Hello, hello, I am still here enjoying my summer holiday. Apart from going to the sea yesterday (Oh, how lovely it was!) I was at home all the time and was keeping busy with all kinds of crafts.
First of all, I finally finished my first quilt. Do you remember? I wrote about it ages ago, when I started quilting it, I realised there were mistakes and that put me off it. Now I took it out, finished the quilting in a day (decided not to worry too much about the mistakes, just continue), made a scrappy binding and sewed it on with the machine. It is far from perfect but for a first quilt it is not too bad. If I may say so. I just love it :D
I am planning to make more quilts, definitely. I have already chosen a pattern and even cut the fabric for a huge overcast for my bed, but didn't want to start it until this one was finished. Now I can start it. Soon! But I also plan to do some small practise pieces to learn quilting, while I am doing the piecing for it. I hope that one will be much better. And I am thinking to sew the binding by hand!
Pictures:
I wanted to show my ongoing embroidery pieces to you. Do you ever stitch without a pattern? Just like doodling? Long ago I posted some improvised embroideries I did on felt, now I have some more on all kinds of leftover fabric.
Most of them I started at school. With year 5 classes I do a hand sewing unit, and with year 6 an embroidery unit. With most classes there comes a time when everyone is happily (or grudgingly) settled down with their work and I don't need to run around showing them the different steps. I sit down among my students and take out something to work on. It cannot be something very complicated because I am often interrupted, and of course, my main focus is on the children. But I found they like watching me actually make something, not only explain all the time, sometimes they even get inspired by my work.
Then it happened that I threw that piece of fabric with the needle and thread in my bag so I could stitch a bit on my way home, or while waiting at the dentist etc. That meant that next lesson I had to start a new one, right? :D
So here they are, not finished yet but they will slowly become something.
I also have this piece of Hungarian folk embroidery that I started a while back and pick it up once in a while to practice the special stitch it uses. It is very typical of the Hungarian area in Romania, and it is done with a stitch similar to the open chain stitch (see Mary Corbet's video here) except the stitches are laid very close to each other. It was not easy to learn and I am still not really good at it. First I constantly took it out but that is quite difficult, so I decided to just go on and hope to get better in time.
The next piece is a little experiment. Stephen bought for me a pile of old snaps and hook-and-eye fasteners once and I was thinking perhaps I could use them for decorative effect. So I sewed some hooks on the fabric, wrapped some thick thread around them, and the plan is to sew them down couching-style, also add some stitches around the hooks. We will see what happens to it. :)
The cross stitch I made I have already shown here (the birds), but now I am planning some more. I have to finish 3 squares for the charity quilts till the end of September, so I am working on those now. After that I will make some things to sell in my webshop. I have been working on some patterns, will show them later. But there is a small one, a biscornu pattern that I would like to share with you.
It is a red biscornu again, I just love red embroidery, but of course, you can use other colours too.
Please enjoy it and feel free to share it with others.
Click on the picture to get the pdf pattern. Happy stitching!
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