Thread Storage

I decided to organise my hand sewing threads because I had too many little boxes of this and that and I wanted everything in the one place.

 I already had 2 plastic containers for my 6 strand embroidery floss that I use all the time. I really love them because they are big and I can see my thread clearly. I bought them from the Craftainers stand at the Melbourne Craft and Quilting Show one year (aka Jeff’s shed) I have looked for them since and they haven’t been there again.

Here is a picture of one of the containers.

So I went on line to buy some more. I ended up buying not only some more plastic containers but a little shelf system to store them all. I also bought a bigger container that I have stored at the top of the storage container.

So, I have 2 containers holding my 6 strand embroidery floss and 1 container holding all of the thicker threads.

Another one contains my wool threads.

I am lucky to have the entire range of the 100wt YLI silk thread and so I have stored them in a container.

In the last container I am going to store all my silk ribbon.

In the big container up the top, I have stored all my braids.

I am very happy with my new system and it makes everything so handy and easy to find.

I was also happy with the service from Craftainers. The package arrived within two days of placing the order.

I have to get back to my sewing!

Bye for now,
Linda

CQJP 2012 March

I am managing to keep up to date with my Crazy Quilt Journal Blocks (CQJP 2012).

My theme is Christmas and this month I used a blue background as my base. I really like the blue and don’t know why I don’t use that colour more often. It was always my favourite colour when I was growing up.

This month, I decided to needle turn appliqué a couple of Christmas crackers in the middle of the block.

Here is the finished 6" block.

The block looks a little bare on the right edge but I am leaving a place for a charm. I don’t put the charms on my crazy quilts until after they are quilted.

The little red stitches on the cretan stitch on the top right is Sorbello stitch.

I had better get started on my April block. Actually, hasn’t the year just started, why are we suddenly talking about April!

Bye for now,

Linda

Van Gogh

This month the Waverley Art Quilters have been studying Vincent Van Gogh.

Vincent Van Gogh was born in The Netherlands in 1853 and died in France from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1890. He was only 37 years old but had suffered mental illness for years.

Vincent only took up painting in the last 10-15 years of his life and he worked tirelessly with self-imposed training to make up for his late start. He produced many paintings but always felt a failure because he only managed to sell one in his lifetime.

Van Gogh is known as a Post-Impressionist painter. He started using a brighter palette after discovering the Impressionist style and used an impasto technique to create thick layers of paint.

Many of his paintings are worked in complementary colours because he found that they produced brilliant effects together without using any middle tones.

The Impressionists were trying to paint what they saw. Van Gogh was trying to paint what he felt when he saw it.

Van Gogh became obsessed with painting a night sky. Two of his well-known paintings are Starry Night 1888 and The Starry Night 1889.

Starry Night 1888

The Starry Night 1889

In January 2010 I drove to Canberra with my family to see the Masterpieces from Paris exhibition in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. It was the Post-Impressionist paintings from the Musée D’orsay Museum in France.

It was a wonderful exhibition but the painting that stood out for me the most was Starry Night by Van Gogh. They seemed to have a particularly good light on it and the painting glowed.

I decided to make an A3 art quilt using Starry Night as my inspiration and rather than trying to faithfully re-create it, I would try and concentrate on using the complementary colours of blue and yellow and try to create the reflections in the water.

I wasn’t happy with the end result. It looked like a poor imitation of the original painting with none of the vibrancy.

I felt that I had to redeem myself. So I got out a copy of the other painting The Starry Night and just drew the sky part of it onto blue fabric with a white pencil.

Using blue and yellow embroidery thread I covered the lines with stitches. The stitches used were:

Stem stitch

Chain Stitch,

Blanket stitch

Running stitch

Colonial knots

Back stitch and

 Satin stitch

I am so much happier with this result; it is more artistic and brighter.

Next month we are using an Image as Inspiration and we are all using the same image. The photo is a tree branch with a beautiful red leaved creeper growing on it.

Bye for now,

Linda

Labels

When I finish a quilt I always make sure that I put a label on the back no matter how small and insignificant the quilt is.

When I first started quilting I never bothered much. It seemed like too much trouble and I was always eager to get on with the next quilt. This was a problem when I had my quilt exhibition at the Victorian Quilters Showcase last year. The organisers wanted me to show some of my earlier quilts including my very first quilt. I had to go to a lot of trouble working out the year I made the quilts and because I used patterns in the early days I had to find out who the designer was and I also had to measure the quilts.

This would have been so much easier if only I had taken the trouble to put a label on the back.

Now I write my labels in Word and then print them on Inject fabric sheets. The fabric is specially treated so that the label or photo is waterproof and fade proof.

The fabric has a high thread count so the print is very clear but this means that it can be hard on the fingers to hand sew. I always put a fabric border around the outside to make the hand sewing easy.

