover stitch or each applique piece may be finished with a cover stitch before moving on to the next piece.

7.  Once the applique pieces are in place the rest of the design is stitched in the same manner as any other embroidery design.  Here is the finished giraffe.

 

The next stitch out shows how I choose to do the applique I digitize in the Bernina software.  It may be slightly more time consuming, but I get more satisfactory results this way especially if I’m using the blanket stitch as my cover stitch.    This design is one I digitized from a pattern in “Snow Buddies Throughout the Year” by Possibilities.  Unfortunately, this book is out of print.  Also this snowman is large enough that it took four hoopings, so I am going discuss a little about stitching out the designs after using the Multi-hooping feature in the software.

1.  For me, one of the nice features in the Bernina software is the ability to print out perfectly sized pattern pieces for each applique piece.  This picture shows the numbered pieces, the software also prints out a diagram of the whole applique design showing where each piece will be placed.

2.  I trace each piece onto paper backed fusible web.  You will either need to make mirror image copies of your patterns or trace from the back of the pattern using a light table.  Another option that I stumble upon while preparing for software club last month is to mirror image your design in the software, print your pattern and then undo the mirror image.  After tracing the designs onto the fusible web, press the rough cut fusible web to the back of your selected fabric.  Then carefully cut out each piece.  I forgot to take pictures of some of these steps, so here is a picture of the pieces after they have been cut out.

3.  Because this design is going to be a specific sized quilt block, I wanted to control the placement of the design on that block.  You may notice that I didn’t actually cut out the block before embroidering the design.  Instead I marked the size of the block on the fabric and cut the block out after embroidery.  This just happens to be my preference for these snowmen.  It means I don’t have to cut oversized blocks just to  enable hooping.  You could print an embroidery template, but I was lazy and used the placement print out for the applique.  I centered that on my block and then lined up a template of my first hooping over it.  The template of the first hooping was printed to include the X and Y coordinates.  Using a ruler I made small marks at the end of each of those lines.  The red arrows indicate where I made those marks.

4.  Next I remove the template and connect the marks to create a cross.  I’ve enhanced the marks because they didn’t show well in the picture.

5.  Next I lined these marks up with the markings on my hoop.  Ideally I would have used the plastic template that fits in my hoop, but my basement is such a disaster I couldn’t find it.  I did find it once this design was stitched out.  Since I didn’t have the template handy I lined the line up with the marks on both sides of the hoop and the arrow at the bottom of the hoop.  Don’t try to line it up with the mark at the top of the oval Bernina hoop as it is not centered.

6.  Next I placed the hoop in the machine and stitched out the first placement line.

7.  I removed the hoop from the machine and placed it on a flat ironing surface.  Remove the paper backing from the applique piece and carefully line it up with the placement line.  I then use a small clover iron to fuse the piece in place.

8.  Return the hoop to the machine and stitch out the cover stitch  and the next placement line.  Notice the gaps in the cover stitch.  Those are the result of using the “Partial Applique” tool in the software which removes the cover stitch under other objects.

9.  Continue repeating these steps until all the applique pieces and embroidery details are completed for the hooping.  The final color change is small x’s which are used to line up future hoopings.  If your design takes more than two hoopings there may be more reference marks than you will use in the very next hooping.  After stitching the final color change remove the fabric from the hoop.

10.  The simplest way to hoop the remaining hoopings is to use an adhesive backed stabilizer.  Hoop the stabilizer sticky side up.  Put the hoop in the machine and stitch out the first color change of the second hooping.  This will be more x’s. 

11.  Remove the hoop from the machine and insert flat headed pins (I happen to use T pins) through the center of the x’s. 

12.  Now because I had more than two hoopings I have extra reference points from the first hooping.  So I had to figure out which reference marks line up with the ones stitched on the stabilizer.  It may be necessary to print templates of each hooping to lay over each other and identify the reference points for each hooping.  This is especially the case the more hoopings that are needed.  Once the correct reference points have been identified, insert the pins that are in the stabilizer through the corresponding marks in the fabric.  Then smooth the fabric over the sticky stabilizer.  Remove the pins.  Place the hoop in the machine and continue stitching out the design. 

13.  Continue with as many hoopings as needed using the steps described above for the applique.

The nice thing about preparing for club this month was I completed another block for two different UFOs.

Little Miss Muffet

I am sick again!  This is the fifth time this school year.  I’m beginning to think I don’t have an immune system.  I’m coughing hard enough I can’t work on customer quilts.  However, I did manage to work on a couple of other projects.

My iron on transfers to finish the Nursery Rhyme quilt finally came last Wednesday.  Little Miss Muffet has been transferred and I started embroidering the first one on Thursday night.  Friday I had to sub for grades 7-10.  Since I’m not the teacher, I didn’t have to grade papers or input grades.  So I took along Little Miss Muffet and worked on her once I had explained assignments and everybody was working.  I finished her up this afternoon.

In addition to finishing Miss Muffet, I digitized a label for my sister.  She sent a piece of fabric she used in the quilt and I digitized the sea horse from it.  Here is the test stitch out. It isn’t too bad, just needed the outline stitch adjusted slightly.  I made some slight adjustments and went ahead with the label.

The outlines still aren’t exactly on, but I will fix that with a pigma pen.  I’d share the design, but I’m afraid I would be crossing the line into copyright infringement since he came from a piece of Hoffman fabric.  Plus that, I’d be obsessed with perfecting it.  Since I was only planning to stitch it out this time, I didn’t worry about controlling the jump stitches.  I can live with the outlines not being exactly right.

Valentine Cards

Did you receive a Valentine card today?  I’m afraid if the card industry had to depend on me, they would go broke.  I am aware of the history of Saint Valentine, but when did we start exchanging cards?  I did a search on the Internet and pulled up my history lesson for the day.

Esther Howland is responsible for the first commercialization of Valentines in the United States.  After her graduation from Mount Holyoke College in 1847 she received her first English Valentine from a business acquaintance of her father.  She was fascinated with it and came up with the idea of making her own valentines.  She imported paper lace and floral decorations from England.  She started taking orders for valentines and soon found demand was greater than she could supply.  She brought her friends into the endeavor and eventually even that wasn’t enough help.  This assembly line production that began in her home led to a business that was grossing $100,000 a year.  Not bad for that era.  She retired in 1881 and sold the business.

I actually did buy a package of valentines this year.  You know the kind the kids exchange at school (my boys refuse to exchange them — too sappy I guess).  They caught my eye because they were bobbleheads.  I gave them to my Quilters Anonymous friends at our meeting last week.

For those of you that celebrate Valentines, I’ve decide to upload two designs I digitized last year as samples for Software Club.  They are both in the hoop applique designs. For some formats the designs were too large so I didn’t upload those formats.

Below are stitchouts of the designs.

The snowman’s scarf has fringe.   So after embroidering this design you need to trim the bobbin thread behind the fringe.

I notice I was very lazy on this sample.  I didn’t stabilize.  He will be flatter if you will stabilize.

Once again I make no promises on formats other than ART.  The zipped file containing both designs is on the sidebar.