Category Archives: embroidery

Projects of 2024

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My motto for the year was “Make it Easier”. It seemed like half of what I did to make life easier was hard work. We should reap the benefits in the future, though. And it was a good habit to stop and think: “will this make life easier?” or “is there an easier way?” when faced with a task, rather than my usual habit of sprinting down a path without considering my limits.

January

The second month of the Summer of Quilts, in which I attempted to use up all the strips of flannelette I cut to weave floor rugs out of four years ago by sewing quilts. It was like a madness came over me.

It wasn’t all quilting, though. A return to crocheting in the previous year led to me making the Granny Square Jumper from stash and (of course) yarn I purchased in order to complete it. I love it and was wearing it as I typed the early version of this post.

February

Though I’d decided this quilting obsession had to stop at the end of summer, I knew that I couldn’t possibly get all the quilts done, so I prioritised finishing the tops. Binding and topstitching would have to happen later, maybe one quilt a month. For that reason, I have no finished projects to show for February even though there was feverish making of quilt tops.

March

The Blue Quilt, which was the hardest and biggest, was finished.

And the Purple Quilt.

And then I got around to doing what I’d intended to do when the quilting thing started: sewing clothes. First, the Cascade Skirt.

April

Then lots of knits.

May

Then the Colour-Blocked Corduroy Jacket.

And crocheting continued with the Gradient Slouchy Hat

June

No projects were finished in June, because I was reorganising three and a half rooms of our house in order to reinstate the guest room and divide my hobbies into a room for textiles and a room for art. And was THAT a project. Utterly exhausting, but worth it.

July

But in July I finished three quilts First the Rainbow Cat Quilt.

Then the Art Quilt.

And finally the last quilt, the Cats In Squares Quilt.

I was introduced to slow stitching.

And I wove off the dishcloths on the Jane.

August

Another month of no finished projects, but I did start two big slow stitch ones. Slow means longer gaps between finished objects, which is probably why I bought some kits at the Craft & Quilt Show and was suddenly very inspired by small project tutorials online.

September

I hand stitched a cute pentagon bag.

And made fabric birds.

And made a triangle bag.

I made microwave bowl cosies.

And a pencil case.

By then I’d finished one of the big projects: a kawandi made from old men’s shirts.

October

I sewed some pinstripe pants.

And a harvest apron/bag from cotton canvas scraps.

November

I made (or covered) some sewing tools.

And I made a shirt from some very old organic cotton remnants.

December

When a friend wanted the Desperately Seeking Susan jacket I’d put together fifteen years before, I decided to attach the collar properly and fix up a few things on the back.

That inspired a new jacket transformation, the Moon Raven Jacket.

Also…

It was a year of quitting. First Instagram, after I couldn’t sign in to my Creative Fidget account any more, then Twitter, which I’d barely touched in years. I also stopped my Sketchbox subscription. It was fun for the year I had it, and I still enjoy using the mediums I discovered through it, but there are only so many kinds of art supplies and they were bound to start repeating themselves.

It was also the year I got hooked on YouTube, watching art, sewing and thrifting videos. At its best it’s informative and inspiring, at its worst it’s a distraction. I’d rather be making art or sewing, but both require a certain amount of alertness and energy, and sometimes I have neither. And now I remember that slow stitching was meant to be my ‘dull brain’ activity.

In the next year I plan to keep on making art, sewing and slow stitching. I’m sure there’ll be other creative rabbit holes to explore, or revisiting of familiar territories, but (to keep the analogy going) no I have no destination in mind and will dawdle along at whatever pace suits.

Desperate Seeking Susan Jacket Take Two

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Back when I did my Spring wardrobe cull, I included my costumes. I used to have an entire wardrobe’s worth of them, many hand made, but I’ve grown out and culled most of them. In my most recent cull I finally had to acknowledge that I was never going to fit into the Desperately Seeking Susan costume I put together for my 40th birthday.

