Slow Stitching Sunday

While every day is a slow stitching day around here, no matter what I am making, today I am organized enough to link up with Slow Stitching Sunday over at Kathy's Quilts.

My ongoing hand stitchery project is Best Friends Forever, a block of the month from Australian designer Rosalie Quinlan. There are eight months in total, and each month has four different stitchery motifs. I am halfway! Today I will be putting in the final stitches on the first motif of Month 5:

The linen fabric is white, actually, and has been an ongoing challenge to photograph! Right now my plan is to get one motif finished and posted by every Wednesday. Check in with me then for the final reveal!

I'm hoping to get a start on the next motif as well today:

I have been choosing my own colours and stitches for this project, and I have done all the birds as Northern Cardinals, with their distinctive red and black colouring. Here's a finished motif from Month 1 as an example:

The female cardinal is tan, with the same black marking and coral beak. Cardinals mate for life, so I thought they were a good fit for this project.

I'd better get to work. See you Wednesday!

Wordless WIP Wednesday - BFF 4.4

WIP Wednesday Link Up

Wordless WIP Wednesday - BFF 4.3

WIP Wednesday Link Up

BFF Month 4.2 Stitching

Yesterday I was finally able to put the last few stitches into the second motif from Month 4 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever. It's been a frustrating time since my last post because I spent most of last week flat on my back after a stretch intended to make my back better made it much, much worse. I should know by now! No machine sewing to show, but at least I was able to do this hand stitching.

I tried a different stitch combination on the leafy border this time. Here's a (very dark) photo of the work in progress:

It looks like the middle of the night, doesn't it? Actually it's the reflection of the blue sky through my north facing window. This project has been a real trial to photograph...

But anyway, you can see that the pattern had the same rounded leaves that so far I've been backstitching. I did still backstitch the leaves in the centre for variety. For the leafy border I used a light green twisted chain stitch for the middle of the leaves, and a darker green regular chain stitch around it to preserve the feeling of the "line." It took a few tries to get right, but I'm very happy with it!

And, since it worked so well, I tried the same technique on the tulips at the sides:

I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this again.

I'm halfway through the next motif as well, but I'm keen to get back to my sewing machine now that my back is feeling better. And I'm finally getting organized on this project too. I'll try to post that one next!

Left or Right?

The other day I sat down to do the blanket stitch on this flower, and I suddenly thought that I'd been doing it wrong up until now! I've always stitched blanket stitch from left to right, I guess because I saw it that way somewhere. But I'm right handed, and I've been finding that stitching is generally easier when I go from right to left. It was! It's a much more natural way for me to hold the needle.

Do you ever struggle with a stitch, only to turn it in a different direction and have it all fall into place? It was an interesting experience.

Anyway, this is the first motif from Month 4 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever.

I managed to get some purples back in the mix this time, and I added the lazy daisies to try to minimize the "sliced eggs" look of the ovals. I think that stitching them in green helped too.

I'm starting to think that Best Friends "Forever" may be prophetic on this project! Maybe after this month is completed I'll put it aside in favour of this project with the Flight Patterns fabric that I showed you earlier in the year. I have an immediate use for that project, but not for BFF, so I may re-prioritize. Despite my best intentions, I've got new projects sprouting out all over again, and my sewing area is getting chaotic. Time to clean it up and make some choices!

BFF Month 3 Finished

Here's the last motif for Month 3 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever. I am continuing to "Canadianize" the motifs where I can, so it seemed clear that the girl with the pigtails should be a redhead like Anne of Green Gables.

But I didn't know what to do with the character on the right. Shades of purple, perhaps? Then I remembered this illustration from Frances Tyrrell. If you look closely you can see one of the fairies in a very similar hat and tunic. Maybe it is a standard fairy outfit? Anyway, I went with green and I'm quite pleased with the result.

I also tried to do the flowers in light purple, but it made the piece too cold, and I wanted it to be sunny. So once again, there is no purple here. I'll try again in Month 4! Although, Month 3 was not completely purple-free:

Regular readers may have noticed that is it just three days since I said I would be packing this project away. But, after several days of doing nothing but Texas Star in the evenings, my hands were complaining. So I added BFF back in the mix so I don't strain one particular set of muscles. There will be one other change too -- the Trick or Treat baskets were not as "ready to start" as I thought. I may need more background fabric. So, I think I'll go back to Home Sweet Home, which at least is all blocked out, and the fabric choices are done.

