Itty-Bitty Scrap Happy Day in January

 Kate (in Australia) and Gun (in Sweden) host Scrap Happy Day on the 15th of each month. It has been my habit to participate with quilt blocks or quilts made out of scraps, with a few exceptions. This month will be an exception. I've been really good, not using my hand and arm that seem to be suffering from carpal tunnel or something, for what feels like forever now. It's actually only been weeks, but possibly as many as six. I have not been a happy bunny. I feel bad for the members of our household; they've had to endure my short temper and nervous energy. 

To help pass the time I've been watching crafters on YouTube with an eye to what I might be able to do when my arm is more fully healed. Not quilts, but small projects. Embroidery, if I can manage it. One thing I've learned about is clusters. Journal makers assemble them from the smallest of their paper scraps and then use them to decorate the pages of the books they make. Some folks combine fabric, lace, and paper. Thought I would give that a try with a few of my smaller scraps. 

I layered a strip of quilter's cotton on top of a chunk of homespun cotton and then layered them onto the remnant corner of a vintage table linen. A few rows of running stitches didn't seem to bother my hand - what a relief! Then I found the slip of polyester and a button I thought would work well to top it all off. I was concerned about giving the button something sturdy to support it.

A scrap of denim from my husband's really old Levi's worked well. I sewed it with the back of the denim facing the front. I'm thinking I want to have the option to have this be visible from both sides in whatever it ends up in. Overall it measures roughly the same size as an ATC (2.5" x 3.5"). I can't even describe how happy it made me to be able to do this little bit of play with fabric and thread. 😊

There are participants in Scrap Happy Day all over the world, and everyone publishes at some point on the 15th in their own time zone. I'm generally one of the last to get a post up. If you haven't been to see what others may have done with their scrap materials (not all play with fabric primarily) now would probably be a good time to do so! 

Kate, Gun, Eva, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule,
Gwen, Bekki, Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L,
Vera, Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Bear,
Carol, Preeti, Edith, Debbierose

Slow Stitching

 There are all sorts of new community projects popping up with the start of a new year. I'm talking about online communities like YouTube and Facebook. I've never been one for New Year's resolutions but I do enjoy suggestions for new creative endeavors. It's being very hard this year to be laid up and unable to play along, at least not yet. I wasn't able to finish the #52tagshannemade project by the end of last year either. Hopefully when things improve for me physically I'll still be interested in completing my set of ATC's for that project. In the meantime I thought I would share some small pieces of slow stitching I did late last year that I don't think I've shown here.

My understanding of "slow stitch" is that it's meant to be a meditative endeavor with needle and thread. Some people doodle with a pen or pencil for mindless relaxation. I think of this as doodling with thread. And I do find it very soothing. I'm missing it terribly at the moment. 

This strip is a piece of muslin over scrap batting. It's about 2.5" high and 10" long. At first it was difficult for me to stitch without a specific purpose or end product in mind for the work. Gradually it became a place to practice or play with embroidery stitches. There's chain stitch, lots of feather stitching, blanket stitches, some fly stitches, French and Colonial knots, and just plain straight stitches. I'm not sure this is actually done yet. There's a blank space on the left I could fill in. Or I may not. 

This square was done on a mottled yellow cotton, again over a scrap of batting. I really like the texture that the stitches over batting create. This one and the others I'll show you are all about four inches square. Basically the same stitches throughout.

Same yellow ground on this one. Can you tell I like feather stitching? And variegated thread!

I used tiny scraps to create the foundation for the one above and below.

It's this sort of work I want to get back to more than quilt making at the moment. I did try to do some machine piecing after the onset of this current affliction but it didn't go well. Maybe after a bit more time I can ease back into my textile projects. 🤞

Winter Scroll

About the time Anne Brooke proposed the #12pagesofChristmas book in a tin project (see my SAL post) I knew my Summer scroll was coming to an end. The 12 Pages project wasn't yet clearly outlined. I thought I might like to do a Halloween/Days of the Dead version of the book project but that didn't happen. I'd still like to tackle that at some point. Instead, I began another stitch wrap/scroll. While I started it in late autumn technically, I'm referring to it as my Winter scroll because most of it will cover the winter months here in the Northern Hemisphere. This time I'm using a long, narrow strip of batting for the foundation. The Summer Scroll was stitched on a strip of muslin. 

