2022/06/30 I’ve been doing a little machine embroidery lately; these little brooches are so cute and easy to make. I’ve only done a few colours so far, the most popular being pink and blue. They’re great as a novelty gift to the new grandparent who is just dying to talk about the newest grandbaby. Pin one to your lapel, your bag or whatever object you’re sure will be seen by anyone in your gathering and be sure to have the baby photos ready to display! I’m contemplating making some for our Guild’s Boutique in the 2023 quilt show. I wonder if they’d be a good seller?
2022/06/29 – new grandbaby badges, approx. 1.5″ (40mm) x 3″ (80mm) in size. It is backed with a standard 1″ brooch pin with a safety rolling catch.
Week six of the broken fifth metatarsal saga is drawing to a close and I’m still wearing a cast…sigh. One more week and this one should come off. I’ve had this boot cast for about two weeks now and it’s a treat to be able to remove it to shower! But I’m still on non-weight bearing orders…..
It’s Spring around here; the daffodils are blooming, the primula and crocuses are blooming, the peach and nectarine trees are blooming….and on and on…. I love living on the West Coast!
And all that blooming is why I talked myself into doing another Sweet Pea Embroidery Sew Along. The discounted design for March is the Tulip Fields Hanger and I found it irresistible. And as usual, life & other quilting projects interfere & I was down to the wire on submitting it to the Facebook group today. And wow! what an amazing collection of beautiful submissions from all over the world! I don’t think I’ll win anything with mine but it’s fun being included in such a talented group.
And did I mention I placed third (one of three) in last month’s Sew Along with my table topper (which is a wall hanging at the moment)? I was so surprised! The prize is one free design. How will I decide which one when there are so many beautiful ones from which to select!
2022/03/27 – Tulip Fields machine embroidery design by Sweet Pea Embroidery Designs 12.5″ x 24″
Oh what fun I’ve been having…….I find machine embroidery designs on sale and what am I to do? Yes, well, you can guess I’ll bet.
Before Christmas I was looking for something to make for a 10 month old adorable cherub and found this delightful ITH (In The Hoop) bib pattern so quickly stitched it up. His mom tells me it got used! So after Christmas I stitched up another one just to have on hand for another Christmas when I need a baby gift again. I back them with rip stop nylon so however wet the front of the bib becomes, baby’s clothes underneath stay dry.
The design is the Rudolph Christmas Bib from Sweet Pea Embroidery Designs. Their designs are well digitized and stitch out beautifully. In addition, detailed well written instructions are included with every project. Even I hardly ever make a mistake lol.
Last year my daughter, who enjoys pottery, gifted me two lovely little vases she’d made. During the summer I had no problem keeping them full of blooms, but they’ve been empty so far this winter. I decided machine embroidery could come to the rescue so off I went searching for the perfect flowers. I found a beautiful Floral Lace Bouquet at OESD. So far I’ve only stitched two of the flowers but there will be more to come! Again, another site marketing well digitized designs and excellent instructions.
And then if that wasn’t enough machine embroidery I moved on to the Sweet Pea Sew Along project for February. I think I’ve mentioned before that Sweet Pea Machine Embroidery has a monthly sew along group on Facebook. At the beginning of each month they produce a new design for the sew along and discount the price 30% for that month. You post your finished project by the month end and it’s judged and the lucky winners (and there are many) may win free or discounted designs. I’ve entered a couple of times, won nothing yet, but keep trying. Considering they have entries from all over the world, it might be a long wait! February’s project is the Half Square Flare Quilt and my little quilt is a table topper that measures about 31.5″ x 31.5″…….or maybe it will be a wall hanging; who knows!
2022/02/24 – Table centre piece
– machine embroidered/quilted
– 31.5″ x 31.5″
– pattern is Half Square Flare by Sweet Pea Machine Embroidery2022/02/23 – Table centre piece
– machine embroidered/quilted
– 31.5″ x 31.5″
– pattern is Half Square Flare by Sweet Pea Machine Embroidery2022/02/23 – Table centre piece
– machine embroidered/quilted
– 31.5″ x 31.5″
– pattern is Half Square Flare by Sweet Pea Machine Embroidery
So tonight I’m off to one of our Guild’s demos on hand embroidery to see if I can learn something new. I’ll take along my little fabric pieces, needle and scissors but I’m not going to get hooked on any other hobby……really…….
…the stuffie family of Mom & Pop Penguin & the kids. I wonder if it’s our current weather that inspired me to purchase this design or the fact that it was on sale? Or after giving one of our youngest friends one for Christmas I just thought that making more stuffies would be fun? And if you’re interested in machine embroidery, as of today this design, Playful Penguin, is still on sale at Urban Threads. Pop is the tallest at about 7.5″ and the shortest one is about 3.5″. They’re made of black sparkle fleece, white quilter’s cotton, stuffed with polyester stuffing and embroidered on my Husqvarna Designer Diamond with Sulky thread.
2022/01/06 – The Penguin family: Mom, Pop & the kids. Embroidery design purchased from Urban Threads. Tallest penguin is about 7.5″ and shortest is about 3.5″.
