Hand Stitching Throw Back Post

Lynn's book (see my post here) got me thinking about how many hand stitched art quilts I've made.  I do love hand stitching....I can't sit idle while watching TV at night!  I'm lucky I can sit in a movie theater, which only happens a few times a year!  HA 

So here are some of my hand stitched pieces I've done over the years...I won't bore you with all of them...just a few I found in my picture directory backup (Tech was kind enough to back up all my files to an external drive!  Whew!).

This first quilt was for our Michigan Quilt Artist Invitational from years ago...don't remember the date.  The theme was "south of the border" so I found a record album with that same name!  I had it printed on fabric and added beading for the cactus and hand, stab stitching for the entire piece.  The quilt was 20"x24".

Closeup of stitching.  I don't hand quilt...but I do hand stab stitch!  HA

This was for a monthly journal project...8.5" x 11"...of course I had to add beading for the sunflower!

This started out as a shibori piece I had dyed.  And, yep, stab stitching.

These next three pics are from my horse hex quilt I did.  You can see the finish/process here.

I did a combo of stab stitching and creating lines on the background fabric.  I mono printed the entire background so the stitching just seemed to tell me what to do!  Yes, Lynn, this was slow stitching!

This was another piece I did patchwork style for the background and because I love doing circles I did quite a few of them! HA

This quilt was on the cover was on the cover and in the book 1000 Quilt Inspirations.   You can see the finished quilt and progress here.

Both of these I made for a challenge...I had to make four or five...can't remember...these were two I found.  Again, the background was fabric I had mono printed from a cardboard stamp I made.  Hand stitching was a must!

Interesting, for those of you who subscribe to DMTV, you'll see two a video on Line/Shape/Stitch by Laura!   Very similar on how I hand stitched these.  I did these in 2014.

I think my followers will remember this Challenge piece!  There were four of us who were each given a square of hand dyed fabric by Kay Sorsensen (You can see the entire quilt and each of our blocks here.)

I didn't want to detract from Kay's beautiful dyeing technique/pattern so figured I would hand stitch a pattern, which I've used before...in fact, you'll see it in the next quilt picture!

I do like to use patchwork for my backgrounds when ever possible.  But if you look closely, you'll see the same pattern in this piece as I did in Kay's challenge.

This was just straight stitching or my stab stitching.  I used the opposite color on blue (I used orange) and on the orange I used blue.  I think it worked out well.


So now you can see why I enjoyed Lynn's book so much.  And I love her term 'slow stitching'....it certainly fits my hand stitching life!

Back to some quilting roots!

I'm working on a new project, which I'll show more pictures of  next week.  Until then, here's a sneak peak!

Yep, the geese are flying!  What fun making these little buggers again!  How long has it been!  A long time that's for sure!  Now my placement of these little buggers is most likely different from how I normally place/sew them....guess  my 'geese' aren't doing all that much flying after all!

The top is already sandwiched and I've stitched in the ditch so I can start some hand stitching.  The piece measures around 22" x 36" or close to that!

  Here are two areas that I've started some stitchin in.  Wrists are bugging me a bit so I've now been wearing both braces when I stitch..appears to help some.  It still feels good to be doing hand stitching again.

I have also cleaned up my sewing room here in Florida!  Look, it's back to being a bedroom again...well, almost...I do have some quilts on the bed and other items that will be packed up to head home!  I should have taken a picture of 'before'!

We will be home 3 weeks from yesterday!  The time goes by slowly in January and then speeds up from then!  Especially with Bob's episode this past week, we are both ready to be in our own home.  We have always said we are so blessed to be able to spend the winter in Florida and to have a wonderful home our friends  allow us to spend four months in...they make us feel like this is our home for those four months!   Thanks Jan and Larry!!!

Another standstill.... :(

After Ron left on Sunday, I prepped dinner, started laundry and then went into my little studio to play.  I took a piece of a deconstructed screen print I had made while in Florida.  When we got home in May, I did rubbings from one of my hand carved stamps and NeoColor 1 pastels...I really like the colors and had visions of what I could do to enhance the piece.

 I copied from one of the Dover books a leaf and printed onto to tracing paper.  I  added a 2 1/2" strip of green batik I had in my stash on the right side, which you can't see there!  Then I spray basted the the piece onto some batting.

I free motion stitched over the transfer paper...which does make it easy...but not so easy to remove the paper.  I used this same technique when creating the leaves on my table runner (see my last post) but it was more difficult, for some reason, to remove the paper today.  May have been due to the fact i spray basted the paper onto the fabric.  I don't think I did that last time...think I just used pins.   That dark area you see on the first leaf is the printed tracing paper.  I had already removed a good portion of the print.  And now you can see the green batik I added on the right side!

This is the back after I quilted the leaves..

And stitching a 99% of the paper removed!  HA

So then I decided I would do some hand embroidery...well, so much for that.  I barely got through on this leaf and had to quit.  My wrist won't take the motion!  So interesting what I can and can't do..even with the injection.  The free motion quilting didn't bother me at all..other than my back, which always hurts when I sew!  HA

So now to decide how to quilt this piece.  It's only 13" x 14" or so...just wanted to play....but guess I need to just play with the dogs or come up with another way to keep myself entertained!  Yes, Betty Davis, you were right...getting old isn't for sissy's!

Today I'm off to the Osteoporosis Clinic!  Who knew there was even such a thing!  Dr. said I'm in great shape for a 70 year old but my bones are like a 90 year old!  So....previous meds didn't agree with me so now she's sending me to this clinic.  Should be interesting and we shall see!!!

Working away...but not for long...

I've made pretty good headway on these two pieces....

But I am planning on taking a few days off from hand work.  Left wrist is quite bad, so until next time....Just call me 'gimpy'!

What's up?

I don't usually have many issues with Blogger...but sure have the past two days.  Couldn't even get to my dashboard or blog for that matter to post earlier.  Appears that issue is resolved now...but then in my Reader List I have this unknown (to me!) blog post showing up!  It's called "lori - juz 4 fun dot blogspot dot com" and it's for a Cinema Movie Online web site!   I had about 12 posts from them giving you a description of movies!  What!!!  Apparently, from what I researched on Blogger forum, another blog that I follow has been hacked but how the heck do I find that out!!!  Hmmmm   I have over 100+ blogs I follow so I'm not clickiing on each one to try to find who has been hacked!

Anyway.....not sure if anyone has heard of or used Kraft-Tex (a paper fabric)...

My thought was, based on reading the material description, it would be perfect for beading.  Well, I received my roll from Amazon, well really from Gold Cloud Products through Amazon.  This stuff is really interesting...you can wash it and tumble dry!    It feels rather stiff so not sure it will work for beading.  I am going to cut a square piece and wash to see if it softens up somewhat.  Just not sure how much of a struggle it would be to bead through.  I'll have to test that as well.


So, I am working on another hand/beading projects..it's a small piece and I'm almost finished.  It's been one of those that I stitch on when I have a few minutes.

Just adding some beads now.....I plan on stitching more on this when I finish this post.












 Earlier today I decided to clean out the garage!!  So I moved everything and I mean everything out of the garage!!!  Whew....then I hosed off everything that needed to be hosed!  Spiders and spider webs all over!!  UGH...

Looks nice and neat now and CLEAN!  No spiders...well, ok, there may be a few lurking around but at least its nice and clean and it only took me a little over 3 hours!!!

 I just finished my shower so now its time for hand work and to catch up on my favorite new show!!!  Married at First Sight! Gotta love it!