A crafty Birthday gift! Embroidered felt birds

A crafty blog post

Every once in a while I like to do some embroidery needle crafts. Garment sewing is my true love but I do like to just create! One area that I enjoy is doing some embroidery. I have a pillow that is an embroidery WIP for a couple of years now!! However, this time I turned to the birds!

 

My granddaughter just turned 6 and she really enjoys handmade items. She loves to know that someone is making something for her and doing it with their own hands. When I make her clothes she knows that I make them with love and she takes joy when she wears them. She sees many people in her family and school creating. This is something that is an important family value. I grew up that way, my daughter grew up that way and now my granddaughter is growing up that way. It is lovely!

Due to the pandemic the options were limited for birthday celebrations- we came up with the idea of a socially distant picnic with our good friend Liz in Grant Park. V loves getting together with friends of all ages and was so happy to be having a picnic in the city.

For her 6^th birthday I decided to create for her 6 little birds that she could play with and enjoy. I did a google search and found this book- Folk Embroidered Felt Birds by Corinne Lapierre. I purchased my book from Nancy’s Notions and it was as a kit with a pack of very nice wool felt. You can also purchase directly from Corrine Lapierre’s website in the UK or from Amazon.

The templates or patterns are located in the back of the book but you will need to make copies to cut them out or use tracing paper to cut them out since they are layered and on both sides of the page.

Song thrush made up in purples

Robin

Modified Goldfinch- i made him double sided and added a 'breast gusset' to make him fatter.

I made 6 of the 20 birds -   Song Thrush, Blue Tit, Robin, Goldfinch, Puffin and Dove. I made a few changes. For the single sided hanging birds, I made them double sided and added legs. The directions were all very clear and worked great except for the Puffin. There seems to be a pattern piece missing and the directions were not as clear on this one. I saved him for last and just sort of made up the missing parts as I went along. SO if you get this great little book just don’t start with the puffin!!

L-R Robin, Dove, Song Thrush, Goldfinch, Puffin and Blue Tit

Each bird probably took about 6-8 hours to complete from start to finish depending on how many pieces and how much embroidery was needed.

Such joy and happiness in her smile!

Victoria really enjoyed opening these lovely little birds and I certainly enjoyed making them! I think that I will have to make some for myself J

Do you enjoy other crafts? I’d love to hear about it!

Happy Sewing and Happy Crafting!

 

A little bit of this and that! And quilt labels...

This weekend was another productive one! Although, the weather here in Chicagoland was quite scary on Sunday. Luckily we were out of the direct path of the line of tornados that hit the area, even so we had lots of wind and hail and sheets of rain. Many people were not so lucky.... My prayers go out to them.

This past weekend was the Sewing and Quilt Expo in Tinley Park. This year I did not really take any time off to go attend any seminars or classes. A couple reasons for that, I'm on a hobby spending diet (I had to buy a ticket to the Netherlands and that was expensive!), I pursued the class offerings and there was not really anything that I just HAD to attend and I felt that I still had so much my head from seminars that I have already attended this year. You know, I didn't want to push out the knowledge and ideas that I haven't even fully processed yet! 

I did go on Friday for 2 hours to pursue the vendors and the quilt exhibits. I saw a couple of art quilts that took my fancy. I had a small budget of spending money and I spent it all at Laura Murray's booth on Burmese silks. I have been coveting these for several years and thought why not! (Well, except that I have so much damn fabric at home that I have no where to even stuff it!!!) I do plan on making an light jacket from it. A little holiday gift for myself. 

On the sewing front... I did get to spend Sunday sewing :) and no, I still did not finish that darn skirt!!

I worked on some Christmas gifts and I worked a little more on my nieces baby quilt. I added a narrow border and have the quilt sandwich pin basted and ready to be quilted! I'm using a kinky cuddle fabric for the backing, my first time trying this so I also have a small 16x16 sample piece ready to be trial quilted. I do think the quilting will have to be fairly simple because of the kinky backing I will need to use a walking foot. This means no fancy free motion quilting. I'm not traveling next week so I'm hoping to get it all done in the evenings. 

