One More Notebook

Uno mas cuaderno (If I am saying the title "One More Notebook" in Spanish.)  My Spanish classes are paying off.  I knew that without having to look it up.  But I confess I did a check before the post was published. 

One of my longtime readers and friends asked about one of the previous notebooks that I had put in the gallery.  You see, she is a horse lover also.  However, my horse notebooks sell very fast in the Guntersville gallery as there are lots of horse lovers in that area.   I promised to make one for her.  So I am about to send her photos to see if she likes this one as much as the other one.  I love using black fabric behind the embroidery.  The bad thing is that every fiber of lint shows on it in photos.  And I took the  photos before I remembered to take a lint roller and do clean up.  Oh well.....

Fully opened cover

Front Cover

Inside pocket with label

So there you go. That is what i have been doing this week in addition

 to learning Spanish and practicing music.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Embellishing To POP a project

Have you ever worked on something and then realized it was not making you happy?   Y'all know that I love lots of color.  When I added some redwork embroidery to my current project I thought it would stand alone.  But when I saw it there beside the applique,  it looked too bland, tame, uninteresting.   As the project was already quilted,  I needed to step outside the box a bit and find a solution.

There are so many ways to embellish fabric, but it becomes trickier when you have already completed the project.  So I took a wild chance and pulled out some colored pencils and started coloring it.

You can see that these are Derwent Inktense pencils.  The pigment is actually an ink so it will be permanent once I heat set it.   To intensify the color (and insure that it will be permanent)  I used a couple of artist paint brushes to apply some textile medium to the colored areas. 
The textile medium makes the ink pigment flow and blend. I used it very sparingly to avoid bleeding past the embroidered lines. 

Here is the completed stocking.

The background fabrics are lovely Island Batik neutrals.

I love the soft hand-painted look that I get when I use these pencils.  In fact there is only one thing that I don't love about them.  The tin doesn't stay closed well on its own.  So I do this to store them.

Two simple rubber banks hold the lid on the tin so that I can pop it in a bag for an "on the go" project without worrying about the tin popping open and spilling my lovely pencils.

Now, this project has to cure and dry - so I will leave it for a day and then heat set it. After that I will do a photo session and post this project so that you can see my new Christmas table toppe

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Marking the Spot

How do you mark your spot?  Do you like to help other people mark their spot?   I do!
I have been wanting to try free standing lace (FSL) on my new embroidery machine. I got the water soluble stabilizer on a roll (not sure how long that roll is though.)  So I found a design on emblibrary.com that was inexpensive and bought it to try.  I hooped two sheets of the stabilizer and used the "embroidery edit" on my machine to place two bookmarks in the hoop.  I think maybe I could squeeze three in there  - maybe.
As Easter is fast approaching, they had a "Happy Easter" FSL bookmark file for $1.08 - I love their sale prices!  I thought "these will make great little gifts!"  What do you think? Would this gift make you happy?

Somewhere I read that you don't want to wash out too much of the stabilizer, but after it liquifies leave some in the piece and iron it (use a press cloth on top AND bottom) and it will stiffen it. (Oh yes, and save the scraps to make a fabric stiffener also  -just keep them in a ziplock bag until you are ready then put in a small amount of water to liquify them)

These are 1.79"(w) x 6.84"(h) which I think is a nice size for a bookmark.  Now, I am wondering if I made FSL bookmarks to sale, how much should I charge for them?  (no that is NOT rhetorical-I want an answer - how much would you pay?)   Obviously I would need some different designs, but there are a few choices to be found.
For now, I will probably make a few more of these to give to family and friends. (I know Mom will get one!)

Oh yes, Accuquilt is announcing the Barn Quilt Contest. There are some great prizes. If you want to enter click the graphic.

Finished -and Some more Machine Embroidery

In case you missed the earlier Saturday post it is here.  There are a couple of close up shots there.

The secret quilt for my brother is finished and will be given to him at his surprise party.
Here it is:

I also played with some machine embroidery.  I got some files from Marjorie at http://shop.b-quilts.com/products.  She also has a blog at http://b-quilts.com/blog/  She does some great work. If you like doing machine embroidery and have an Accuquilt GO! cutter,  You can really find some treasures in her store.   This is a Scalloped Heart from the Scalloped Hearts design set.
I like this so much I took two pictures of the same heart - still in the hoop.

I have some ideas, but for those I will have to use the extra large embroidery hoop.  Stay tuned!

Quilt Embroidery

I have never made a  quilt with embroidered squares before. However, I need to make one faster than usual for my brother's upcoming birthday.  I couldn't decide what to do for a while.  Then Monday afternoon (after my trip to the dentist for a cleaning) I had an idea.  You see, my brother is a big fan of the University of Alabama football team.  But here they are just known as Alabama or Bama or even "The Tide."   I believe they just won some important game. But then I am not a big sports fan. LOL.
So, I had some of this licensed fabric which I bought before I knew you can't make items with it to sell. Ahhhh!  I will make him a quilt.  When I got home I found the fabric. Hmmmm...there is only about 7/8's of a yard. Now what?   So I hunted thru the stash for some fabric to go with it. All I could find was a mottled black.
A light bulb flashed in my brain.  I could do some embroidery with the new machine on the black.
So I did these:

The football is really brown, but this thread really reflects the light. The licensed fabric is in the back of my embroidered squares.

