TAST Week 8: Chain Stitch and Week 9: Couching

The February CQJP block is done.  I added more fly stitches to mimic feathers on the blue jay, and along the base of the tree as leaves for some blue French knot flowers.

I used chain stitch to create a vine for the tree trunk, and gave it some red berries.

The March block has an image of flying geese at the center.   I couched a wooded bead with Coral Zig Zag stitch right above it.
 

With some tiny beads, this became a fancy beetle.

I've picked some morning glories and some doves for the patches opposite the beetle.  Onward, onward.

TAST Week 7: Detached Chain

My little block is filling up pretty quickly.

This week I used the detached chain stitch (aka Lazy Daisy) to make silk ribbon leaves for my tree.  I had originally filled it in with perle cotton leaves, but they didn't show up against the busy background, so I pulled out the heavy artillery.  I didn't take out the original stitches, but just sewed right over them, and that worked out fine.

Like I have done with other accent motifs, I traced this little owl from an old embroidery book onto some tear-away stabilizer and stitched through it.  

The bird in the central panel got a few accent stitches, and I added a gold spider web.  My spider blends a bit too much into its leaf, so I'll add some outline in a contrasting color.  My double herringbone stitches got some green buttons, and I added more herringbone stitches and French knots next to the butterfly.

The middle of the block got some dark green buttonhole stitch and some red lazy daisy blooms.

I'm planning to embellish the two short seams to the right of the tree, and to add some foliage to the left side of the tree.  Then I think this block's done.  Onward to the next block!

TAST Week 6: Chevron Stitch

It's been very inspirational to work the TAST and the Crazy Quilt Journal Projects alongside my sister stitchers on the Tuesday Stitchers blog.  This week I shameless stole was inspired by Jane's post from last week about using wool felt to make a tree.  I had some felted wool, and I applied Heat n Bond Lite to the back, took some rough measurements of the space I wanted to fill, and drew a tree in reverse of the image I wanted.

I had to trim the tree branches a bit to make it fit the space, but after I was satisfied with the placement, I ironed it down.  Now there was no going back.

I've also been inspired by the way several of the Tuesday Stitchers have stacked their TAST stitches, and also the free form approach some have taken.  I filled my tree with chevron stitch in a rustic way.  I added some heart buttons that Debra sent me, which provide the pop of red I was looking for.  I'll add more later after I add a bird to the long branch on the right.

Because others have posted their work tables, I'm posting mine here too.  This is the mess I had to clear away in order to do my stitching today.  At first I wondered how I would ever think up enough ideas to fill 12 blocks.  Now I wonder how I'll ever fit it all in.

TAST Week 5: Herringbone Stitch

Thank goodness for the Superbowl.  It allowed me to sit down and get this bit of embroidery done while the rest of the family watched the game.   I got one seam done with two layers of herringbone stitch.

I'd been looking for something to help get my stitches even, and this peel and stick tape that I found in the embroidery isle at Michael's worked really well.

I positioned it on one side to do the light blue stitching, and then I flipped the same piece to the other side to do the larger dark stitch.  It was easy to use the centimeter measurements, which conveniently have no numbers. 

I stitched a butterfly over some iron on stabilizer, a method I showed in an earlier post.  I used satin stitch and chain stitch.   The little bird at the bottom was transferred onto a piece of linen and then cross-stitched on.  Maybe I'll add some beads to the herringbone stitch.  It needs a bit of zip.

TAST Week 4: Cretan Stitch and CQJP Block 1 Finished

I used this week's stitch, the cretan stitch, to make some grapes for the wheat.  Cretan isn't one of my favorites, and some folks over at the Tuesday Stitchers group agree.  I used a piece of ribbon to help space the stitches, and I think that helped a lot. I hope it doesn't look odd that there are grapes missing around the wheat,  but I didn't want to layer one motif over the other.  The grapes are lazy daisy and French knots.

I'm pretty happy with the finished block.  One down, eleven to go.

 I added a bug for the birds to eat.  The blue stitch to the left of the bug is called snail's trail.

The stitch immediately above the bird's head was the dry run for the snail's trail stitch.  I got the loop going the wrong way, and this is how it came out.  Because it otherwise looked okay, I left it.  If this stitch doesn't have a name, I'm naming it Snail's Trial.