The next post, though, will probably be some snowmen, because that's my plan for tomorrow!

BFF Month 3.3 Stitching

Before I pack it away, here's the third motif from Month 3 of Best Friends Forever, all finished.

I experimented with a couched lattice in the centre of the motif. This was my first try at a lattice, and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. I'll be using it again in other projects!

The fourth motif is almost finished too, but I'm going to stick to my new plan and pack it away while I work on L'Herbier. I hope that knowing this one is so close to the finish will motivate me to keep on track with L'Herbier. Something else to look forward to!

Back to Best Friends Forever

After a long hiatus, I have been working on Best Friends Forever again for the past few days. It sure feels easy, after all the fiddly little bits on Sweet Hearts, and the heavy stitching on L'Herbier! Mainly, though, I was in the mood for the bright spring colours again.

These two motifs are from Month 3, and were already mostly done when I put it away last year. The next two have further to go, but who knows? Maybe I am on a roll. :D

BFF Month 2.4 Stitching

Without further ado, here's the final motif for Month 2 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever:

I am continuing with the Northern Cardinal colouration on all the birds, even though they don't all have crests. Northern Cardinals mate for life, and they are rarely far apart, so they feel appropriate for the best friends forever theme. Plus, they are one of the few species of birds that stay near our house all year. The others tend to fly south for the winter, or north for the summer.

I know the photo is dark again too. Yes, it's still very cloudy around here! I had to use the flash for the next photo:

The next steps for Month 2 will be to wash the whole thing again, cut the motifs apart, line them, and piece them into the blocks. Plus, Month 3 is already underway!

BFF Month 2.3 Stitching

Here's the apple tree from Month 2 of Best Friends Forever, all finished. I think I've already said it all about this one! I will admit, though, that the solid apples in padded satin stitch do look pretty nice. :)

You can see by the dark photo that after an early taste of crisp January sunshine and snow, we are back to our usual grey and rainy December weather here in Toronto!

The last motif for Month 2 is also almost done, but I ran out of the grey-brown thread, DMC 840, so I'll have to dash over to the store some time this week. It's annoying, because somehow when I stocked up on thread for this project, I forgot that one! Well, I guess I'm lucky to have the option of a nearby store, I know many don't. On I go!

BFF Month 2.2 Stitching

Here, finally, is the next instalment of the Month 2 stitching on Best Friends Forever:

I did a lot of experimenting on the big hearts here before I hit upon a stitch that looked the way I wanted it to. I wanted a lot of texture so the hearts would stand out even though I was using a light colour.

When I'm "shopping" for a new stitch, I always come back to Country Bumpkin's A - Z of Embroidery Stitches, vols. 1 & 2:

These are probably the most used books on my bookshelf. They are spiral bound inside the cover, so they lie flat, and the detailed photographs are excellent.

Twisted chain stitch turned out to be perfect for this design. It works up quickly, and I found it to be very forgiving -- it creates a fairly straight line even when your stitches aren't! It's worked on both sides of the line...

...and can also be used for applique.

For the flowers I stuck with the stitches I've been using since Month 1:

The petals and leaves are done in back stitch with four strands of floss, the flower centres are tiny chain stitch, and the stems are stem stitch, naturally!

Regular readers may be wondering what happened to the apple tree from Month 2? After much procrastination it is now well under way! Here's another preview:

In the long run I think the padded satin stitch will prove to be a bad choice here, because I'm sure it will catch on something. But I'm committed now! Hopefully the whole tree will be done soon. ;)

In the mean time, happy stitching!

Recent Photos

My plan tonight was just to update the Texas Star Ticker in the right sidebar, which you can see is now up to Number 120. But I found two weeks of photos on my camera which provide an interesting (I hope) cross section of what I've been working on, so I thought I'd share a few.

Do you ever see inspiring quilt or stitching ideas on tv? I take photos! I hit pause, turn off the flash on my camera, and they come out pretty well. (Yes, I understand that this makes me a total fibre nerd.)