But what to do with it? On a whim, I posted a picture on FB. A friend immediately asked it she could have it. I was delighted, but also embarrassed. You see, I’d forgotten how impermanent the adaption had been. The text was written with pen and I’d taken a jacket with no collar and tacked one on very loosely over the top in a way that didn’t even distantly resemble real clothing. Yet at the same time, I realised that I now had the skills to attach the collar properly. So when I next saw my friend, I got her to try it on to make sure I wasn’t wasting the effort, and I admit I was excited when it did because I really did want to fix it.

So I got to work – taking off the collar, adding some interfacing, reshaping the neckline and attaching the collar properly. It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than it was.

When I made it, I had only a very low resolution photo of the design on back to go from. Since then the original jacket has sold at auction there’s now a good photo of it online. I was amused to see that the text on the ribbon had been written with pen (and had blurred with time) just as I had done, so I left that as it was. The text on the pyramid was stitched as part of the quilting, and there was nothing I could do to match that. The writing I’d done had bled into the gold fabric. So I just embroidered over that and dabbed a bit of gold paint on in a few places.

The last big difference between the original and mine was the eye at the top of the pyramid. It had been very obscured in the original reference. I could now see both the design and what it was made from, and decided to completely remake it. I didn’t have any of the gold fabric any more, but I’d bought some for another project inspired by the DDS jacket, so I used that. I also didn’t have any bugle beads like those used for the radiating lines, but I did have the gold embroidery thread I’d used for the chain around the ribbon.

This was never going to be a close duplicate because the original jacket is made a gold and black fabric and the shape isn’t the same, but I’m happy with the update. And I’ve been inspired by it, and a few other decorated jackets I’ve noticed in craft and thrifting videos, to embellish one of my jackets with something entirely my own design.

Slow Stitch Skirt

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Having done two fairly random slow stitched pieces then turned them into useful objects, I was ready to make something more intentional. I had lots of ideas to choose from. What I settled on was a skirt with a slow stitched front. The base fabric will be black and the scraps sewed onto it will be colourful so the result looks a bit like stained glass. Because it’ll be washed in the machine, I’m folding in the edges of the scraps.

I didn’t want to wrangle a large piece of fabric so I’m doing it in strips to be sewn together later. The strips would be indifferent colours, with red at the bottom then purple, blue, aqua and green in turn to the waist.

My small stash of fabric scraps wasn’t going to accommodate this, so I began sourcing more. First from a friend, who supplied most of what I needed from her bountiful stash. Then by buying scrap packs at the Craft & Quilt Show, and at the Embroiderer’s Guild destash sale. I also ordered a random scrap bundle from a quilting shop but the colours were either too muted or not the hues I’m looking for.

I didn’t want the skirt to be as thick and poofy as a quilt so I’m using strips of leftover flannelette from making quilts instead of batting. For the thread I’m using up more mercerised cotton thrums, but where I don’t have the right colours I’m using perle cotton embroidery thread as well. I really like the soft shine of mercerised cotton, and enjoying stitching in saturated colour.

Another Stitched Thing

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Before I’d finished the first slow stitching piece I had the next one ready and waiting, but while I worked on the second piece my thoughts wandered down a different path: all the different applications I could put this stitching thing to. Which seems like planning, which is not in the spirit of slow stitching, and yet seems like exploring wherever inspiration takes me, which does.

I did a lot of exploring in the second piece.

When it was done, a bit of contemplation and experimental folding happened before I knew what it wanted to become. That, it turned out, was a zippered bag, with a quilted corduroy stripe at the bottom and as a tab at the side. I love it!

My favourite part of the stitching is this bit:

The stitch might be called ‘feather stitch’ in the little embroidery book I keep by my armchair, but linked up and meandering into a larger mass it looks like the pattern formed by streams joining to form every larger rivers, or the expanding growth form of tree branches. The stitched area has a satisfying texture not unlike lines of running stitch, but more fun to sew.

