Xmas tree skirt

Quilted this today as I decided that if it was really going to be a Christmas present for my friend this year, it was probably about time I actually got to work on it. Just a simple meander, as it didn't really need more. I have since cut a hole in it to make a gap for the tree and now, just have to bind it. I suppose I will have to make bias binding rather than my usual (and easier) French Fold - but as I have to go around a quite tight circle, I've not much choice. Grumble, grumble.

A few heart blocks

For my bloggy friend Shirley in New Zealand - her group is making quilts for the families of the miners killed in the recent explosions there.

2011 Birthday ATC Swap

Over the past two years, I have hosted a (mostly) successful swap of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards)* - any medium, not just fabric or even mixed media. I had a lot of fun with this (as did, I hope, many of the participants) and I intend to run another round next year. Here's how it works:



I'll take somewhere around 30 participants so that we average around 3 ATCs per month, which shouldn't be too much of a burden for anyone.



Each month, you will be expected to send one ATC (in any media, on any theme, must be your own creation, can be something you made earlier) to each of the participants whose birthday is that month (any time during the month is fine). I will send a reminder each month to help you out. Also, there is a yahoo group for the swap, which you will be expected to join in order to take part (very low volume of messages, mostly used for acknowledgements, lateness apologies and posting reminders). In turn, in your birthday month, you will receive ATCs from everyone else. Easy as that.





If you are interested, send me an email to katelnorth at yahoo dot com (or leave a comment here, but if you do that, be sure I can contact you - comments set to no-reply are hard to respond to, unless I have your email address already for some other reason). I'll need to have your full name and postal address (but don't leave that in a comment) and also, your birthday (I don't need the year!).

*ATCs are 2.5x3.5" creations; they can be made from virtually anything, the main rule is that you are not allowed to buy and sell them, but must swap with other artists to increase your collection...

Cross stitch progress

Not much to show this week, other than some progress with the garden cross-stitch. Another busy weekend, with no real sewing time - maybe next week! The cross-stitch is coming along nicely, though. Perhaps I will finish it before I get in the mood to get out something seasonal - probably not, though. Still, it will make a nice piece to come back to in January when I need something refreshing and spring-like...

Robins, red & white blocks

Here's my fifth round for the Stay at Home Robin - I added a 4x6" and 4x7" block to the bottom of this piece - I am thinking I might take the left-hand one back off and add more black, then turn it at an angle. Either that, or straighten out the right hand one - I really don't like the balance much. I'm also not that crazy about the colour of the left-hand rectangle - too close to the colour of the bottom of the flying goose above it.



And here's the addition for the Japanese taupe one - hard to see in this photo as both are very pale in colour, but they are quite different.



And these are some 8" (8.5" unfinished) red and white blocks which I made for my friend Clare, for Quilts for Leukemia. Now to get them off in the post to her for her challenge...

Finished Fern Leaf

And here it is with the binding all sewn down. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself. But I really must finding another quilting pattern besides the clamshells one which I like to do as much, as it does take ages and ages...

Canal Houses - Done!

Today I worked on the last two houses, as well as finishing up the top-stitching on the ones which hadn't been done before. So, that's it. Here's a photo of as much of them as I can show at once - the two end ones have been cut off a little because I simply can't get far enough away from it to show the whole thing (even by standing on the coffee table and holding the camera over my head). God knows where I'm going to hang it when I get all my bits and eventually attach it all together. But I'm sure I'll figure out something...

In the end, I will get two of my own houses back - not sure which two, though I think we are all getting House A back. Originally it was only going to be one of our own back, but someone had to withdraw, so now it will be too. The hostess kindly said I could specify which one if there was one I really wanted, but looking at them all again, I can't make up my mind - I like them all!



These two are today's complete additions - the others have all been shown to some degree before. It's been a fun project, but I have to say, I am very glad to have finally finished.

Mostly binding

Finished quilting the Fern Leaf quilt today, got the binding attached (needs to be flipped and sewn down, which I will do Tuesday at quilt group), and also got the binding attached on this batik quilt I got back from the longarmers a little while back. Tomorrow, it's canal houses. Two more to go, but they really really need finishing...

Pretty Garden Sampler

New cross-stitch project, which I will work on for a while - at least until I'm ready to bring out the Christmas projects. I might even finish it; it's not that big. However, I think it's more likely I'll get it about halfway finished, then finish up in January when I'm tired of Christmas stuff. Here's what the finished piece should look like...

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of stitching on Aida (or rather, I don't mind stitching on it, but I don't like the finished product so much), but actually, it suits this.

More ATCs

I am still working on the Fern Leaf quilt, but it's a bit slow going for some reason. It's nearly half quilted now, though. Soon, soon, I will show it again, I promise! In the meantime, here are a few more ATCs which are fabric based - this one above and the one below are for a swap where the players choose their own themes - crosses and fleur-de-lis, you may have guessed. Like the ones from the other day, this is organza over a stitched raw silk background, the designs are FME'd then the negative space removed with a soldering iron to expose the background.




I also pinched my Vintage Fashion design to do some with a transparency theme - they didn't scan too well due to the transparency, but again, similar technique to the Vintage Fashion ones, only I've attached a transparency in the middle rather than using a fabric image. There are 4 cards, but they are all fairly similar to this (different images).

Another (Very) Little Quilt Swap

Yep, round 5 is now open. It's a bit different (smaller) - go on over to the blog and check it out!

Vintage Fashion

Although I have been working on quilting the Fern Leaf quilt (I've done the leaf, am now working on quilting the background - done maybe a quarter of it), I thought I'd wait and show it later when it was done, or nearly done, as otherwise, it would get a bit repetitive. Instead, here are some fabric based ATCs (I am sparing you all a lot of the paper ones, for which I think you should be thankful!) for a swap to the theme Vintage Fashion.