The first panel is plain muslin with no embellishments. I still don't have any spools or bobbins on which to wrap these scrolls so I left that plain in case I needed it in the future for mounting purposes. Then I went into full autumn mode with this panel:

For what it's worth, all of the pictures in this post were edited quickly on my phone. My intention is to fill the center of that flower I made of lazy daisy stitches with a button. The green sprigs are fly stitches, and I added some seed beads.

The next panel was created around Thanksgiving time (end of November). 

It's actually two scraps from a single print that I butted up against each other. I just used simple straight stitches around the two images and to accent the bush in the foreground of the house. Eventually some beads will probably go into that bit of eyelet lace at the top of the panel. That's a short strip of sari silk peeking out from underneath the lace to help it show up better.

Next up is a circle I fussy cut from one of the flannels I used to make pillowcases for one of our granddaughters this Christmas. It's appliqued onto a piece of wool with some more fly stitches. The roses next to it is a bit of another flannel I bought for a pillowcase cuff but didn't use. It was a good place to practice my feather stitching though. 😊

And still in pillowcase mode, the skelly and candy canes was yet another pillowcase (I made five for her in total). I really liked how the bit of vintage lace echoed the snowflakes in the print. I added the five little hearts to represent all the granddaughters, the pink standing in for the newest addition. There's just basic straight stitching outlining the skelly and canes in the green background and then some white on top of the snowflakes to highlight them. Not sure more will be done to that section.

Next up is a scrap of a print to represent our acquisition of a Christmas tree on top of a print that represents the cloudy, stormy weather we had. Then I found a piece of black velvet onto which I stitched an assortment of beads leading to the star sequins. That's meant to represent the convergence of the two planets into what was known as the Christmas star. Below the star sequins I've attached two feathers my canary dropped recently just to fill the space without doing much to the velvet. 

Finally we have the latest additions to the scroll. I bought a packet of goodies from Tilly Rose some months back, and in it was the piece of fabric I've used to indicate the end of one year and the beginning of the new. It seemed perfect for the purpose as it's appropriately dark for 2020 and lightens up with hope for 2021. I've only just added all the white bits to the right of that. Anne has begun her #52tags project for 2021 (on Instagram and YouTube). Basically the plan is to do a little slow stitching and attach it to a regular shipping tag, one for each week of the year. I'm not participating in the strictest sense of the word but will be watching from the sidelines and probably incorporating many of her prompts in my own work one way or another. In this case, the prompt for the first tag was to restrict yourself to the use of white materials. Starting the new year with a clean slate as it were. I wanted to acknowledge the fact that the annual Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, CA had been cancelled this year due to Covid-19 so I inscribed that note on a strip of muslin to attach to my scroll. The muslin was so thin I decided to rip two strips to layer one on top of the other. At the time I thought I might stitch them together for stability. But I kind of liked the way they flutter. Then the insurrection of January 6 happened. Now that second strip of muslin will be inscribed to that effect. 

And underneath the two flags, more feather stitch practice. 

The rest of the stitching on the white section is just straight or tacking stitches. There are a couple of areas I want to do more on but this is as far as I've come as of this writing. 

Working this way has made me realize I've got more reorganizing of materials to do as the year progresses. That's one of those tasks I dread because you have to make a bigger mess than you already have before you can put things away more efficiently. Which takes time and energy that I'd rather spend actually stitching! 

Slow Sunday Stitching

I decided to add more of the Cocker Spaniel puppies to my dish towel. I'm using this set of transfer patterns from Aunt Martha's collection:

You may remember this first one that I placed diagonally on one corner.

I was able to place three more puppies across the bottom edge of the towel. I've cut away the text that accompanies the patterns.

The little guy with the butterfly on his tail backs up to the completed puppy in the corner.

And this one with his nose in the bush is on the extreme left of the towel. So far one dog has black eyes and one has brown. The pattern suggests blue as an eye color but that seems out of place to me. I've never seen a Cocker yet that had blue eyes! I'll be stitching the rest of these designs in basic primary colors. This is meant to be relaxing after all. :- )

I'm linking up with other slow stitchers over at Kathy's Quilts.

Small Victories

Between toxins and hormones there hasn't been a lot accomplished here in the Magpie's Nest this past week. However, I may have stumbled across the healing properties of hand embroidery and I have found a new use for a piece of family history.

I've finished up two needlepoint cases that I had in progress. I'll share those in the next SAL post (Feb. 19). I didn't have the energy to cut or piece or even throw blocks on the design wall for a new quilt. I shopped for a new needlework project (online) but of course I have to wait for that to arrive. Then I remembered a set of two pillowcases I picked up on clearance a few years ago. I knew one pillowcase was already completely stitched. I wasn't sure how far along the second one was. It took me a while to remember where I'd stashed them too!

