Only three more to finish off....

When I think back to how long it took Mum and I to make two of these when I was staying in the UK a couple of months back, it put me off making any more of these Ami Simms Puzzle Balls.  But I have found a way to avoid any hand sewing at all so they really don't take long to make and instead of dreading the process, now it's quite enjoyable!
Here's the first of four I am making for our group charity event in October.

This morning I stuffed the red and blue segments for the next one and stitched up the openings by machine, next I will use the Husqvarna machine to join the segments at their corners using a stitch I found on it which is meant to be used for bar tacks at the base of zips.  It works a treat, a bit fiddly holding the two stuffed segments under the presser foot till the needle grabs hold, but definitely preferable to making rows of buttonhole stitch bars by hand!!  This machine also knots the threads and cuts them too, so the whole process is quite quick.

I've been doing more drawing on my virtual quilt top.... actually more rubbing out than drawing.  It's definitely a better idea doing it this way than ripping out lots of stitches.  It seems to be taking me forever to get this quilting design done and I'm anxious to get the quilt under the needle, but this will have to wait till after Frankie and Liam go home next week. I still have to add two embroidered cranes to one of the blocks and stitch on the final border all round, before layering up the wadding and backing.

 I spend quite a lot of time researching filler designs on the internet in the evenings, then practicing them on paper.  It's quite a learning curve even before I try stitching them out in thread!  Now I wish I was a doodler,  then maybe this would all be easier.  I try to have a sketchbook and pencil always to hand so that when I sit for a few minutes doing nothing (very rarely!) I can try some of the designs out.  As they say practice makes perfect.  Off to draw some more......Bye for now, Rachel

Feeling blue......

I forgot about  these until this morning!!  I had put a bucket with ice dyeing in the storage shed on Saturday, where it would be a little cooler and hopefully the ice would melt a little more slowly giving me the lovely markings .  It doesn't seem to have suffered from being left two days, though I think the ice may have melted very quickly as the characteristic markings from this technique are not so evident, and I have a fair amount of very pale areas on the fabric piece which was in the bucket.  Now it's dry and ironed, the fabric is also a little lighter and I may decide to over-dye the piece which has less colour.  The apron which was thrown in the colander with the large piece of fabric seems to have taken the dye better, not sure why.  Anyway, these fabrics are intended to be used as the backing for my Japanese-themed quilt and if I can cut enough from the more solid colour fabric to make the backing from these two large pieces, I will keep the paler areas for another project as they are quite "sky-like".

                                      

While they were being washed and rinsed I spent the morning practicing using the Tru-stitch regulator on the HQ16.  It's a slow, long learning curve, but I'll get there.  The trouble is I have been quilting for a long time without it so I am having to go back to basics and it's frustrating,  When I get it right though, the results are worth it and the stitches are lovely , so I must, and will persevere!!!

 Tomorrow I'll be spending the morning with some of the VSS girls in the hall in Viñuela, before a trip to the nail salon.   I have cut out pieces for 4 more puzzle balls, and mastered a way to make them entirely on the sewing machine.   The only hand work needed is t turn the segments inside out and stuff them.  A massive improvement on the techniques we used when Mum and I made the two for Sam and Ben.   Tomorrow, I'll be turning the pieces inside out and stuffing them, ready for the next machine stage when I get home.  

I hope you are enjoying the "indian summer"  over there in England, here it's a little hazy but still hot, hot, hot;  but as the sun is moving around the house more, today I am working in the studio with one of the shutters up so it's lovely and light in here for a change.  Off tomy machine, see you soon!

Another one finished....

Today I've learnt how to reproduce a drawing of a quilt layout from a pro!.  Frank has been quite patient with me,  I am always wanting to do things quick as a flash, which really goes against the grain because he takes his time and detail means everything.  But I realise that he is right when it comes to designing things.  So although it's taken a couple of days to get there, I now have a full scale mock up of my latest project, which I wanted so that I can now make an overlay to try out various quilting designs for the final quilt.  At least this way when I draw in quilting lines that don't quite look right I can erase them and try something else.  I have tried doing this process before , in a small A4 scale, but when parts were enlarged to fit the quilt it looked awful!  I'm quite looking forward now to drawing in the quilting.  I've spent a very hot afternoon in front of the fan looking at lots of inspirational work by others on the internet.

Here are a couple of photos of one of my old wall hangings, made many years ago and left virtually unquilted.  The wadding is very thin as it's been washed a few times, but it's given me the opportunity to practice my stitching without having to start from scratch and piece something first.

Tomorrow I hope to spend the  morning working on the new project while Frank takes the car for it's service and pre-ITV test.  Maybe it will be another degree cooler again too!

Back blogging again.....

After three years of blogging on behalf of Viñuela Sew&Sews I have decided it's time to blog for myself again.  Life has been busy in the last three years, and while I still belong to VSS group, I am taking a back seat from organizing things and hoping to live a more relaxed lifestyle.

These are two quilting projects I have just quilted using my lovely Handi Quilter Sweet16.

