Somewhere in Keswick a duo sit stitching

Moira and Sally, those stalwarts of the needle, have been busy getting together on Wednesday afternoons to sew bits and bobs on the wall hanging. They have nearly completed the sides which are made up of various examples of embroidery techniques and they are just about to finish off the grey fleece which was chosen a) to show off the individual pieces and b) to give a flavour of Keswick with its town full of shops selling fleece jackets.

This photo captures them mulling over those last little details which have made the hanging come to life. It also provides them with cover, yes you guessed it, they wanted the photo of them shown on the blog with their heads down....I am only here to oblige, but I do have one of them smiling too for the record. Well done the pair of you, your Chairman is very pleased with the results of your labours and I know that everyone else in the Keswick EG will agree with me.

Meanwhile, Moira also came up with a very simple recipe.


POOR KNIGHTS PUDDING

Take two slices of malt loaf per serving
Fry on both sides in butter
Dip in sugar and cinnamon mixture to coat both sides
Place on a warm serving plate
Put a slice of canned pineapple on top
Lastly pour a little of the pineapple juice over all.


This I am assured is delicious and it is also a very old and well tried recipe which Moira has made for her family. Sally showed me that you can now buy 'Soreen' malted loaf in handy two slice packs. So there you are, no excuses; if you do try it please take a photo and send it to me for the blog.

North West Region news

Hi everyone,

Some news has just arrived and it is good news for Rheged because tickets are selling well plus Anthea Godfrey the EG National Chairman and Jane Sweet the Director of the Guild will both be attending this event too.

Also please note that the 'Madeira Show' will not take place in Harrogate this year instead it has moved venue to the NEC in Birmingham on 25th - 28th March 2010.

Tickets for Summer School are going well, and there are still places on Saturday 18th July with Margaret Wareing and she is teaching 'Hand Made Buttons' which include Macclesfield and Dorset buttons.

Here is a piccie of my fabric stash cupboard, just to show you all that I am sometimes organised. However, I don't feel that I have enough fabric, maybe I need to buy some more. So today as its the Rheged 'familiarisation day' at 2pm, I might just call into Just Sew Penrith for some more.

Make your own starch

I have been quilting for a number of years but had never realised that it is a good idea to starch the back of a quilt so it moves more freely through the machine when free motion quilting. The tip is not mine, all credit is due to Diane Gaudynski. I came across her work in a round about way but realised that she had one of her quilts in Harriet Hargrave's book 'Heirloom Machine Quilting' which first started me off on the road to machine quilting. Anyway, Diane gives a recipe for starch which I have tried and tested and it really is good.

I have interpreted it for English use.

DIANE'S STARCH

Dissolve half a teaspoon of cornflour in 2 tablespoons of cold water in a (1 pint) Pyrex jug. Add boiling water to make up a quarter of a pint and stir constantly, then add cold water to make half a pint. Let it cool and use it in an old pump spray bottle. Give it a good shake every now and then.

She says don't starch fabric for storage or 'it will attract little critters', so obviously it is ok to use if the quilt is going to be washed fairly soon. I have not tried it on my machine embroidery because it does not get washed and I don't want to attract little critters, but it has been used on my quilts lately and is ok.

I use it when I am pressing all of the squares or blocks and it works fine, plus you can use it to build up stiffness by spraying a few times. I regularly wash my quilts because most of them are in use on beds as I don't use duvets, which I dislike. I have friends coming to stay in a couple of weeks (they have a contemporary, warm, flat in Glasgow, with thick duvets) so I just need to make a quicky quilt because the two in the spare room are fine in Spring/summer but at this time of year a third might? be needed on the bed. I layer them according to the seasons and they all are rotated so they can be washed often, which is much nicer than a duvet when only the cover is cleaned frequently. I use cotton sheets under the quilts so they are the top layer, and I find I don't need blankets.

Here are some piccies of the Amy Butler fabric which is going to be quilted using a wool batting so its warm for the spare room. I am also using some fabric I picked up in a 'thrift store' in Palm Springs, California, when I was out visiting my daughter and her family in October. (You would be amazed at the shops in California, but that is another story.)

Machine embroidery tip

Sometimes you need to stand back from something and view it another way. Two ways of doing this are to 1. leave it a few days and go back with fresh 'eyes' and 2. to take a photo and then have a look at it instead. So given that a piece of machine embroidery I am working on needs accurate colours for water and sky, I decided to take a photo and placed some thread on it so that I could check the colours for suitability. (The piece is for the wall hanging and it is Catbells seen from Derwentwater.) This is the right side of the lake and I need to bring it to life with a bit of a shine so I am using Madeira embroidery thread. The left side has gone towards blue and I want to introduce a bit more green. It is never easy depicting water and the whole idea is that the lake should have movement, like ripples. So I have now 'auditioned' this thread as the Americans say! I know it seems to be a lot of trouble but you can't really unpick machine embroidery and sometimes you just have to go for it.....


The second problem is the sky, which at the moment is just painted on with silk paint, incidentally the fabric is a rough, tough calico. So this second photo should help me decide on the colours for the sky.