When I finally found them all that remained to be done were half of the yellow flowers and all the pink flowers and French knots. That took me about two days finish, only a couple of hours each day.

I noticed that I felt better overall after each stitching session. Could have been coincidence, but my appetite had been whetted for more needlework. In the bag where I found the pillowcases I also found a flour sack dishtowel from long, long ago. It's a new towel but it had been along time since I ironed on the embroidery design. For whatever reason I'd been intimidated to begin stitching it. Apparently this was the week for that towel.

I was able to use some of the leftover floss from the various needlepoint kits I've been stitching. Score! And it didn't take me nearly as long to stitch this design as I expected. Better than that, every time I picked it up I was feeling crummy but when I put it down I was feeling better.

I'd heard that quilters benefit from their hobby, I guess it works for embroiderers too.

During all this I've come to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to make my embroidery projects more accessible. I've had them in this appropriately labelled tote bag - which seemed like a good idea but disappeared among all the other tote bags I have hanging on the back of the studio door.

"Sew or Die" with skeleton head pins. :-)

So I've decided to re-purpose my mother's pie basket.

I always thought of it as a picnic basket because I've seen modern versions outfitted that way but my mother called it a pie basket. There was an insert that enabled the her to stack at least two pies inside. It was one of the gifts my parents received when they married. I've never been a pie baker - I preferred cookies and cakes and let my sister do the pies - but it will be fun to honor and remember my mother by using her basket in a way that suits my current lifestyle (I don't know what happened to the insert, I don't have it). There should be room enough in it for both embroidery and needlepoint projects, thus consolidating my needlework somewhat. It should be harder to misplace too!

I'm linking up with the other Slow Sunday Stitchers over on Kathy's Quilts.

Diary Quilt and Selfish Stitching

The Princess is in the closet and the Macabre Medallion has been on the design wall in her place. I've added a bit more to the MM but still haven't settled on how to incorporate stars. It will be interesting to find out what the next prompt is and whether I can use it with stars for a border, thus fulfilling both challenges. ;- )

In the meantime, it's time to check in with my version of Quilty 365, my Diary Quilt. I can no longer get the whole thing on the design wall for a photo shoot so I'll only show the most recent rows/columns:

I'm at day 290 in this year-long adventure. Rather than the circles others are appliqueing for each day I'm cutting 2.5" x 6.5" strips representative of my daily experiences. In the end there will be 13 rows or columns of strips. I have ten complete and have just begun number eleven.

I believe I began this mid-November last year so it will be the middle of November this year when I'll stop adding new strips and sew these columns together. There's a link party over at Quilty Folk today for those of us still slogging along.

It's also time to check in with my selfish stitching efforts. I haven't touched any needlepoint since my SAL post in the middle of August. Instead I've been embellishing a bit of intuitive piecing I did some time ago (probably more than two years ago in fact!). I don't think I have a picture of the piecing alone. This is what it looks like now:

It all started with some random scraps that I just sewed together as they came to hand. Very soon I was seeing the little house image so I purposefully used the yellow batik to create a frame for the house. Then I decided to set it on a strip of land at the edge of a body of water. I've seed stitched most of the background areas with either cotton or rayon floss. The fluffy yarn is couched down with an occasional delica bead. The rick rack is hand sewn in place. This is one of a pair of 4" x 6" creations. The other is next in line for embellishing.

On Sunday (4 September) I'll be linking up with these ladies who are cheering each other on with their individual needlework projects: Kathy, Susan, Kate, Avis, Claire, DebbieRose, Gun, Carole, Wendy, Lucy, Jess, Christina, and Constanze. If you'd like to join us every three weeks just leave a comment when you visit Avis. :- )

Stalled

Early Sunday morning a blaze broke out in a commercial building over the river to the west of us. It spread to the furniture store next door and had an impact on another nearby business. The resultant air quality has had the expected negative effect on my system. My misery is minuscule compared to the losses suffered by these local independent businesses. Nevertheless, not much has been accomplished since then. 

I managed to rearrange the blocks I'd made for the sashing of my F2F quilt and get them sewn into strips.

I just haven't been able to find the energy to set the sashing between the four-block units yet.

I also made a card for a friend of mine dealing with bone cancer.

