Tag Archives: free-motion

Redwork Ornaments

My last day of #Needlevember was a free-motion quilted ornament. As I did with many of the November stitched pieces, I sketched or drew a little picture of what I was going to attempt to stitch, then instead of drawing on the fabric I just look at the drawing as I free-motion quilted. It does make the process a bit slower because there is a certain amount of creating on the fly and sometimes I have to just be okay with wonky!

These November stitching pieces ended up being a great way to use painted, gel printed, stamped, and stenciled fabric pieces I had been saving.

Here is the finished ornament on hand painted fabric…

and a video showing the free-motion quilting (I built up more thread off camera).

And here are a couple links to printable pages for you or anyone you know who like to color in ornaments. Have fun and stay safe.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BM22ZRGEDBXEjJmnWtx8JlfqdvJW8TiU/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qLtd8rYm-eUnWwmQL_Vioa-hqXm4mful/view?usp=sharing

November Quickie

Previous post I shared the palm tree from the #Needlevember challenges; here is the free-motion video . I’ve had fun stitching everyday this month so far. It’s been a challenge first drawing something and then looking at it for reference while stitching on my machine. But I must admit the hand embroidery pieces have been a good speed (slow) for me at this time.

I’ve also produced a new video challenge project for Visions Art Museum member challenge titled: Fall Flag panel.

I hope you are staying safe and healthy.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Made it to November

This is a full post, feel free to share it with anyone you think would enjoy the project videos and artwork.

October was crazy around here. My husband went in for his second procedure only to find out all was corrected during the first, so happy about that…cycling can commence!

Our daughter is finally back from Russia and we made it through quarantine.

Our old cat was diagnosed with kidney disease so I have learned how to give injections. I could stick a needle in things all day long but could never watch needles going into skin. It still makes me queasy but we do what we have to do, right?

And still we are more fortunate that so many.

During the past two months I have made a few videos and have been thankful to be able to work on more projects for Visions Art Museum member challenges. There is another new project coming later this month. I’m posting the video projects below.

And now I have started a November challenge – #Needlevember, everyday this month I’ll be posting a stitched piece (think Inktober-ish). Here are the first five days; I’ll be adding day 6 to my Instagram page later today. Would love for others to take part in this November challenge just use #Needlevember and post on Instagram and Facebook.

As always I appreciate you stopping by.

Life Changes Plans

This seems to be the year for unplanned events. So I’m trying to roll with them.

My husband will be having a procedure for his health in a couple weeks. This is new to us, we have been very fortunate to not have any major health issue in the last thirty five years. So far the hardest part, because he can’t exercise, has been to keep him from over doing it. For a guy who is used to cycling between 40 and 90 miles about three days a week this is not easy.

It has also meant that I have been helping him more than usual on home projects, mostly to keep him from misbehaving. We have worked on many, many projects over our forty one years together but I’m feeling pretty much over it now!

Thankfully I have been in the studio a bit too.

Most recently I made an altered frame and painted a simple (faux) mat. The frame was being made to go onto a hand embroidery piece I made, but in the end it didn’t work with it. So I still have to make something for that embroidery piece sometime.

If you watch my videos, thank you very much and thank you for stopping by my blog too!

I finished the small art quilt that I wrote about in a previous post. I kept adding more quilting and then came beads, which I hadn’t planned on but am really happy with. I’m editing the video now and will post it as soon as it is finished. It will primarily be of the free-motion quilting.

Free-Motion Quilting

Sometimes things get heavy and I just need a little escape. That’s the time here right now. So I drew a little open wreath in my MeAnndering tablet (actual paper!)…

…and then decided to use it as inspiration for a little free-motion quilting. My first thought was to just quilt the open wreath and then to paint the flowers and leaves but now I think I’ll just keep quilting and make it a wholecloth quilt.

It’s looking pretty traditional which is not what I do much anymore but free-motion quilting, for me is pure joy, at least it is when the thread doesn’t break!

I hope you are safe and well and masking when going out.

Thanks for stopping by.

Quick Stitching

I have two living aunts, one lives near by and recently celebrated her 94th birthday. The other lives in Indiana and celebrated her 101st birthday this month! My mom was their baby sister. I remember years ago when my older aunt and I were talking quilting (she made many things including quilts), she couldn’t believe that out here (South Western USA) we would piece our quilt backs. I told her sometime the backs looked as good or better than the fronts. Apparently, back there, they would only use a seamless piece of fabric for their quilt backs and it wasn’t just because of hand quilting through the seams.

I would assume thanks to quilts being more recognized as art, that the pieced backs are fully accepted even back there now. If you are from another part of the US or world, are you familiar with pieced backs ever being unacceptable. I’m guessing economics played a role as those with less would have likely use whatever they had, and would have indeed piece the back of their quilts.

In celebration of her birthday I stitched up a quick little card and I know it will make her smile. I won’t tell her this one doesn’t even have a back! It has a thin layer of cotton batting on Timtex, with a quick satin stitched edge and then I used artists gel medium to attach it to the card stock. Quilted in about one minute because I was on my way out the door; next time I would go slower but as far as cards go, it was a quickie and fun. I like the results and I would make more.

I think my little fabric beads, each sewn on with a French knot and two colors of floss, are perfect for fabric poinsettia flowers!

Warm-up Wednesday

Well, I thought about doing this post yesterday with the title Tension Tuesday but Warm-up Wednesday seems to have a better ring to it!

I test tension and warm up for free-motion thread play at the same time. After testing my tension and ending up with this flower, I decided I needed to do my machine’s tension test on a solid piece of fabric (maybe a painted sky scrap?) so that I could add to it every time I tension test, creating a picture (which I may paint in the future). I know the best way to test the tension is sewing loops and straight lines but I can’t seem to help myself!

I recently learned on LuAnn Kessi’s blog about a tension gauge, but decided to hold off on buying one since I seem to be doing okay on my own. Have you used a gauge for checking sewing machine tension?

I mentioned it before – Because I change thread often while working on art quilts I have gotten pretty fast at adjusting the bobbin tension on my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen. I had a student in one of my workshops say that she uses only one kind of thread so her machine never gives her tension trouble. I think in some cases that is a good idea, but I like to change up the thread to get different textures. It also helps me remember to clean the lint out.

I wonder if some day sewing machines will just “feel” the thread, automatically make all the adjustments so all sewing goes smoothly!

Fiber Designs by Ann

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