Today I was talking to a co-worker about it and he (yes I said HE) said "why don't you get one of your Dad's shirts and use some of that in it?  That will make it even more special."  Cool idea!
At Mom's this evening, I asked her about shirts.  She said "He had one red one that you could use." We found it, and in the process found one other shirt that I will be using in the backing and maybe a little on the front.
So I cut up the red shirt and made two of these.  This is the first on still in the hoop on the machine.

I think he will really like this quilt.   I don't think I will have it done by his birthday, but I will be able to show him some pictures. LOL.  I hope it is worth waiting for.
Oh, I will be making big squares and doing this in my method of Quilt as You Go..which is a slight variation on Marguerite McManus' method in Finish almost Any Quilt.

Bits and Pieces

My back decided to act up Thursday morning, so I made a visit to the chiropractor and got it  "whacked back into place."  However, that left me limited in what I could do for the evening.  I had been playing with digitizing a logo for my friend who carves Father Christmas figures.   I had done one test stitchout that I wasn't overly happy with.  So I sat gingerly in my chair and did some cleanup on the original image.  Then I used one of the three trial programs I am testing for digitizing embroidery.  (There is another way more expensive one that I want to try too!)
Anyway - here is the stitchout from the effort.  I think I like this one.

I could not get the branches as "spidery" as I wanted them, but at least this one looks pretty good.

I also looked at some pictures from a past vacation.  This one had been lost in the shuffle.  Although it is a tile mosaic wall, when I saw it all I could think was "Crazy Quilt."

I am wondering if I can semi-follow the design and make a lap quilt.  LOL, talk about making it up as you go!

Embroidery - a new beginning

What I worked on Friday:

 A pretty t-shirt for Mom

 Quilted a table topper - using an embroidery machine.

And I stitched out this design that took 84 minutes of sewing time....that doesn't include time spent changing the thread - 26 thread changes! Yeah, I should have added an extra layer of stabilizer under it too.  Live and learn. 

ME - Machine Embroidery that is

After my last post, I decided to alter one of the things we learned in the embroidery class.  I don't have any nylon organza in my stash (not surprised are you?) but I will be getting some.  Anyway, I substituted sparkly tulle for the organza and it worked.  What I did was use a layer of water soluble stabilizer with a layer of tulle on top and bottom.  I hooped it and stitched out a butterfly that was NOT designed as "free standing lace."  Then I washed out the stabilizer, trimmed down the tulle and I got this:

I did two shots with different lighting so you could get a better idea.  Now this can be used as an embellishment by just tacking down the center and leaving the wings loose.  It can also be stitched around with invisible thread to fully sew it down.  Or it could be pinned on a headband or.....well you get the idea. You are only limited by how far outside the box you can think.  Cool huh?


Then I went to the computer to pull some of the designs off the discs that were in the packages I got at the show.  I was surprised and highly disappointed to find that they will only work if you have (buy) Floriani's software.  Not a good marketing strategy if you ask me.  I now have 5 discs of designs that I can't use unless I find someone who has the software and will convert them for me. (These are .cs2 files and as far as I can tell  no other software will read them.)  That has really put me off on recommending ANY Floriani products.  Sorry, but it is just a very bad way to treat customers. 
Oops!  The above was a mistake!  I figured out MY mistake and the designs work fine.  (see this post.)
But on to happier things!  Today I decided to embroider a cute little teacup that I got free from Embroidery Library.  They are a great place to get embroidery designs.  This one happened to be free, but I have bought a number of designs from them and they have all stitched out beautifully (as long as I didn't mess it up.)
So here is the finished product, still in the hoop 

I should have printed off the color change sheet before I started because my machine substitutes strange colors. As I was stitching out the first color (pink here) I went to the site to look.  Oops, it was supposed to be a medium taupe. Still, l like how it came out. 
Did you see that I now have a blog button that you can grab and add to your blog? Check the sidebar on the right, it is right under followers. 

Machine Embroidery

Hi everyone.
I had an adventure in education today.  I attended a Floriani Embroidery perfection tour.  I expected to be so ready to start some projects after the class that I could hardly wait.  However, I got information overload and can't even decide on a project. Ha ha.
The class was excellent.  I learned more about embroidery supplies than I ever imagined. I also learned that there is a LOT that I haven't even started to learn yet.
For attending the class, we got a great take home box of goodies.  Just look!

There are samples of stabilizers, ten spools of embroidery thread (which can also be used for free motion quilting - just so you know), an educational DVD on stabilizer solutions, four discs of embroidery designs, a project DVD with several projects on it, thread color charts, and some reference sheets.

I also bought the show bundle for quilters.  It has some great products in it. I will tell you about them as I start using them.
Now, what do I use first?  Whew, my head is spinning with ideas - I am afraid I didn't take enough notes. LOL.  I guess I just need some quiet time to let the ideas solidify and then I will be off and running.

Stay tuned.