On my little Art Quilts for the Waverley Art Quilters I usually just write my name and the date that I made it. I make another label which tells all about the subject that we studied as well.

On my other quilts I always write the quilt title, my name, address and phone number and the size of the quilt and the year I finished it.

If I give a quilt to someone I include the washing instructions and when I did the label for our raffle quilt I included the names of all the people that helped on the quilt.

I often wait until I have a few labels to do and print them all at once so I don’t waste the printer fabric. Then I have them ready to take with me when I have a sewing day at a friend’s place because it is easy sewing and you don’t need to worry if the light is good enough etc.

So when you finish a quilt don't forget the label!

Bye for now,

Linda

Quilting

I feel as if I have been quilting all year so far. I have already quilted my latest Crazy Quilt which I am calling Naturally Crazy. I was quite happy with it when it was finished but halfway through the quilting process I always feel a bit of a panic thinking that it is not going to work.

Here is a photo of one of the blocks called Canada.

I can’t show you the entire quilt because it has no binding yet and I haven’t sewn on any charms.

Now I am quilting my next quilt which is an appliqué quilt and unfortunately I am at the halfway point where I don’t think that it is going to work out. It is giving me a lot of trouble at the moment.

I spent a lot of time with the trapunto. I have been keeping a time sheet so I know how long everything takes. The trapunto took 30 hours.

Here is the back of the quilt showing the squares of wadding that I had sewn to the back of the appliqué.

Here are the offcuts after 3 hours of careful cutting out one part of the trapunto.

When the trapunto was finally finished, I basted the quilt which took 5 and a half hours but that was including preparing the backing fabric.

I finally got to start quilting around all the motifs and my top thread kept breaking every 2 inches of stitching. It was very frustrating. I checked all the usual things and couldn’t understand why it was happening.

I finally got out the book that comes with the machine to see what it said.

Reasons for top thread breaking:

Upper thread tension too tight

Incorrectly threaded

Poor quality or old thread

Stitch plate or hook damaged

Loose threads caught in the pre tension or the take up lever.

None of those things applied to me but I did find out how to get into a part of the machine to do some extra cleaning that I didn’t know existed.

I was sitting at the machine wondering what to do next when I looked at the reel of thread and saw that the thread was caught on the side of it. I had a careful look at it and sure enough there was a rough spot on the edge of the reel that was catching the thread and then it was breaking. I am using silk thread so it is probably a bit more prone to catch than a cotton thread. I changed to a new reel of thread and have had no more trouble since.

I have put that reel aside to use for hand work but I suppose I could file the rough edge if I was desperate to use it on the machine.

I had better get back to quilting.

Bye for now,

Linda

CQJP 2012 February Block

My February block for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2012 is finished. This time I did a green 6" block using silk fabrics.

Here is the base block before I added any embroidery.

My theme for this year is Christmas so I put a couple of candy canes in the middle of the block. I decided to satin stitch the red and white stripes on an angle and it gives a nice rounded look to the candy canes.

Every month I am trying a stitch or technique that I have to look at a book to remember how to do it. This month the stitch that I cannot remember to do automatically is the chained feather stitch.

I added some beads to the stitch for the first time because I usually leave it plain.

People from all around the world have started putting their blocks on the CQJP 2012 blog. Anyone can look at them by going to the blog. It is so wonderful to see everyone’s blocks.

Bye for now,

Linda

Silk Challenge

At the Waverley Art Quilters end of year dinner late last year, we were all given a 7½" square of silk. Every piece of silk was in a different colour and they were hidden in a brown paper bag so we couldn’t see what we were getting.

This is my piece of silk!

I would never have chosen these colours; in fact it would never occur to me to put bright burgundy pink, bright yellow and orange together. Everyone else got these lovely greens, blues and mauves. I asked if anyone wanted to swap with me but nobody did!

I looked at this piece of silk all December and January, trying to find some inspiration until I finally came across a greeting card that had a bird with a curly tail on it.

I photocopied the silk and then traced the curling shapes and then simplified them to form a bird’s tail. Then I remembered that we had to include some of the challenge fabric in the design so I made up some 2" squares and made a post for the bird to stand on using some other colours in the fabric.

I used all silk fabrics that I happened to have at home. The yellow background and the orange fabric I had dyed myself. Most of the fabrics were the 50/50 silk/cotton blend that is so easy to work with compared to 100% silk. I quilted it with YLI 100% silk as well.

This week the Waverley Art Quilters group met for the first time this year and it was amazing to see everyone’s different interpretation of the silk. It was interesting to find that most of them had trouble with the colours of their silk samples.

We are going to study Van Gogh next.

Bye for now,

 Linda