This still photo is from the tv drama Betrayal, on ABC in the U.S. and on City here in Canada. If you've been watching, you know it is about an affair between two married people, Sarah and Jack. The quilt is an interesting prop here. In the scene Sarah is sleeping in her studio after her husband has discovered the affair and kicked her out of their apartment. To me, the use of the quilt implies that by leaving her marriage Sarah has returned to a more wholesome way of life. Throughout the series, so far, there's been the suggestion that the affair is somehow more moral than their two marriages, his to a corrupt developer's daughter and hers to an ambitious prosecutor who's using her to forward his career. It will be interesting to see how it ends!

The other still is much less deep:

I think this is a Leapfrog commercial. But look at those cool drapes! They could be a stitching design, or a quilting design, or even an applique design. Plus, they remind me a lot of that Orla Kiely fabric and wallpaper design that has become an instant modern classic.

I found a bunch of poorly-lit photos of another new stitch that I'm using on Month 2 of Best Friends Forever:

I've been doing the hearts in twisted chain stitch, which I'm very pleased with, but more on that later.

Finally, I took some photos earlier today of the new background fabric that I bought for BFF:

Last time I showed you the solid light green background that was my first try. But I'm not sure if I like this either! It does tend to make the flower blocks look a little shady, doesn't it? I cropped the photo and tried a different angle to see if I liked it any better:

The blue looks very electric against the petals, which have a slightly grey undertone, and the olive leaves. It clashes, but just a little, and I'm starting to think I like that, the more I look at it. For a while now I've been trying to break away from "safe" colour schemes, but I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it. What do you all think?

BFF Setting

So, there's kind of a long story behind the idea for my setting for Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever stitcheries. Feel free to scroll to the end to see the final plan, and if you wonder how I came up with that idea, you can come back to the top and I'll tell you now. :-)

In the summer of 2012 I had two new English Paper Piecing projects in mind -- Texas Star, which is now well under way, and Botanic Roses. Botanic Roses was a reworking of this old UFO that I started almost ten years ago:

This quilt design was on the cover of an old issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting. Each block has 72 pieces! All are hand cut from templates and hand pieced. For me, the cutting was the worst part of that, but there was also a problem with the white-on-white background fabric, which was printed with gummy ink that was terrible for hand sewing. The quilt ground to a halt.

When I learned about English Paper Piecing, and I saw that you could buy these kite shapes precut, I wanted to revive the project, but with a more disciplined colour scheme. Botanic Roses was born. My idea was to interpret my favourite dishes as a quilt:

I thought this would be a good way to restrict the colour palette, but right from the start I had trouble showing all the detail in the rose. I just hated that clumsy hexagon in the middle of the block. I tried many variations:

I played with cutouts:

Finally I realized that the batik fabrics I bought for the project were too busy, and they would blend out all the tricky piecing, so that would just be a waste of time. The whole project went back on the shelf.

This summer, along came BFF, and I suddenly realized that the clumsy hexagon which gave me so much trouble on Botanic Roses, would be just right for the hexagon stitcheries:

It fits perfectly!

So, there you have it. Having seen the photos now, though, I am pretty sure that I will change the background from this pale green solid to something a little darker and with a slight pattern. I didn't want to detract from the blocks at all, but now I see that this doesn't do them justice. One of the threads I'm using is a cooler, jade green, and I'm thinking that may be a good background colour too. Now I have something to shop for again!

Ironically, some of the yellow fabrics that I bought for this quilt have the same gummy ink that set me back on the original version of this quilt almost ten years ago! I can't believe I made the same mistake again! Fortunately it is only here and there, so hopefully it will not be as bad.

And, Botanic Roses is still not dead, I have a new plan for that one too. But there is a fair bit to get done before that...

The Needle and Thread Network has not seen me in a while, so I am linking up with WIP Wednesday there. Happy stitching!

BFF Month 2.1 Stitching

With the Thanksgiving holiday last weekend, there has been very little stitching going on around here. Instead, I had a full week of Thanksgiving planning, shopping, cleaning, baking and cooking. So much production for one meal! But, I have realized that I think I enjoyed the meal a lot more than those who just sat down and ate it, lol. You appreciate the details more when you understand what was involved!

