Tag Archives: machine stitching

Online Exhibition/Meet the Artists

Posted on by under Announcements, exhibition, Level 3 Stitch

You are Invited to an Online Exhibition and 

Discussion with the Artists of the

Bachelor Buttons Level 3

Advanced Experimental Stitch Class

Join Tutors Gail Harker and Penny Peters at a free online venue 
Tuesday July 19– 10:30 am – 12:30 pm  PDT

Join us online  (no fee) to view our Level 3 Advance Stitch student’s exhibition of creative stitched artwork. It will truly have you dreaming of wonderful possibilities there are for people just like you.  

Each of our participating artists will have a chance to talk about their experience working through this coursework, in spite of pandemic conditions!  There will be time for questions and answers with the artists.  

The event will be starting at 10:30 am PDT (West Coast US Pacific Daylight Time) and run until 12:30 pm PDT. To convert to your time zone, go to: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.htm

Sign up here:

Click this link to go to the registration page.  

Three More Color Studies

Posted on by under Color, Level 3 Stitch

I am getting to the end of my list of color studies. I just have a few more to complete. These are the three I did this week. I am down to the 6 colors in a composition and the more colors added, the more difficulty I have with proportions and making it look like something other than a jumbled mess of color.

So I often fall back to what I might see in nature to get all the colors in. But I wanted to do one that was not a landscape.

So this is the result. I am happy with it even though It took quite a while with the layout of fabric. I used a linen hand dyed thread to stitch it all together.

And here’s the machine one for this week. The colors are a little off though in this photo.

Thanks for stopping by and have a Merry Christmas!

One By Machine, One By Hand

Posted on by under hand stitching, Level 3 Art and Design, machine stitching

I didn’t get as many color studies done this week but I still got a hand stitched one and a machine stitched one completed.

 

The hand stitched one is violet, blue and yellow orange. You can’t really tell from the photo but the darkest large French knots are violet and blue. They look very similar in the photo. I had to make a little frame for this one otherwise it looked silly.

This is the one completed on the sewing machine. It is cut back applique and supposed to be yellow, green and red violet. But I didn’t think about putting the yellow cotton organdy over the green fabric so now it reads yellow green. I should have made the back fabric yellow instead of green. I used one of my circle designs from my circles studies in Level 3 Art and Design. So anyone that was asking what I would do with all the work and designs from Level 3, here’s an example.

Using Up More Felt Scraps

Posted on by under Felt, Felting and Fiber Studio, hand stitching, machine stitching

I wrote a post about my first felt scrap landscape over on The Felting and Fiber Studio blog. I still had lots of scraps left over and some were pretty bright orange and pink. We visited Hawaii last week and those colors reminded me of sunsets.

Background Layout

Here’s the layout I started with for the sunset background. It’s a combination of screen printed, felted and dyed commercial felt.

Layout with Leaves

Then to add some lush greenery. I also wanted to include some fiddle head ferns still all curled up. I started with a light taupe green for these but midway through stitching I changed my mind. I felt the piece needed some darker values. You will see the change from this photo to the end but this was just a basic idea of how it would end up.

Painted Background

This time I decided that instead of using a white background of light weight interfacing that I would paint the interfacing. This is a terrible photo but you get the idea. Then there wouldn’t be any white spots showing through between the scraps.

Background Stitched

I used a zigzag free motion stitch on the machine to hold all the background scraps down. I used a variegated pink, red and orange thread.

Texture

You can see a little of the texture in this photo. The orange bits in the middle were not very well felted but the stitching holds it all together.

Hand Stitching Greenery

I then started to hand applique the leaves in place. At first I was planning on stitching them all flat to the background but decided I liked the way it looked with parts of the felt loose or just stitched on one edge.

Matted Finished Piece

And here it is with the matt around it. I definitely will not use the inside blue matt with this but that’s all I had at the moment. You can see the fiddle head ferns got darker in the end. I just cut some thin pieces from some darker felt scraps and then curled the end into a spiral. It was all a bit fiddly with the stitching but didn’t take all that long.

Finished Hawaii Landscape

And here it is framed. Again, not the best photo but you get the idea. It definitely reminds me of Hawaii. Great tropical colors which I don’t use a lot but obviously if I had scraps, then I had used these colors before. Perhaps I just don’t usually use them together? These scrap landscapes are a lot of fun. I still have plenty of more scraps so I think I’ll just keep going. Have a great weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Snippets of Work

Posted on by under fabrics, free motion machine stitching

I’ve been trying to get back on track since I’ve gotten home. I am still trying to do at least 5 minutes of creative work every day but I’m having a hard time somehow. I have lots of things I want to get done but sometimes the list feels a bit overwhelming. So I’m just doing a little bit at a time and hopefully, I’ll get back into the groove soon.

Being You CardI finished one of the greeting cards that I laid out last Friday with my art group. I decided to add a background fabric and then just used one of the programmed stitches on my machine to stitch it down. I used fusible to attach the words and to attach the fabric to the card.

Being You CardHere’s the card ready to be written in and sent off to someone. I really like using hand-made greeting cards. They don’t take very long and people are always impressed. It’s nice to give a little bit of your time and thought to a card instead of just buying it from one of the box stores.

Card ComponentsHere are the ingredients for the next one. The white piece to the right is stitch and tear interfacing. It gives enough of a backing to prevent the stitching from buckling the fabric. If you do a lot of free motion stitching, you might need two layers of interfacing. I’m thinking about doing free motion stitching on this card. Perhaps following some of the organic lines.

Matching ThreadThen I just choose which color thread I want to use and it’s time for stitching. I usually keep these cards fairly simple and practice a bit on making a balanced composition.