I purchased the bluebird applique some time ago from Flights of Fancy. The acrylic flower beads may have come from them too. The rest of it is wool felt and a bit of cotton floss embroidery. Not my best work but it's the thought that counts right? :- )

Returning to an Old Love

I have been involved in one form of needlework or another since grade school. I started with simple embroidery but moved on to latch hooked rugs during my teen years. Then I discovered needlepoint. That's how I spent my leisure time during my twenties. Well, it was my medium of choice. In my experience needlepoint was always one of the more expensive forms of needlework. I didn't often have the funds for all the stitching I would have liked to have done!

I was busy having and raising children during my thirties. The sharp needles and scissors and expensive wool yarns were put away. Gradually I acquired rotary cutting tools and started piecing. As the children grew so did my piecing skills. I still couldn't indulge as much as I would have liked. Time was the issue more than money in this case however.

Faithful readers know that I still enjoy bouts of hand sewing. So far my plans to continue with a personal beading project this year have not born fruit. Since my last post I've been stitching down bindings. Apparently that was insufficient. A new Keepsake NeedleArts catalog came in the mail one day and I found myself ordering a nifty pair of swordfish embroidery scissors and a small needlepoint kit. (I do not need another pair of little scissors, but these were just too cool to pass up!) The kit was for a coin purse/credit card case:

The beauty of this little project is that it comes pre-finished. With a zipper all the way around the needlepoint canvas all I had to do was stitch between the lines. I amazed even myself by completing the stitching in a matter of two or three days.

And that wasn't enough! I'd cleaned out most of my old needlepoint canvases and projects over the decades but I knew there was at least one still lurking in the depths of the studio closet. It took a while but I finally found it:

I don't remember where I acquired this. I certainly was never in Boca Raton, Florida! My best guess is that I picked it up in a shop when I was living in South Carolina. Which makes this project potentially 35 years old. There were two slightly rusty needles still threaded with floss in the bag. The canvas had been rolled up for so long that I've been having to fight the scrolling ends to do the stitching. You can see that the tape that came on the canvas has dried out and fallen off. I have a raw spot on my hand where I keep rubbing against that rough edge. (Maybe I'll tape that back up today...)

This was meant to be a belt when completed so the design area is only 1.25 inches high and 34 inches long.

All the fish have been stitched, although some need their eyes put in. There's a bit of seaweed yet to be stitched at the far end of the canvas.

The fish, seaweed, and bubbles are stitched in cotton floss. The background is a wool yarn. When I pulled this out there was maybe five inches of background stitched. Now I've covered nearly 20 inches. My family will tell you that I've been stitching almost compulsively.

I have no idea what I will do with this when the stitchiing is done (in another day or two!). While I could use a belt I doubt it will actually be made into a belt. Meanwhile, I've been back through the catalog to have a closer look at other needlepoint projects... ;- )

Pondering Goals

I think I was a teenager before the concept of setting goals was officially presented to me. And it did not go down well, let me tell you. Every time I was given an assignment that involved setting goals I would put it off, try to get out of it, moan and groan and complain until finally I was forced by the deadline to sit down and apply myself to the task. I never followed through on the stated goals if I could help it either.

Now that I'm in my fifth decade I have matured sufficiently to find goal setting not only easier to do but also desirable (at least in some cases!). Who'd a thunk it?! It only took some 40 years.

I bring this up because I've been thinking about how I'm going to cope without the Take It Further challenges next year. There doesn't seem to be enough interest amongst this year's participants to keep it going another year and Sharon is going in another direction with the challenge she's sponsoring in 2009. So I will have to challenge myself. I want to do a small monthly project, and I want it to be as much a mental challenge as an artistic one. (Does that make sense?)

I figure I need to come up with 12 challenges before January 1 otherwise I'll spend half of January trying to figure out what my challenge is! Also, part of the fun of TIF was waiting with bated breath for the first day of the month to find out what the challenge would be. So I'm planning to write out the challenges in advance, put the slips of paper in a tin or a box and draw one out on the first day of each month.

This is a new experience for me, planning this far in advance. By nature I am a leave-it-to-the-last-minute kind of gal. ;- )

It's not really eye candy, but I can't leave you without pictrues of some sort. I've done a couple more rows on my band sampler:

You'll notice I didn't bother with guidelines. I'm determined that this is to be a working sampler, not a showpiece. As a recovering perfectionist it's actually more difficult to let myself stitch freestyle than to mark nice even lines and have my work turn out more polished.

