Wild Olive Stitch Swap

Back in March I signed up for Wild Olive's stitch swap, and what a lot of fun it was! We each received the name of someone, and had to send a small piece of stitching in a four inch hoop, ready for hanging; we could add a few little goodies, too. And of course we'd each receive something, too, although from a different person.

I got Beka, who loves earth tones and birds, especially owls. So I found this nifty, somewhat retro owl from Urban Stitches and traced it onto batik fabric. For thread I picked a Watercolours skein from my stash in the most earthy tones I could find, and started stitching:
Only, I didn't like the way it came out -- the thread worked in stem stitch produced a corded effect I didn't want. I thought of back stitch, but that would produce a neat, more discrete look that would not work with the natural, woodsy feel I was trying. So then I tried split stitch:
And that worked much better. Plus, split stitch would make it easier to navigate all the tight curves and points.

Here is the finished product, with a few specialty threads and ribbons and a little stone charm:
I had a lot of fun stitching, especially in a style I would not normally do.

I received this from Kami:
I love it, especially the vibrant red heart in the center of an old tree. The magnets, mirror, and beads were a treat, too. Thanks, Kami!

Wild Olive mentioned doing this again in the fall, and I can't wait.

Cookies!

Last year's Quilting Arts Gifts mag had Kelli Nina Perkins's "Frosted Holiday Treats" which were so cute. But they involved a lot of painting, which is not my thing, so I decided to make my cookies felt. When I made the paper cloth last February, I realized that would make a perfect frosting (and no coincidence -- the paper cloth technique is Perkins's, too). So I made two sheets, both "sprinkled" with words I cut out of the Nutcracker (a photo-copied page, of course), and painted one green and the other white.

A few days ago, I used cookie cutters to cut out stars from the white sheet and trees from the green:

I machine-sewed them onto tan felt leftover from the Advent Calendar and cut them out, leaving a border of felt for the unfrosted part of the cookie:

I then sewed on some bugle beads for jimmies (sprinkles to you non-New Englanders):

The last step was to sew them onto more felt for the backing. Et voila:

Coincidentally, the swap this time in my Crazy Fridays class was a small project involving words, which was a good thing because otherwise I would not have been able to swap anything. So one member got two cookies, and I got the instructor's piece -- Busy Work by Diane Rode Schneck:
I love it, and will put it in my sewing room.

ATC Swap

The swap this summer in my Crazy Fridays class was ATCs. My inspiration was some fabric I picked up a few years ago, printed with images of the cards from the Mexican Lotería game -- perfect for cutting out and placing on 2.5 by 3.5 cards. The fabric was a repeat of 24 different images, so of course I had to make all twenty-four cards (just as well that the fabric did not have all 54 cards).

My base was the "tissue fabric" technique I have used before, from Fabric Art Collage. I wanted it to be a mix of purples and teals, but the end result was heavy on the blues:
I'm not thrilled at all with the color, but oh well.

The next step was to fuse the Lotería fabric to the background with fusible webbing and cut out all the cards. To secure the fabric images, I edged each one with hand sewing of some sort, using embroidery, rickrack, beading, and ribbon. It was fun, albeit time-consuming, coming up with a different border for each one. The final step was to back the cards with ultrasuede in different shades of grey and blue. I couldn't bear to zigzag stitch around 24 cards, so I used a straight stitch, which went a lot faster. Unfortunately, at the time I was embellishing the cards I did not think about what would be going under the pressure foot, so some of the cards are a little lumpy and crooked.

The final products:
I gave one to Beadmom, another to Beadfriend, and five were swapped. Which leaves me with a big stack left. Additionally, as I said above, the fabric only had 24 of the 54 cards, which distresses the completist in me. I have the actual game, with all the cards on paper, so I may in the future make a complete set of paper ATCs.

I was also left with scraps of the tissue fabric, which I turned into bookmarks for Beadboy1's therapists:
and an inchie for my collection:

The ATCs I got in return:
This was by the instructor of the class, Diane Rode Schneck, using the stretchy shape bracelets that are so popular with the kids these days. Diane had wanted to glue the shapes down, not couch them, but no glue would hold. That's ok, though, because I like the look of the couching.