2021/12/08 I finished two projects for which I had deadlines (mostly self-imposed) so I took a little play time yesterday to machine embroider a cute little badge for a friend with a sense of humour. She wore it to work today to amuse her colleagues. The patch was purchased from Urban Threads and stitched on my Husqvarna Designer Diamond. I turned it into a badge by adding a badge pin to the back. Click here for a good tutorial by Urban Threads for making ITH (In The Hoop) patches.
2021/12/08 An In The Hoop patch from Urban Threads
In a fairly recent post I mentioned Sweet Pea Machine Embroidery and their Sew Along in which I’d participated. Well wouldn’t you just know that their design for the November Sew Along would be irresistible and I’d have to purchase it too (30% off helps to make the decision). So the deadline to have this one submitted for consideration in their monthly awards was half an hour ago and I got mine in one hour before that (doing my happy dance lol)! And now I have another Christmas wall hanging; win, win! I used glow in the dark thread (Wonderfil’s Ahrora™) on some of the elements in these designs. Oh yeah, the snow on the roof shines after the lights goes out lol. These nine individually stitched designs use up an incredible amount of thread. I must have used 8-10 bobbins! This project was stitched on my Husqvarna Viking Designer Diamond using mostly Sulky thread. Its size is approximately 23″ x 23″. Hmm… I wonder what December’s design for the Sew Along will be….. And I’ve started quilting another Dream Big Holiday panel…
2021/11/25 – Christmas Village Machine Embroidery. Approx. 23″ x 23″2021/00/25-November Sew Along – glow in the dark thread.2021/11/24 – Just started quilting another Dream Big Holiday panel.
This was an impromptu embroidery design purchase; I didn’t even know I needed another project! And one with a deadline…..sigh…
Sweet Pea Machine Embroidery Designs carries beautiful machine embroidery designs and the temptation is always there to click on the ‘buy now’ button; it’s so darn easy! Well, as a way to entice the customer, they hold a monthly sew along and discount a design for that sew along. This was October’s sew along and poinsettias were on my mind as I was just quilting one (my previous blog post) so I was hooked. I didn’t leave myself much time; I just finished the poinsettia wall quilt on the 19th. It took a long time and a lot of thread to stitch this; I think I used six bobbins! I finished yesterday and submitted it to their Facebook page; I even beat their deadline by one day! The design is Poinsettia Blocks/Quilt, in case you’d like to get yours too.
This is a small table runner measuring about 12.5″ x 26″. The poinsettia is available in sizes 4″ x 4″, 5″ x 5″, 6″ x 6″, 7″ x 7″ and 150cm x 150cm; I used the largest one – 7″ x 7″ and a variety of Sulky rayon, metallic and holoshimmer threads. I used one layer of wrap n zap batting; perfectly good for this project. All the fabrics and threads came from my stash. If I’d had more time I would have made a longer one. Maybe for next Christmas….lol.
Sometimes an embroidery project is just too much fun. Our ladies cycling group started small and the initial members named the group the Golden Girls (and yes, the members are all old enough to remember the TV series). Our group grew in size and during a group texting chat one day the members started brainstorming an updated name for the group. I’m only disappointment that I wasn’t the one who thought up the acronym upon which we enthusiastically settled: BAGGs! But I am the one who has an embroidery machine so I quickly produced these badges.
I suppose you’d like to know what this acronym stands for? Well, it’s Bad A** Golden Girls lol. Depending on the audience asking, the A could stand for Apple, or some other non-offensive word.
And yes, we will be offended if you call us the OLD BAGGs!
Although our own grandkids are getting older (the youngest is 13) we are fortunate to have young friends with youngsters three and five with whom we get to spend time and are very happy to babysit occasionally We’ve even been lucky enough to have spent several Christmases with the family. Because of Covid our interactions are less frequent these days but that doesn’t mean we can’t give gifts at Christmas. I’ve been doing lots of stitching leading up to Christmas, some of which I can’t publish until after tomorrow, but here are the fun projects I completed for these delightful children – glow in the dark door hangers and novelty place mats.
This year’s place mats are half of the four piece set Critter Placemats from Vanilla House. I made the first two a couple of years ago and forgot to take photos but ben bear and friendly fox scored a photo session this year. In addition I made a couple of door hangers with glow in the dark thread and I’ll bet the kids will like those!
Another passion of mine, and one in which I don’t indulge much since quilting seems to have taken over my time, is machine embroidery. There are still times though when I incorporate embroidery in a project and this is one.
Hubby asked me to make covers for a couple of pieces of his woodworking shop equipment that he doesn’t use frequently; he hopes to reduce the amount of dust that collects on them. My job was the easy one as he designed and provided me with the patterns and on one of our trips to the Island we picked up the nylon fabric and the piping for it. He’s hoping that the nylon fabric will shed most of the dust that settles on everything in the shop…….my experience is that dust sticks to EVERY surface no matter how slippery it is but we’ll see how this works out..lol.
In his pre-retirement life there was a lady on his staff who was skilled in graphic design and he had her design a logo for his joe handyman custom woodwork™ hobby. Now for those of you who know my DH doesn’t that look just like him? I love it. Several years ago I digitized the logo and this seemed an ideal project on which to use it.
myrtBquilting 