It's been a little challenging to get back to business as usual, but last night I did manage to finish the first motif for Month 2 of Best Friends Forever:

This is probably the least interesting motif in the Month 2 set, but at least it was fast. And I did manage to squeeze in one new element:

These little purple buds are just circles, but I stitched them in blanket stitch to give them a little more presence and tie them together with the flowers from last month.

The next motif will be the apple tree. I decided to try out the apples in padded satin stitch:

In the lower left corner you can see the remains of a failed attempt at this! But, I secured the thread so firmly that it is melded with the fabric. So, like it or not, I am now committed to satin stitch for the apples! But, I did find that the padding acts as a stabilizer and the fabric didn't pucker, so I think it will work out ok. Stay tuned!

And, today I have managed to link up again with all the Canadian blogs for WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network. There's lots to see this week!

BFF Month 1.4 Stitching

Monday was a very productive day for me. In addition to finishing off the Lima Beans, I went on to put the last stitches in Month 1 of Best Friends Forever. There's nothing like an extra cup of coffee during the day!

Today I tried to get some photos in the morning sun before it went behind the trees:

The photo's still a little shady, but let's call it "atmospheric." Here's the whole month:

The next step is to cut them all out and start work on the setting, which will be English Paper Pieced. Right now, though, I've started to stitch Month 2. I've been thinking about the colours for a month now, so I'm keen to see how they will look, but I absolutely would not let myself start until Month 1 was done. Good plan, I think!

It's Wednesday, so I'm linking up again to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network. Onwards!

BFF Month 1.3 Stitching

Here's the third stitchery motif for Month 1 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever:

The only issue I've had so far with these patterns has been the gummy ink that they are printed with. It is very hard to stitch through. My solution has been to pick a side of the line and stick with it. For the most part, I've found that stitching on the outside of any curves is best, because the thread has a tendency to roll inwards and cover the line.

I've been stitching all the half pinwheel flowers to the outside of the line as well, which makes them a bit larger. So far, though, I still think they are pretty cute!

The fourth (and last) motif for this month is the teapot. I am chain stitching almost the whole thing, so it has been slow going. I'm hoping it will be done next week, but no promises!

This week I am linking once again to WIP Wednesday (which starts late Tuesday, if you are wondering) at The Needle and Thread Network.

Related Posts

BFF Month 1.2

BFF Month 1.1

BFF Month 1.2 Stitching

Here's the next finished motif from Month 1 of Rosalie Quinlan's Best Friends Forever. I have already shown this while it was in progress, where I discussed the flowers, leaves and bird. The lettering is back stitch, done with two strands of floss. By breaking the back stitch down into two steps, instead of just one step worked from the front, I have finally managed to get it to be fairly consistent.

I am happy with it, anyway! The third one, the umbrella, is not far behind. The teapot will need a few more days. Onwards!

BFF Month 1.1 Stitching Finished!

Here's my first completed stitchery for Rosalie Quinlan's BOM, Best Friends Forever:

If you are familiar with the pattern, you can see I have made some variations. I am sticking with my Northern Cardinal colouration for the birds. This time I was able to include the brown female as well as the red male. Aren't their coral beaks pretty?

I have also decided to keep those small leaves on the stems open, rather than closing them in with satin stitch. I like the feathery, ferny effect this gives them:

These were back stitched with four strands of floss to balance them with the stems.

For the flowers I stuck with the half pinwheel petals that I showed you previously. This is a crazy quilting stitch that would normally be used as a seam treatment. It is sewn continuously, so it goes quickly:

I also used blanket stitch pinwheels on the round flowers:

I tried at least four variations on this flower before I was happy with it. I am sorry I didn't take photos of the rejects, sometimes it is interesting to see what didn't work too.

Finally, I want to show how I handled all those little crosses. Wretched things! I don't think they add anything to the design, and they're a time consuming pain in the neck. I elected to stitch them all in a very light blue, DMC 828, and try to blend them out as much as possible:

You can see that I couched down the centre of each cross. I'm hoping that this will prevent them from snagging when the quilt is used. It also gave me a little more thread on the back to work with when I tied each and every one of them off. After a while I did get into a rhythm with them. Good thing, because it looks like they appear on almost all the motifs!

So, one down, 31 to go. Hopefully the rest of Month 1 won't be far behind! I'm linking this post up with WIP Wednesday #104 at The Needle and Thread Network. Check out some of the other great blogs there!