My "Love to Stitch" book has been a real delight to sew. I've tried to use all sorts of stitches in its making and it has become a sample book of some of the sewing that I've enjoyed in the past few months. It was my entry for the Flowerpatch Quilters challenge "Love is in the Air".
Here are all the pages starting with the cover:
Now a little bit about each page:
On the cover I've used Sashiko cotton to stitch the letters and then many colours of embroidery cottons to stitch along the lines of the fabric pattern like Kantha work.
Next the inside cover. When I had made all my pages I realised that there weren't any that actually represented "Love is in the Air". Luckily I was off to a jumble sale and bought some music (the Air) upon which to sew some hearts (Love). I did think that I would simply stitch on the music with a free motion design of hearts, but my sewing machine had other ideas and just made a mess of stitches. I took out the threads and perforated the heart shapes with the needle so that I could tear them out. I placed the dotty red fabric behind and couched red thread between the hearts.
Page 1 is a heart made from cross stitches. When Susan Denton visited Flowerpatch she showed many quilts where the hand quilting included cross stitching so I thought I'd try it. I also like the quilting around this heart which is a combination of machine and hand quilting.
Page 2 is the design that we used when practising reverse applique. I added some embroidery stitches
Page 3 is one of the designs that we used in Flowerpatch's charity quilt. again I added embroidery stitches.
Page 4 is another of the designs in the charity quilt. More embroidery. You can print off a copy of this design here.
Page 5 is a lino printed pear which I have embellished with applied fabric and ...... you guessed it - embroidery.
Page 6 is a sample of a Lynette Anderson design. This was a trial to see how difficult it might be and now my friends and I are making a quilt using this and many other of Lynette's designs.
Inside the back cover is a redwork design that I found online. I realised that I had never actually sewn any redwork and it fitted with the theme of the book perfectly.
The back cover uses the same fabric as the front. I have spiral quilted by both machine and hand.
Each page was made up individually with a thin wadding backing. Then they were sewn together in pairs (right sides together, sew around 3 sides then turn the right way out). Calico was sewn to the open, spine sides of the pages and then they were put together by binding all the open sides with the black, gold and green fabric to make the spine.
What fun!! - Anita x
The Launceston group of West Country Embroiderers recently held an exhibition and I'm delighted to be able to show you some photos of their lovely work. At present they only have 20 members so it was a real surprise to see so much sewing on display and such varied items!
This is one of Joan's beautiful cushions
and Moira's exquisite framed embroidery on silk.
Ruth's riotous garden in a hoop looked such fun to do. She must have used every single embroidery stitch known!
and she also made these delicate ribbon work flower twinchies.
Valerie had been very busy and made these two boxes - both lovely and practical,
and she sewed a set of 8 mandalas displayed in hoops. These 4 were my favourites.
This is Anne's sweet redwork snowman - I like the border she used, too.
and I loved this single colour relief embroidery, but I'm not sure who's nimble fingers created it.
There was so much more than the above to see and many beautiful stitchings beneath glass which I couldn't photograph sensibly.
Launceston embroiderers would love to welcome new members to their group. They meet at St Cuthbert Mayne Hall on the last Friday of every month from 10 am to 3 pm, when they share ideas, learn from each other or have a workshop with an expert tutor.
Happy Stitching - Anita x
After the visit by Marilyn Hornby to Flowerpatch in June I learnt that my friends next birthday would be a special one. I loved Marilyn's redwork so what a good opportunity to make one of her Jigsaw Cushions.
I made mine small measuring only approx 8" x 8", and used twisted chain stitch instead of the more usual whipped back stitch. The other embroidery stitches are lazy daisy, danish knot, cross stitch and bullion knot. This is a link to the jigsaw pattern I used.
The words in the jigsaw pieces refer to all the things my friend has been in her life so far. I wrote them with my Micron pen (size 01) as I chickened out of doing such tiny embroidery stitches - it would have been illegible!
A real joy to make - Anita x
How lucky we were to have Marilyn Hornby of Patch Flora as our speaker at Flowerpatch Quilters last Thursday evening. Marilyn is a very experienced quilter who has written many articles for national patchwork and quilting magazines. She showed us all her designs and very generously, included lots of tips on making them up. How lovely to be able to have a really close look at work you have seen, and admired, in magazines. Some of the Flowerpatch members were already great fans of her designs and had made their own versions in the past.
Marilyn has always been interested in sewing and other crafts, but her first foray into quilting was with applique of botanicals. Not finding any designs that she particularly liked because they weren't very realistic, she resorted to drawing her own and has proceeded in that fashion ever since.
I really liked this poppy:
Another great love of Marilyn's is redwork, in which she excels, and again always draws her own designs. She showed us wall quilts, cushions, bags, notebooks and even a hat.
This is just a small selection of Marilyn's redwork:
and I must have a go at this "Square Dance" patchwork pattern:
Marilyn also showed us some fused work and Hardanger embroidery, and finally finished with her larger quilts which included "Stack and Whack", Willow Pattern, Music - with the score of "London Bridge" around one of the borders, and a beautiful crazy patchwork medallion quilt with a crazy ninepatch centre.
There was so much to enjoy that this blog can never do it justice so please do click on Patch Flora to see more.
One thing in particular that Marilyn encouraged us to do was to practice and practice our free motion machine quilting until we can relax in the doing and are happy with the results. This would make so much difference to our quilting life. So guess what I've been doing this weekend!! Maybe I can show you some results later ............................much later!!
With the Flowerpatch Quilters annual exhibition less than two months away members are all sewing frantically to get their entries finished. Entry forms have to be at Dy's before 1st July. The exhibition runs from Tuesday 4th to Saturday 8th August and is held at Central Methodist in Launceston, Cornwall.
The next meeting is on 9th July and is an exhibition preview when we get to hear some of the stories behind member's quilts, etc.
Sewing frantically! - Anita