I have also sewn up these Bow Tie blocks:

They finish at 6" but they sure look bigger than that to me! Right now they're orphans; someday they'll end up in a preemie quilt or something. Oh, and my Christmas quilt has come back from the quilter. All I have to do now is trim it and bind it. Time for a seasonal movie!

More Color!

On my way home from my daughter's house the other day I took the opportunity to stop in my favorite shop for embroidery supplies. I went in intending to indulge in a purchase of maybe 5 to 7 dollars. An hour and a half later I left with $20 worth of happiness.

This isn't all of it, but there were only two other skeins in my bag that didn't make it into this picture. These are Watercolours by Caron. I bought them in part because I figured the luscious colors would help me get through the gray days of winter. (I had to lighten up the photo a bit; I think I overdid it.)

Then yesterday I finally took the plunge and dumped all of my embroidery threads on the floor to reorganize them. I'd had all my cotton flosses grouped according to color in the bigger plastic box you see on this shelf. The smaller tote had the lesser quantities of rayon threads, silk, linen, and perle cottons.


Now the bigger box holds my neutral threads and cool colors, and the smaller box has the warm color threads in it. My cotton flosses were strung together by color on shower curtain rings and then all the rings were loose in the big box. I've kept all the cotton flosses strung on their rings and then strung the other fibers together on another ring (within the color family). The rings and the balls and skeins of bulkier threads are all kept together now in one or two-gallon Ziploc bags.

The Ziploc bags keep the color families separated from each other within the boxes.

After all that I finally put my band sampler in the hoop and had a go with the new threads and some new-to-me stitches:

The top row is Portuguese Stem Stitch done in two different threads. The first part and last part of the line is done in 6 ply cotton floss, the middle bit was done with two strands of the Watercolor thread (which is a 3 ply cotton).

The second row is a laced running stitch. The bottom two rows are the same stitch, another version of the laced running stitch. In all three of these rows I did the running stitch in a perle cotton (#5 or #8; the 8 was really too fine). The yellow row is laced with another of the Watercolor threads (all 3 ply). The next row was laced with a fine ribbon intended for knitting. The bottom row was laced with a thread called Overture by Rainbow Gallery.

Can you tell that I like the variegated colorings? ;- )

(The stitch links will take you to Sharon B's Stitch Dictionary. She does not have the Portuguese Stem Stitch up there yet.)

Itchin' to Stitch

First of all, let me share some news: Sharon Boggon has moved her blog and all of her great resource material to PinTangle.com. There are links to all of the tips and tutorials and eye candy on her sidebar as well as links to the various challenges and activities she has or is hosting. This woman is a walking, talking, blogging font of embroidery and textile information and is constantly on the hunt for something new to share with us. I stitch in awe of her.

And speaking of stitching, here's where I am so far with my Sumptuous Surfaces piece:

Can you see the bits of turkey work I added? That's the fuzzy Whisper thread I bought on my last shopping excursion. I also did a bit of feather stitching with it to sort of fill in the shrubbery on the top right side.

It needs more but I'm afraid to go any further. It's simply a fear of the unknown. I am not fluent in the language of embroidery stitches so I don't know what can be achieved. Seeing pictures of what others have done is one thing. To make those stitches yourself is another. Only after you have stitched them can you begin to fully comprehend the possibilities they hold. To that end I have made up my mind to begin a band sampler a la Sharon's and Annie's:

Sharon's is the wider, longer version on the right, Annie's narrower sampler is on the left. Sharon has been teaching for some time so she had lots of little bits of stitching that she had been hauling around in folders and things. The folders got to be heavy and at least one piece of stitching got lost along the way so she decided to piece them all together into one long strip. Now she just rolls up her sampler and takes it with her. Students can still see and touch but it's much easier to transport and much harder to lose!

Annie's sampler is unique because she has included references to historic or meaningful events inbetween her stitch samples. You can see in the photo I lifted below that she has documented the Australian government's apology to the Aborigines. (There are more detail shots on Sharon's blog post. Just click on the link above.)

Annie blogs at Annies Crazy World. You can see all of her stitching there, usually in great detail.

The idea for a stitch sampler that incorporates personal history has been tickling my brain ever since I first read about this pair of samplers. When I was introduced to embroidery it was through kits and charted projects. Samplers were a static thing that someone else had designed and really didn't perform the function of giving experience with a lot of different stitches. (Can you say 'boooring'?) I played around with a greater variety of stitches when I was doing needlepoint, and that kept me interested for several years. Now that I have a desire for a working knowledge of embroidery stitches I have the perfect excuse to start a band sampler of my own! :- )