I know I’m leaving it a bit late, but I’ve just finished my last entry for our local show on Saturday. It’s a padded coat-hanger. I’d already made two, one of them is a gorgeous frothy affair, the other is an elegant linen one and it’s this one I wasn’t completely happy with, from a likelihood of winning point of view!

When I was at Denman College at the beginning of the month I learnt how to do ribbon embroidery. The tutor was Marilyn Pipe and she was fantastic, a great tutor and we had a lovely atmosphere in here class, I loved it so much I’ve already booked myself on one of  her classes next year. She’s a very talented lady, I bought a machine embroidered card from her, it’s a picture of a sewing machine. I’ve framed it and hung it in my sewing room.

We made a beautiful pot of roses and flowers, learnt how to colour silk, adding filler flowers and twiddly bits. I was so excited when I got home I sent it off to be framed before  had chance to photograph it, so for those of you who missed the update on my post , here’s the photos of my flowers. Marilyn recommends framing without glass so the embroidery doesn’t get squashed, my house is too dusty for that (dogs etc!) so the framer suggested a double mount with a spacer in-between, I really like the effect.

Each day Marilyn lent us a Classic Inspirations magasine (bed time reading!) one of mine had a beautiful padded coat-hanger in it and she kindly lent it to me so I could make one for the show. I bought some extra hand-dyed silk ribbon and silk noil from her so I would have sufficient supplies.

First job was to trace the basic outline onto the silk, I just used a soft pencil. I started to embroider the briar roses, each petal is made from two stitches, I quickly realised I wouldn’t have enough silk ribbon to do three pink roses and as I’d started in the middle I couldn’t just do two! I chose the blue ribbon for the others and made them slightly smaller and simpler to make it more like a periwinkle. I’m particularly pleased with the rosebuds as I couldn’t really follow the instructions so I sort of made it up as I went along, I’m well chuffed with the result!

The coathanger in the magasine is in beautiful soft muted shades, once I’d started with the blue, I had to add more colour to balance it. I stitched the forget-me-nots with one of the new DMC variegated threads, lots of french knots! The lavender spikes to me look more like veronica, they are stitched with bullion bars, I always have to get the instructions out for those to remember where to bring your needle out!

With Marilyn’s voice ringing in my rears I added some twiddly bits, the green twirls and leaves, it does just soften the edges and fill in the gaps. I even made one into a four-leaf clover for luck!

With the embroidery done, I then had to make it into a padded coat-hanger, I found some ivory silk dupion in my scrap box and cut some strips on the bias to cover some piping cord, at the same time I made a narrow rouleau to cover the hook with, It turned really easily with my loop-turner.

I covered the hanger with 4oz polyester wadding, it was clear that the pattern in the magasine was for a smaller hanger so I had to draft my own pattern. I used a scrap piece of lining fabric and pinned it round to get my basic pattern, then stitched it to check the fit. Yes, I actually made a toille for a coat-hanger 🙂

Once I was happy with the pattern, I cut it out in the silk and stitched the piping round. I thought I was starting at the top, so the join would be under the bow, but unfortunately I was having a moment and I actually started at the bottom…

The silk was machine stitched to just round the ends, leaving a tiny gap for the hook, I could just persuade it over the ends before hand stitching the bottom together, I added a little toy stuffing too just to pad it out a bit.

I tied a double bow round the top and my coat-hanger was complete…except I decided it needed a lavender bag…

I had just enough noil leftover to fit in my embroidery hoop (with a few gaps, but I managed!) I had silk ribbon left for one simple pink rose, I added a couple of leaves and some forget-me-knots, the twiddly green bits just brought it all together. I cut it to a 3″ square and cut the same in silk dupion for the back. I stuffed it with a little toy stuffing and lots of lavender. I was planning to stitch a little bow over where the loop attaches to the bag but it looked too fussy, so I dug out my jar of vintage buttons and found two tiny mother of pearl buttons, I stitched one on the front and one on the back, I think they are just enough.

Well, that’s it, all my entries complete, it’s up to the whim of the judge now….better get on and finish that quilt for an 18th birthday tomorrow…