Embroidery Projects

I finished another Instagram swap.  This time it was for the Canadian Hoop Art Swap.  You could create whatever you wanted (applique, embroidery, etc) as long as it was within a 6 inch hoop.  My partner liked animals and flowers that had a Native American feel to them.  I wanted to practice embroidery (while we finished a tv series).  I decided to make a dream catcher out of the hoop.

The design I picked was a combo of two designs: a fox and a dream catcher. 

I drew the fox in pencil and the dream catcher in water soluble pen so I could keep track.
I quickly got bored with orange, so I decided that the fox was going to be colorful.

For the dream catcher, I decided to make it as realistic as possible so you could tell what it was.

I got bored with brown.  I decided beads would look nice.  A trip to Michaels was in the works!

I really like how the beads turned out.  Next was to make feathers for the dream catcher.  I wanted to make them more whimsical to match my flashy fox.  I decided to go with Kaffe Fassett fabric.   I ironed to pieces together with fusible webbing and then cut out a feather shape.  I then stitched them together.  Hind sight... should have stitched them THEN cut them.  Oh well.

I made the string out of brown fabric.  I learned from the feathers and stitched lines 1/4 apart and then cut them out with a rotary cutter.  To attach them, I strung up a bead (this was not easy) and then hot glued it in.

Before I put the embroidery in the hoop, I painted the hoop to look like it was wrapped with leather.
Here's the finished product!

My husband then asked me to make him an embroidered rose for his linen shirt.  He's been bugging me for years and said, "you're making things for strangers but not for me <insert pouty face>"
Here's the rose I did for him.

It still needs to be washed.  Crossing fingers and toes it doesn't bleed!

Birds on a wire

I signed up for a mini swap with the Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild.  The theme was modern.  I wanted to create something simple to focus on the quilting.  I decided to create birds on a wire. 

I drew out 6 birds on fusible webbing and ironed them onto fabric.  I decided to go with solids because I normally do patterns and I wanted a change.  I couldn't resist making one fancy bird though.  I cut out the birds and looked for the best placement.  For the wire, I used a clover bias tape maker (1/4 inch finished).  It was the first time I tried using it and I loved it.

Here's a close shot of the birds sewn on.  I used a straight stitch because I wanted it to be hidden.  Since it's a mini quilt I wasn't worried about fraying.

For the quilting I wanted it to look like moving clouds in the background so I decided to go with wavy lines filled randomly with paisley swirly thingys. Once done quilting I decided to try out hidden binding.  It was an easy tutorial I found online and I think it makes the piece read more like a canvas than a quilt.

Here's the finished product!

Yellow Lab

I signed up for my first instagram swap, which was dog themed. With an instagram swap, you basically fill out a form with what you like/don't like, the organizer assigns a person to you and hands you their form.  You make them a mini quilt and receive one from a stranger.

My partner had a yellow lab and used a collage of pictures of him as my inspiration.  I knew I needed to do a yellow lab, but I didn't want to use all yellow.

I started with the background making equilateral triangles.

For the dog, I found a grey scale drawing of a dog I liked, so i printed him out.  I placed the picture in a clear page protector sleeve and drew him out with sharpies.  The darkest value I assigned blue, medium was red, and light was yellow. Once drawn out, I used a old classroom projector (I bought at an auction) and projected it on the wall.  I traced each piece out on fusible webbing, and ironed them onto the background fabric.

Once ironed down, I sewed each piece down with coordinating thread,  I quilted the piece with simple triangles.

For the back, I added a paw print as the label.  I blurred out the name (just in case).

Hope she loves it!!!