I’m also enjoying french knots more now I have the hang of them. And chain stitch, despite not really liking making daisies. I’ve always liked blanket stitch. But not so much the stem stitch I used for the spirals, which I kept having to unpick and redo because they looked too wonky.

A New Thing

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Of course, trying to finish UFO and organise my stuff is the perfect time to try a new hobby, but in retrospect, it was doing those things that led to the hobby-trying.

Because of thrums.

This is after culling and using maybe a third.

I have quite a lot of them, and recently I’ve tested a few new ways to use them up. I tried combing some wool thrums into fluff to spin new yarn out of, but it was too much like hard work and the yarn it made was yucky. Then I made some wool thrum tassels on a day when only a mostly brainless task would do, and I was pretty happy with the result. They’ll be used as decorations at my next party thing.

These will be party decorations.

Then I realised that the perle cotton and 16/2 cotton thrums would make excellent thread for slow stitching pieces.

Ah. Slow Stitching. A woman I met at a car thing a few months ago enthused about it, and of course I’d seen examples on Instagram and YouTube. With those thrums sitting there needing a purpose, I did a bit of research, brought out my new ‘scrap fabric’ tub and started playing. I made a piece out of blue and green offcuts sewn with natural white cotton thrums, that became a small drawstring bag.

Then I started on a piece in red shades stitched with yellow, green and salmon pink perle cotton thrums.

And somehow I managed to buy a book on the subject. And some little packets of fabric scraps I found at an op shop.

I’m not sure where this is going, but that’s kind of the point. This is very much a journey-more-important-than-destination pastime. The fact is, though, that’s not very me. However, I am able to enjoy the lack of end purpose if I tell myself that I don’t have to decide what the thing I’m making will become until I’m done stitching. As with most new hobbies, the first things I made are more about learning and practising. I may grow more intentional in my choices, but for now… this’ll do.

One Cull Leads to Another

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During my fabric, pattern and habby cull, I got to thinking about how different my attitude to fabric stash is to yarn stash. With sewing, I have a limited time I can spend on the machine before my back complains, so I don’t waste it on making items I don’t want or aren’t fun to make.My fabric collection isn’t overly large. It fits in four plastic filing boxes and one tub.

With weaving, I often make things I don’t particularly want to keep in order to use up stash or learn something new. The weaving yarn stash is seven or eight times larger than the fabric stash. Which is sobering, but not unexpected. It’s been my main hobby for quite a few years now, and until recently I was on quite a learning drive.

I’d like to weave with the same attitude as sewing, so having a weaving yarn stash as practical as the sewing stash appeals. However, to get to that point I’d have to cull quite a bit of yarn. The thought was rather intimidating, but on a free day recently, I girded my loins and got stuck in. What I found surprised me.

Since it was a large task, I broke it into smaller ones. My cones of yarn are stored separately to the skein, ball and hanks, and I left them for another time.

Out: a few cones I knew I’d never weave.

The balls, skeins and hanks of yarn made up about half the yarn. I was surprised to find they were mostly knitting and crochet yarn. Not that I don’t weave knitting yarn, just not as often these day. Some is intended for machine knitting projects, so it turns out this is also a machine knitting stash. And possibly hand knitting and crocheting, but I’ll get to that later.

Out: a bag of yarn I wasn’t keen on.

Below the knitting yarns were eight tubs of fabric for rag rugs. Am I going to weave more rag rugs? Probably not. While I like rag rugs, the oldest ones I have I made 13 years ago, and I plan to replace them with the flannelette ones I have in storage.

Out: ALL of the fabric for weaving.

When I’d estimated the amount of weaving yarn I had, I was waaaay out, because I forgot the wool rug stash.

Yikes.

Out: about half of it.

Having decided that this was also a machine knitting stash, I moved the circular knitting machines in from the craft room. In order to do that I had to move the embroidery and macramé yarn stash. You know what happened next.

Out: er, nothing. I meant to get rid of most of it, but there’s now plenty of room on the yarn stash shelves and I have a few ideas I’d like to try. At least removing it from the same cupboard as the sewing supplies gives me a some room for all that ex-fabric-for-weaving, which may become quilts and chair covers.