I also worked on a gift for my daughter. She was supposed to have this before her wedding!!! Oops, better late than never :) if you remember back to the spring, I made each of the girls in her bridal party a set of Chic travel accesories from Anita Goodesign embroidery projects CD. These are a set of embroidered bags. One for dirty laundry, one for lingere and a set of shoe bags. Well, her and her husband leave for their honeymoon on Saturday and I wanted her to have them for their trip. So Sunday, I made her a set. I also made myself a dirty laundry bag. I have been wanting one forever! Since I travel every week it would be nice to have something nicer than a plastic grocery bag or just he corner of the suitcase to shove my dirty clothes in! Especially. Dirty socks, panties and exercise clothes!!! 

The black, gray and red set are for Melissa. Very 'chic' indeed!! The bags are slightly modified from the construction instructions. I use a grommet for the opening and I enlarged the shoe bags to fit a pair of shoes each instead of just one shoe per bag. (Unless they are big shoes!! Or ankle booties)  I picked up the printed fabric of the shoes and the lingerie on the laundry line at a quilt shop somewhere in CT on one of my work trips this spring. I actually purchased it for this project so it was nice to finally get it done!

The blue yellow and white bag is mine. It is hard to see (May be better if you click on the picture) but the printed fabric on the top is dresses on dress forms with different city names printed in between, like New York and Paris. Very fun! The ribbon is a woven ribbon that I bought a couple years ago in the garment district in NYC at a trim shop.

I am also trying out some new ideas for a quilt label for the Cats playmat quilt. I have seen people who write or stamp directly on the quilt, so I made a sample using fabric markers and ink stamps and will wash and dryit a couple times this weekend when I'm doing laundry to see how it fairs. If they fail the test I will use MU old standby of embroidering a label and appliquéing it the back. 

I'm interested to hear what others do for quilt labels? Anyone have any experience good or back with using ink?

I'm off to another busy week. Tuesday in NYC, Wednesday in Central PA and Thursday in Philadelphia. I sure am looking forward to NO travel next week!! It will be good to be at home :) 

Anita Goodesign Mix and match Quilt, Baby Play Mat

I did finish up a project this weekend, a quilt that I made on my embroidery machine using Anita Goodesign embroidery mix and Match quilting. The design was mostly from Cats and Dogs, although in this quilt I used only cats.

The weather is so dark and crappy out that my pictures are not the best... Even the skylights have snow on them so not much natural light! And apparently I even had a hard time taking straight pictures!

I am giving this gift as a 'Playmat' for my new niece that is due any moment now!! So exciting. Once I know her name I will add a label to it. This is going to be one spoiled little girl because I'm also in the midst of making her a quilt as well. I'm lucky to have a few more weeks yet to work on her gifts, I won't meet her until the holidays. 

I know, I know, aren't they both technically quilts? Yes, they are. However, the embroidery on this one makes it a little more stiff and not so soft and quilty like I think a baby quilt should be! Besides every little baby needs a playmat for the floor and this colorful quilt will be the perfect thing!

I had a lot of fun making this quilt, it was quite a departure from normal quilt making! All of the blocks are done in the hoop on the embroidery machine with a layer of batting and then you sew them together on your regular machine to complete the top. I added a second layer of batting and then the backing and binding. To 'quilt' the sandwich together I just stitched in the ditch of the blocks. Hence the squared quilted back.

This week I have only an overnight work trip! So I'm hoping all goes smoothly and I can have the bed/crib quilt done this week as well :) and hopefully my niece will make an appearance soon!!

update on the 60's shirt

I have had some time to work on my shirt this weekend. My electronic sewing machine has a couple fancy stitches and I have almost never used them before. I decided that this shirt had a perfect use for one of them! I first made a test set of the embroidery stitches in the various colors and thread types that I was thinking of using.

I added the embroidery stitches (and really liked it) and then I basted in the sleeves and the side seams. I was a little worried about the sleeve circumference and I cut them slightly bigger. The line drawing and the fit of the garment did not really match and the sleeves were much more fitted than I would have liked for the style of the blouse that I was going for. Luckily for me, I almost always but too much fabric! So to the drawing board I went and re- drafted the sleeve pattern and now need to cut out a new set of sleeves.

All in all, I like the fit (except for the sleeves) and I like the versatility of this pattern.

Test embroidery, varying the design elements as well as color and thread type.

Sorry this is a little blurry... decided to go with the hot pink rayon thread in the flower stitch pattern. You can also see how the sleeves look very narrow.

The re-drafted sleeve. I slashed and spread, re-drew a center line, folded in the excess at the sleeve cap and re-drew the hem line straight. (hard to see in the picture)