The combination of stitches that runs behind the humming bird is the one I'm considering replacing.  It's got a wrapped herringbone stitch as a base, and it's accented with yellow lazy daisy (that's the part of it I like) and some pink French knots.  I've decided that my wrapped stitches look messy, and the spacing changes behind the hummingbird.  I'm not going to tackle this now, but I'm going to think about taking this out and re-doing it in an edited form.

Not bad for a month's work.  I'm really looking forward to starting February's block.

TAst Week 3: Feather Stitch and Some Design Inspriation

 

 I used this week's feather stitch to make a little plant for the hummingbird I also stitched.  The hummingbird is made up of satin and long and short stitch, and I used the background fabric instead of stitching on its breast to mimic the iridescent feathers of a hummingbird.  In spite of the stormy weather I still see hummingbirds in my backyard.  They come for the scattered jasmine blossoms that have bloomed out of season on the porch.

 

Here's another bit of feather stitch, embellished with buttons, that I actually made the week before.  I used perle cotton and some tiny buttons from JoAnn Fabrics.

Here's an updated photo of the whole block.  It's a nice spring scene, a respite from the winter storms that have finally come late in the season, but with full force.

Before I decided to make this St. Francis piece, I coincidentally found this book at a thrift store.  It's a collection of popular stories about Francis written about a hundred years after his death. 

The book has this wonderful inscription, and I felt included in its good intentions.  I've long felt an attraction to St. Francis's story.  He was the son of a rich man who rejected all worldly goods and recognized the brotherhood not only between people of different social ranks, but between people and animals as well. 

When I first thought of this project I though it might be in rustic browns like the Franciscan order's habit, but reading the book I came across a description of the place where Francis first undertook his work, a part of central Italy between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea, considered an area of immense natural beauty.  When Francis and his friend Giles arrived in 1209, the introduction says they saw "deep warm valleys and sloping meadows rich in wheat and vines."

"While the two friars walked through the vast forests of poplar, oak, and beech, and inhaled the soft  fragrance of honeysuckle, clover, mountain lilies, and white roses mingling with the fresh sea breezes, it is no wonder that--as an old chronicle noted--'Francis sang aloud in French, praising and blessing the Lord for His goodness.'"

This description is guiding my design.

A St. Francis statue hanging in my house

TAST Week 2: Buttonhole Stitch

This week I used buttonhole stitch as the foundation for this seam treatment.  From this angle you can see how the buttonhole stitch forms the stems for the blue and pink flowers.  The blue flowers are French knots, and the pink ones are Lazy Daisy and French knot combinations.  The leaves are  Lazy Daisy stitches.

Here you can see the trim in its right-side-up orientation.  I like the way the flowers are growing in both directions of the seam.  At the bottom of the picture you can see part of my feather stitch and buttons seam treatment.  I found a package of tiny buttons at JoAnn Fabric in a coordinating colorway that I'm going to use throughout this piece.

I've also added some wheat to one patch, and I've got a hummingbird positioned that I hope to embroider this week.  The outline is from an Aunt Martha embroidery transfer.

This week is the first week of school.  We'll see how much time I have to stitch now that I'm back to work.

TAST Week 1: Fly Stitch

 

I'm participating in Take a Stitch Tuesdays and in the Crazy Quilt Journal Project this year (links in the sidebar).  My project for the year will be a wall hanging of St. Francis of Assisi.  I've posted my preparation notes  for this project on the Tuesday Stitchers blog.

I get my best ideas when I'm waking up in the morning.  The idea for using fly stitch  to make a dandelion came to me this way.

 
I remembered I have this old embroidery book.  If you look closely, you can see the thrift store price tag.

 

 Sure enough, this book has outlines of wild flowers, including a dandelion (below right).

I sketched the drawing I wanted to use on a piece of scratch paper, and then traced it onto iron-on, tear-away stabilizer.  If it was an intricate drawing, I would have traced it directly onto the stabilizer.

 

Once the image is ironed on, I stitch directly over it.

 I used cotton floss for the leaves, and perle cotton for the rest of the image.  The dandelion fluff is made up of the fly stitch.  I think it makes a nice companion to the thistle in the printed focus fabric.