The images are from a bought fabric image sheet. They are mounted onto a background of gold coloured silk, which I have stitched a pattern into.


The "frame" is made from organza - I sewed down a square, then used my soldering iron to cut away the outside and inside, leaving just the bit around the stitching. The backing was sewn on at this point as well - handmade paper in a colour similar to the silk front.



Finally, a few sequins added for bling. Ta da!

Finished

Just in time. Tempted to start another small Hallowe'en cross-stitch, but not sure I will finish it in time, so might just move on to the next thing, whatever that is. Or go back to something unfinished (what? surely not!)

Hall ween?

As you can see, progress is being made. The "o" is a pumpkin and will be stitched before too long - yes, before Hallowe'en!

Fern leaf

By request from DH, a quilt for a colleague who has an upcoming occasion. It has a sort of plant theme because of her job. I was inspired by a pack of black, cream and green 10" squares I got in the US and a brown quilt I have with a lovely leaf appliqued in a similar fashion over a background of squares. I actually got the top finished and the piece pinned together today, but then I had to take 10 girls swimming and to McDonalds for a birthday, so no more work beyond that.

I won't be appliqueing the fern down per se, but will rather incorporate the applique with the quilting (at the moment, it's just fused).

Canal House/ATCs

Another Canal House - only two more to go (and stitching down a few which are only fused at the moment). Think I might actually make the end of November deadline!

I also made some ATCs today - I've made a lot of ATCs lately, but haven't blogged them all as I thought it might be kinda boring, especially as most of them aren't fibre based. Today's were an exception, though - I decided to work in fabric and thread on these...




The swap was a pick-a-theme swap, which means that although there were only 4 cards, each was different - definitely harder than a standard swap, where I tend to make similar cards for all three or four in the swap. It's not that the actual construction takes longer, but the coming up with ideas certainly does. Above, the chosen theme was (have you guessed?) Sunflowers and blackbirds.




This one was sun, and below, kites or kite-flying. The sun is made with an Angelina base, with stitching on top; below, I have used Angelina as a background over the blue fabric.




Although it scans better than it photographs, it's still really hard to get the effect of Angelina if you can't see it in person.

Finally, Summer Treats (e.g. ice cream, etc) - no idea what flavour these ice creams might be, but I'm sure they are yummy.



Anyone interested in seeing (some of) the ATCs I've been making lately, I have a Flickr Set of ones currently available to swap...

Hallowe'en Cross stitch

Finished my little bird - now it just needs ironing and a little frame. Also started the next one, which will be this:


The start isn't very impressive, though those of you who do cross-stitch will appreciate that it's more work than it looks at the moment. Plus, I was watching telly - in Swedish, with English subtitles (the original Swedish Wallender, which we think is great) - so I had to look up a lot more than I normally do while stitching and watching telly!

Hallowe'en bird

Just realised I haven't showed any cross stitch in ages. There's not a huge amount of progress on the beach huts, though there is some - but anyway, I have taken a hiatus in orderto stitch this little Hallowe'en bird, which I picked up at Ally Pally (at the Knit and Stitch Show). Cute, isn't he?

Knit & Stitch

Untitled, Alexandra Deutsch

Went to the Knit and Stitch Show today at Alexandra Palace with my friend Lana - frankly, if I'd known how tough it was going to be to get there (planned engineering works on both of the tube lines that run up in that neck of the woods) I might not have bothered, although I did enjoy the show. There were a number of pieces I liked quite a lot, though most of them couldn't be photographed. Here are a few that I was able to take photos of - the above was from an exhibit called Holland Paper Biennial 2010, which had a lot of interesting paper work, though I think this was my favourite (there were several by this artist in a similar vein, very organic shapes and nice texture to the pieces).


Ann Small: Anemone Rosa

There were three different anemone pieces in this exhibit (I can't remember what the exhibit was, though it was a group of different artists and featured a number of nice pieces). This one was my favourite of the Anemone pieces, though I liked all three.


And my favourite (probably) of the pieces I saw today was this group of slate vertebrae or fern leaves, or? sewn together down their spines. This was in an exhibit of work by Clyde Oliver; I can't recall the title of the exhibit, but there were a number of interesting pieces using slate as a basic material. I'd like to own these pieces - partly because they are lovely, but also partly because then I'd be able to touch them - I bet they feel great!





I didn't buy much - a couple of cross-stitch patterns and a handful of art supplies, plus a couple of presents - so I haven't photographed the loot, but I have stitched up half of one of the cross-stitch patterns already (it was fairly small), so I'll be showing that before long... A nice day out (though the show is getting to be really expensive, I think, especially given the exhibitor to vendor ratio).

Lots of sewing

That's my kind of day :) I worked on another canal house today - here are all the ones I've done to date together - there are 3 more to go (and the latest three do still need to be sewn down) and then I'm finished. I've enjoyed this project, and look forward to seeing what I will get in return in the fullness of time.



Here's a closer view of the house I worked on today - it's quite a wide one and completes the bridge in the centre of the piece. By the time I finish this set of houses, I won't have any blue hand-dyes left in my stash.

Also today, I worked on my Stay-at-home Robin - first added Round 4 to the black and batik piece - though I'm not convinced that it wouldn't look better on the right hand side of the other blocks - I am going to try unsewing it and stitching it back on the right and see if I like it better.



I also decided, finally, to go ahead and make a second piece for the Stay-at-home Robin - I had been toying with it since the beginning, but hadn't quite got around to it yet. Finally today I decided to go ahead. This one is something quite different, using Japanese taupes - we'll see how it goes.