I need to bring a bit more tone into the composition too, but that can wait until I add some shading which is missing. So its more work on the Bernina this afternoon.

Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see a couple of photos from the felt making at Threlkeld last week. So here is a shot of some Nuno felt shown to us as an example of what could be achieved.

The photo below shows Marilyn explaining how to start treating the edges of the first felting so that they are straight.


It was a very good workshop but I could not stay to see what happened in the afternoon session, however, I did bump into Joan who said it had been very worthwhile. You can of course do so much with felt, and just to prove it, here is another picture of Marilyn's dog Holly, but this time the felted version. Isn't it cute!

Tips for printing your own fabric

I have been working most of the day on a special project which is going reasonably well. (A necessity as hubby and friend are putting up a covered way outside and the sound of drilling has forced me to bolt into my sanctuary.) I don't often work on small quilts, unless they are for Linus, but I find that when it comes to adding embroidery to a quilt I prefer to work on a much smaller scale. So this is going to be fun because it combines my love of machine embroidery and quilting, but I have also added some hand embroidery on this one too.
The last small quilt I made and embroidered I entered into a national competition and it did not win a prize but did have a photo shown in Patchwork & Quilting Magazine; so it was a runner up. This is the quilt, it's called 'Fuji Autumn'.


When I made this quilt I decided that all of the fabric would also be made by me, so I printed every single bit of it on my ink jet printer. I was quite pleased with the results as the colours did not fade too much from the original but of course they are never quite as bright as on the computer screen. Here is a close up of the leaves and flowers which were all made the same way and then heavily starched before cutting out and applying to the background. Then I used Robison Anton 'Twisted Tweed' thread to embroider on top of them.



The next photo shows a close up of mount Fuji and again I used embroidery to enhance the effect of the snow and rocks, but this time I used some Madeira thread too.

• Remember to exaggerate the colours because they are going to fade.
• Use simple clear designs which are not too fussy.
• Watch the proportion of elements in the design you may need to use your software to scale up or down.
• Ordinary 'compatible' inkjet ink works ok.
  
• Cotton fabric with a close count like 'percale' works well.
  

Of course I made the fabric myself, but you can buy commercially produced sheets which you use in your printer, but be aware they are extremely expensive. It is much cheaper to make your own!


Hand Embroidery Enthusiasts and Beginners this is for you!

I just have to share this new discovery with all of you, would you believe that Mary Corbet has a series of videos showing all of these stitches:-

Line Stitches & Bands

* Running Stitch
* Whipped Running Stitch
* Backstitch
* Whipped Backstitch
* Stem Stitch
* Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch
* Coral Stitch
* Outline Stitch
* Couching
* Split Stitch
* Herringbone Stitch
* Double Herringbone Stitch
* Cretan Stitch
* Chevron Stitch
* Fern Stitch
* Palestrina Stitch
* Ladder Stitch
* Mountmellick Stitch
* Knotted Diamond Stitch


Chain, Fly, and Buttonhole Stitches

* Chain Stitch
* Heavy Chain Stitch
* Double Chain Stitch
* Raised Chain Stitch Band
* Alternating or Checkered Chain Stitch
* Cable Chain Stitch
* Rope Stitch
* Rosette Chain Stitch
* Wheat Stitch
* Vandyke Stitch
* Fly Stitch - Horizontal
* Fly Stitch - Vertical
* Feather Stitch
* Double Feather Stitch
* Blanket Stitch / Buttonhole Stitch
* Buttonhole Wheels


Detached Stitches & Knots

* Lazy Daisy
* Seed Stitch
* Spider Web - Ribbed
* Bullion Knots
* French Knot
* Colonial Knot
* Oyster Stitch
* Drizzle Stitch
* Woven Picot


Filling Stitches

* Fishbone Stitch
* Cretan Stitch
* Detached Buttonhole Filling
* Satin Stitch
* Lattice Work
* Bokhara Couching
* Roumanian Couching
* Trellis Stitch


Miscellaneous Embroidery Techniques

* Bullion Rose Bud Tutorial
A little over 13 minutes, this tutorial demonstrates how to make rose buds using the bullion knot. It also covers beginning and ending your threads when working small embroidery motifs.

They are all to be found on her website so if you want to sit back and learn a new stitch then just go here
You will see the videos at the top right hand side of her website under
'Video Library of Stitches' so just click on this and then scroll down to the list of stitches which is in exactly the order I have posted it above. Enjoy.

Australian Bush Fires Appeal for Fabric

Hi everyone,

I have sent a fat quarter of fabric to this appeal as it is for such a good cause. You can read about it here on Jenny Bowkers blog. Basically a lady called Alice has lost her home in the fires and she is a quilter. So if you can spare any fabric suitable for quilts it would come in handy to keep her active in the next few months, she is also planning to share fabric with a group of other ladies in Buxton. This is the fat quarter I sent.
I know she lost a quilt she was making for her daughter in the fire and it was in blues and pastels, but really any spare fat quarters or fabric for quilts will do. I love the idea of a 'phoenix quilt' group, rising from the ashes too! So dig deep ladies and the address is on Jenny's site if you follow the link above.