I’ve come up with a couple of crochet projects for the knitting yarn, too. All things I want and will be fun to make. Next time I have the urge to downsize, the cone yarns will be in the firing line. Hopefully before the next Guild bazaar.

Lady Finishers

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Back when Paul was doing his Batchelor of Photography he needed old wooden frames, so he bought some through eBay. One had an embroidery from 1992 in it. He was going to throw it away, but I figured I could probably make something with it one day.

Recently (but probably not so recently that I’m being all that trendy) I noticed there was a fashion for denim jackets with embellishments on the back. I thought about putting that embroidery on the back of mine as a kind of fast, cheats way to get the look. In the meantime, a corduroy jacket I’d bought second hand lost a button. I went on a long and fruitless hunt for a replacement that would match the rest, but it being your typical metal shank button I couldn’t find anything even similar.

Eventually I settled on a plastic shank button in my stash that has a pearlescent effect that looks remarkably like the metal buttons from a distance. I sewed it on when tackling the mending pile after my big craft room cull. The embroidery was in my ‘not sure if I should toss or keep’ pile and I decided it was time to decide whether to sew it on my jacket or toss it out. I took out my denim jacket and laid the embroidery out on the back. Since it was there I also tried it on the corduroy jacket – and it matched that one better. So I decided to go ahead and sew it on.

I’m so glad I did! When I removed the backing board from the embroidery I had quite a surprise.

Whoever had framed the embroidery had used the photo that was originally in the frame – from the late 1800s we think. On the back was a rather amusing note from the photo studio:

As for the embroidery… I used iron-on fusing to attach interfacing to the back then sewed that onto the jacket. I’m rather chuffed with the result:

Eye of the Needle

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I worked on this piece for a couple of years. It was the project I’d take on trips or work on while listening to a speaker and an event. It was also the test piece I worked on after my eye op.

I have to confess, I didn’t enjoy it much. It may be that I didn’t because it hung around so long and I got bored with it. Struggling to work on it post-surgery turned that lack of inspiration to discomfort. There’s some irony in that my last fine embroidery project is an eye, when my eyes are the reason I stopped.

To get the eye finished quicker, I decided not to do the eyebrow and an area of shadow under the eye. The lines were done with the orange-based cleaner on a printout method. I’ve washed these sorts of lines out before, but this time it was hard work scrubbing it off, and I wasn’t entirely successful. Maybe because they’d been there for a few years. To hide them, I painted the piece with Procion dye while at the weaving retreat.

I do like how it turned out.

I just need the perfect frame for it.

Not long after I dyed it I got a fortune cookie at a friend’s birthday party:

I laughed and laughed.

Sampler Brooch

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I started making this brooch a while back, but stopped because I wanted to use it as an example in a talk about weaving while travelling. That talk got cancelled, then rescheduled, and I wound up finishing it and starting another to be the in-progress example.

After I had my eyes done and discovered embroidery was no longer comfortable, I figured I wouldn’t be making any more of these and wondered what I’d do with the settings. But weaving on cloth like this is easier on they eye than the fine embroidery I was doing before, so having finished one I know I can take another with me as a project to do while travelling. Here’s the in-progress example:

I’ve finished sewing in the ends of the Green Stripes Jacket and sewn up the seams. Now I’m pacing myself as I knit the ribbed bits. Which means I’ve machine knit the pieces of another entire garment, but I’ll talk about that in a new post.

Lots going on here craft-wise, but not much weaving right now. I’m still waiting for the circular knitting machines to arrive. I can see on the courier site that they’ve arrived in Australia, but they’ve not budged since. Stuck in customs maybe?

Bathing Beauties

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I finished these months ago, but I didn’t want to post about them until they were framed. Today I finally had all the elements to do that.

I still haven’t had the courage to try embroidery since my eye operation. There’s a fairly complicated WIP waiting beside my tv watching armchair for that moment.