Once the stitching is done, you (carefully) tear away the stabilizer.  I'll get some tweezers to pull out some of the paper from under the leaves.

I'm working on seam embellishment next.  I realize I'm going to have to keep up the pace to finish a block a month.

Belive in Miracles (21 x 25)

I wasn't able to finish this piece by Christmas day, but if we fall back on the notion of Christmas continuing for 12 days, then I finished right on time.

After I turned in grades I came down with a really bad cold, but Christmas came nonetheless, and once the wrapping paper was recycled, and the leftovers packed away, I was happy to sit down and put the finishing touches on this piece.

It seemed only fitting, crazy quilter to crazy quilter, to add some seam embellishments to the outer border of Allie's quilt.  And I took a page from one of her techniques to use these beautiful shiny ribbons--some have beads, and all have metallic threads, in lieu of a conventional binding. I hadn't set out to do this, but I had four perfect ribbons and I also wanted to avoid cutting the points off on these embellished blocks, so it was a happy solution. I didn't follow Allie's instructions exactly, but the basic idea is there.

I added some mother of pearl buttons to the floral part of the composition.

Another close up.  You can see that I extended the halos with more buttons and with beads.

A lot of handwork is like prayer or meditation.  It infuses objects with spirit and with intentions. It's a wonderful opportunity to make a quilt for someone like Allie who is tuned into these messages in the cloth. This has been a fulfilling project, and in many ways it's been an unexpected form of  dialogue between two quilters.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays in the ways you love the most and with friends and family.  I am sadly behind on my blog reading, but I'll be catching up over the next few days.

Embellishing Allie's Madonna

I've now come out from under the semester's work.  Finals are over, grades are submitted, and I'm officially on vacation.  Between the madness, I've been working on Allie's Madonna, which became a serene meditation to counterbalance the busyness of work.

In the final composition I added that pink and white inner border, which to me adds breathing space to this piece.  I then machine quilted the whole piece with metallic silver thread.

The floral part of the composition got some hand embroidered foliage: the dark green is rayon ribbon and the light green is silk thread. The ribbons are top stitched with machine embroidery using rayon thread.

I took a close up of this part of the outer border because it's a little joke I've inserted into the piece.  The green fabric has that line of stitching because it was cut from a pocket of a night shirt.  I love this fabric and it's appeared in other projects, but I wanted to hint at its prior life.

The Virgin's crown was beaded with all kinds of sparkly things: beads, sequins and pearls.

 

The halos on the Mother and Child are embellished with tiny mother of pearl buttons, which reflect light like you wouldn't believe, although it's hard to capture on camera.

This is the first layer of embellishment.  It only seems fitting to finish this by Christmas, and the final layer is nearly done.  More pictures by Saturday. 

Allie's Madonna

Allie Aller and I agreed to a swap several months ago.  She made me a CQ, "Barbara's Door", one of her lovely and extra-special house quilts, which I have hanging over my sewing machine for inspiration and mojo.  In exchange, I am making her a Madonna Quilt.

I began with an image from Flor Larios, who sells fabric transfers of some of her painted images.  I love the innocence of the figures in her work, plus the baby Jesus in this picture reminds me of my son Alex when he was a baby.  He had the same round face and heavy black hair.   I framed the image with a vintage napkin, which I strategically cut and pieced in order to get the parts of the rose print that I wanted.

 

I used the left-hand and bottom ribbons in the final composition.  Allie sent me the woven ribbons, and the bottom one, which says "philosophy: believe in miracles" came to me with some wonderful bath salts from my daughter Allie.  I've been saving it for a project like this.  I also found the bit of lace in my stash.  It's the perfect size for a wreath or crown for the Madonna.

 

I look these pictures with my phone, so they're not so crisp, but I used some textured fabric samples to piece half-square triangles for the outer border.

This is the rough mock-up of the piece.  I must confess that I got stalled for a long time at this stage: there was something I didn't like about the composition, and I couldn't put my finger on it for awhile.  In the meantime, I sewed and ripped out the pieced border in multiple configurations, several times.  Finally, I successfully wrestled it to the ground.  Next I'll show you the final composition and some embellishment.