The blocks used here are three of four blocks made for me by ladies of the Carol Doak Yahoo group which I joined several years ago.  I took part in a block swap and chose red and purple as my choices.  When I got them back I wasn't so keen on my choice and put them away for another time.  A few months back I needed to try out a quilt-as-you-go technique I found on YouTube, which I planned to use when putting together our VSS group raffle quilt, and came across these blocks.  A little later I thought they would be good to practice some ruler template work on the HQ16, so out they came again.  The quilting brought the blocks to life so much that I decided to make them into a table runner.

This is another orphan block which I used to show VSS group members how to paper piece the Carol Doak way a few years ago.  Again it languished in a drawer for a couple of years and has become a contender for the quilting machine.  (The circles are not free motion quilted, I did these using the walking foot on my Bernina.) I really like how it turned out so finished it off as a small wall hanging. 

Now I can't wait to get stuck into my next project, this quilt top too has a history, but I'll save that for another day.  I'm glad it's still too hot to do much outside here in Southern Spain, and that La Vuelta is still on, so I have plenty of time to plan my design for the quilting!

Till next time, have a good weekend, and Mum and Dad..... I hope the sun's been shining through your new conservatory roof!!

It´s been a busy week

Ceiba speciosa, formerly Chorisia speciosa

This lovely tree is the subject we have chosen to use as inspiration for a piece of work in the small design group I am part of along with Yvonne, Jenny, Maureen and Irene, who are also members of my much larger stitching group.  It´s common name is the Silk Floss Tree because it´s seed pods contain a kapok-like floss inside the pod protecting the seeeds.  We didn´t know the name of the tree, we just loved the huge thorns on the trunk and branches, along with the pretty pink speckled flowers, but we think it´s quite apropriate that we should have chosen this tree for a textile group to study!

I´ve been working on a couple of cards using silk carrier rods with embroidery and beads as embellishments.   The one shown here has been named Blue Eagle by Frank, who I made it for. 

Our combi-microwave caught fire this week too, no damage other than smoke thankfully, but this has meant hours of trawling the internet to find a replacement, then wasted trips to the shops to find one that fits our requirements.  There´s very little choice so I´ve now decided to manage with a small microwave for re-heating foods only, and will go back to using the big oven for other cooking until I find exactly what I want.  The whole exercise has been very frustrating and eaten into precious creative time!

I´ve had a couple of days cutting out all the squares and circles for a heavy duty curtain I´m making in tans, browns and cream leather.  I always enjoy working with leather; the leather smell brings back happy memories of my teenage years living at home where Mum and Dad were busy designing and making leather clothes for very posh ladies from Knightsbridge.

These are the colours of large squares of leather ready to pieced together

The circles ready to be appliqued onto some of the squares.

No rain but productive day

The rain didn´t arrive yesterday, but I still had a fun day finishing off one piece and working on another.

This is a textured paper with molding paste through a daisy stencil.  I plan on adding lots and lots of hand embroidery to this piece after backing it with felt.  I have a photo of a gnarled bare branched tree which I plan on using as inspiration.  I love the colours which have emerged from using pastels then waxing over to seal them.  The daisies were painted individually then waxed again.

I´m not sure how I´m going to finish this piece of silk rod paper, but will probably mount it on a mount board.  The next lesson in this workshop is experimenting with gummy silk cocoons fibres and deep etched wooden stamp blocks.

Happy Birthday today to my nephew Simon!



Rain Clouds??

It´s very black over the mountains this morning, and the clouds are moving this way!  After a really hot windy day yesterday it would be lovely if we got some much needed rain here.  Fingers cossed, and of course it will mean I will be confined to my studio!  I´m eager to get going this morning, I have a mixed media piece of work I am keen to continue working on.  In my fruitless search to find lining paper over here, I eventually found a roll of textured wallpaper with lining paper on the reverse.  The textured side is just perfect for mixed media and yesterday I covered it with pastels in greens, blues and yellows, covered this with a coat of wax medium and when dry pasted on some light molding paste through a daisy stencil.  Now I want to paint the daisies then I´ll back the piece with felt and embroider heavily into it with threads of various different weights.

I finished my current lesson in the Ratty Tatty Papers workshop, but changed the end piece from a tiny folding book to a hanging.  My first attempts at silk paper making were mixed, with some pieces having the silk fibres not completely attached.  They stubbornly refused to behave despite being worked over twice with more medium.  Instead of consigning the gorgeuos fibres to the bin, I used them in this exercise, backed with another piece of silk paper making them more stable.  Definitely a process to try again.

The next lesson explores silk rods.  I have split these down and pressed them to a piece of burgundy silk ready to be stitched into.  Another new technique for me!  My thanks to Dale Rollerson of the Thread Studio in Australia for sharing her ideas and running this internet workshop,  showing me how to use all these lovely fibres I´ve been collecting over the years.  Isn´t the internet an amazing tool.... from Australia to Spain without all the travel hassle too!!