By another student in the class. It was created from some sort of technique from Julie Balzer's Journaling class.

A fishy, made from free-hand machine embroidery, a technique that intimidates me (and that also came from Balzer's class). The edges are fuzzy because the creator zigzagged over both the edges of the card and a fuzzy yarn held in place. She owes me a second ATC, because she took two of mine.

The last classmate to participate in the swap was not able to make ATCs because she was too busy sewing dozens and dozens of these little bags for a wedding shower. Instead, she made us cute little bags too, with a bead and a chocolate inside.

On to the next swap!

"Twinchies" Swap

The most recent swap in my Crazy Studio Fridays class was last Friday. We decided to do "inchies" again, though with a two inch diameter. Some of us discussed doing round ones instead of squares, so that's what I decided to do.

I started with a base from the paper cloth I made a few months ago, and cut out two inch circles:

Next I ironed a little purple and pink Angelina into a sheet and cut out more circles:

Then yo-yos, from green and gold dupioni silk, purple lamé, and some sort of pinky-gold shimmery fabric (the colors are off in the photo):

Finally, buttons:

I stacked them together:

backed them with beige felt, and sewed a buttonhole stitch around them with gold perle cotton.

The finished product (minus one taken by an eager swap member):


The ones I got in return (a few swap members were not present):

Feeling Stitchy Button Swap

Feeling Stitchy organized an embroidered button swap last month, and gave me a partner to swap with (you can find her at Chicory Nits).

My partner told me she liked color, so I knew I'd be using lots of bright shades, but it took me a little longer to settle on the designs. I decided to take my inspiration from Taíno petroglyphs and other pre-Columbian designs (my mom gave me an old book of hers a while back, filled with nothing but pre-conquest Mexican motifs). The results:
From left to right, top to bottom: the Taíno symbol for water, my interpretation of a Taíno sun motif, the Taíno coquí, a Taíno baby, another motif combining different elements, and a version of a pre-Columbian Mexican flower.

The buttons I received:
So exciting! I especially love the lower left one, the heart and arrow on fabric with writing. Maybe I'll make some kind of valentiny, vintagy thing with it. The bigger buttons I think will make great ornaments, layered onto wool felt.

In addition we exchanged a little chocolate and some craft supplies and notions. Fun!

Swap number 2

The second swap for my Crazy Fridays class was "plus-sized inchies." Inchies are little bits of mixed media or fiber arts, one inch square; plus-sized inchies, then, are one and a half inches, an easier size to work with. The swap was for December (ok, this post is a little late) when I would be swamped with school work and Christmas prep, so I was glad to find a ready-made base in my stash. Many months ago, back when my PBS station still showed the Quilting Arts TV show, I followed their instructions to make a painted and stamped sheet that could be cut up for inclusion in other projects. I took a piece of batik fabric and ironed it onto fusible web. I then used a flower stamp and puffy burnt gold paint (regular stamp pads did not leave enough of a mark) to stamp on flower images. I created sort of a checkerboard pattern, and filled the squares in between with asterisks using a coppery red Shiva stick, and then added a hint of gold with another Shiva stick and possibly some gold paint (I don't remember). The grid was just perfect to cut up into 1.5 inch squares -- here are a few:

So all I had to do was embellish and finish them! I love beading, so I added a few translucent gold beads to each one, and made it unnecessarily complicated for myself by arbitrarily deciding that each one had to have a different pattern of beads. Some were embroidered directly onto the squares, others beadwoven into shapes and then sewn on. I then ironed the squares onto rust colored felt (with the squares upside down on a thick towel to protect the beads). The traditional (if this artform can be said to have a tradition) finish is zigzagging, but I could not bear to zigzag repeatedly around each of over a dozen squares, so I came up with an alternative -- copper tape used for soldering. The tape has a sticky backing, and the copper went beautifully with the other colors. I have no idea how it will hold up long-term, but they look pretty neat now:


The inchies I received from the swap:

Bookmark Swap 2

I finally finished the last of the bookmarks last night, just in time to hand them in tonight (they are actually due next month, but I won't be able to make that class). For the most part I am pleased with the results, though I think some are better than others.
I like these three a lot. The first consists of cross stitch variations, and it is the most "regular" of the bunch, though that is fitting given the nature of the stitch. The middle one is the chain stitch one I discussed earlier. I really did not like the blue thread, so I ended up removing it and replacing it with more of the dark pink (what a pain that was). Had I more time, I would have gone in search of a different pink (ideally a purply one). The last is two related stitches -- the whipped spider web and the woven rose (both are built around an odd number of spokes. I really enjoyed this one, experimenting with different thread thicknesses and tensions.
Next up: 5 or 6 different leaf stitches. At this point I had to abandon my idea of only using one kind of stitch (and its variations) per bookmark, but at least the shapes offered a theme. I learned quite a few nifty stitches for this one, including the Vandyke stitch (the big orange leaf in the middle). The middle bookmark is just the stem stitch. By itself it looks nice, kind of minimalist, but here with the others it looks unfinished. The last is the running stitch one. As I said below, the only change I'd make is to get a better green thread.
The last trio: the first is also the first one I did, the feather stitch one, which I really like. The middle one was the last one, and having exhausted all the major stitch families I opted for laid stitch variations. It would look better if I had had the discipline to pencil in the grid before stitching. the last one is the blanket or buttonhole stitch. The way the different threads and stitches are layered over each other is the look I had originally wanted for all of the bookmarks, and I think this is my favorite. Also, I learned that a loosely and irregularly done blanket stitch on its side looks a lot like a feather stitch.

More Bookmarks

I finished the running stitch bookmark on Saturday. I'm pleased with the way it came out, although I wish I had used a darker, yellowier green.
So I moved on to the buttonhole/blanket stitch. I've only just begun it, but I want to build up lots of imperfect layers.

Bookmark Swap

For a few years now I have been taking a monthly quilt class at the City Quilter in Manhattan. Originally a crazy quilt class, because of the high proportion of regulars it has become more of a art quilt/mixed media studio, where we all work on a variety of projects (sometimes even an actual crazy quilt). Recently we've started doing challenges, such as making small quilts totally from recycled materials or trash, or finding innovative or unusual ways of "quilting" three layers of something together, and so on. This time around, the instructor decided to do a bookmark swap. There aren't really any rules, just that it, you know, be bookmark-shaped and flat enough to go in a book, and that in contain something recycled.

I played around with several ideas. I thought of incorporating beading of some kind, since that is my specialty (if I can be said to have one); I could only use seed beads, though, to keep the bookmarks functional. I thought of making charms out of the little colorful plastic caps I've been collecting from juice cartons -- drilling a hole, filling them up with beads and thread and charms, and sealing them, then having them dangle from the bottom of the book. The charms, though, I thought would be too big. I thought of experimenting with various mixed media techniques I've been meaning to try, but that seemed daunting. And then I realized I would be missing the August class and would have to turn them in a month earlier in the beginning of July. So for the sake of my sanity I decided to embroider wool felt. Here are the first three:
(Ignore the scarred and beaten, I mean distressed, table.) I've opted for bright colors for the felt and perle cotton (sizes 3 and 5, with a little 8). What I wanted was to devote each bookmark to a particular stitch and its variations, and to get a layered, not-very-organized look.

The top one is feather stitch. Turns out, there are not a whole lot of variations, but because it is so airy it layered nicely. I still might fill in a couple of spots. Detail:
The stitch family for the bottom one was the chain stitch. There are all sorts of pretty variations, but I'm not thrilled with the way it ended up so linear. I guess I should have meandered more. I do really like the laced cable stitch, though -- that's the 3 pink columns of chain with two strands of red weaving them together.
The middle one is just a simple running stitch. I really like how the stitching came out, and the colors are growing on me. I've since added some teal and purple, but I don't have a photo yet.