Wren Stocking

Posted on December 20, 2022 by craftycreeky

Having recently discovered the free Christmas stocking designs on Michelle Palmer‘s website, I’ve just finished a second one. The first was the barn owl…

They’re only about 8-9″ tall so they don’t take too long to do.

The second one I chose is a design of a wren with some holly. It’s a design from 2019, still available on Michelle’s blog. As with the barn owl I painted the plain felt in my stash with silk paints, it’s given a nice subtle shading to the head and the wing. I added some embroidery to the bird too with fly, feather, chain and blanket stitch together with a few French knots.

The holly branch on the pattern was narrow strips of felt, but I decided to embroider them with a variegated thread in chain stitch. I added the twirly whirly green bits to fill a bit more space,

After blanket stitching the front and back together it was finished, I love these little designs and they’re lovely to stitch too. I think I might stitch a couple more next year.

Posted in Christmas, embroidery | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Staying Home Quilt HQAL

Posted on December 19, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’m a day late with this post as I got carried away in my sewing room and completely forgot to post! This is my Staying Home quilt which was made from leftovers from my Coming Home quilt during the lockdowns of 2020, I’m now hand quilting it and enjoying the process, even if other projects get in the way sometimes! Three weeks ago I was part way through a second row of blocks…

The row with the cat on was complete, I was working on the one below it…and I’m still working on that row, just got a bit further along.

I’ve quilted the embroidered block on the right with a rainbow and a house on. I kept it simple and quilted round the rainbow and round the outside of the house. I also finished quilted the house nextdoor by adding the windows, these are just quilted and then whip-stitched to make a solid outline.

I’ve started quilting the hearts in the sashing too so I think this row just needs one block quilting and then the sashing. I think I’m making slow but steady progress! Hopefully over Christmas I’ll have a little more time to quilt in the evenings and I’ll have much more to show you in my next post next year!!

Hand Quilt Along Links

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another.  If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.

Kathy, Margaret, Deb, Nanette, Sharon, Karrin, Daisy, and  Cathie 

Posted in embroidery, Quilt-a-long, Serendipity | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Barn Owl Stockings!

Posted on December 17, 2022 by craftycreeky

Here’s another finish from last week. I spotted these free patterns on Michelle Palmers website. She does all sorts of designs for applique or needle punch as well as some cute pen and ink illustrations. Each year recently she has kindly published a free design or two for a felt Christmas stocking. They are gorgeous designs.

I decided to stitch the one with a barn owl on. I found some nice felt in Boyes, it isn’t 100% wool like Cool Craftings wool, but it feels fine and it comes in a lovely range of colours. I chose a dark spruce green for the main stocking.

I wanted some subtle shading on the felt – the one on Michelles blog uses felt with a smudgy sort of finish. I only had plain felt so I cut out the various shapes and added colour with silk paints. I’ve not used them on felt before but it worked pretty well, I tried painting it on but it was a bit splodgy so I dunked the whole piece in the brush water which nicely evened out the paint a bit more, I could then add more colour to certain areas and it blended in well with the wet bits. The barn owls wing started off the same colour as his breast but as you can see it’s coloured up nicely,

The pattern just had the face of the owl embroidered with all the French knots, I love that bit. I decided the rest of the owl needed a bit of stitching too. I embroidered the breast first with fly stitch in a variegated cream. It took me a while to get going on the wings as I couldn’t work out how the feathers went. Fortunately someone on facebook on a bird-watching in Yorkshire fb page shared a photo of a barn owl in extactly the same pose! As you can see I used a variety of stitches with a DMC variegated thread, feather stitch, herringbone, fly, blanket and back stitch.

The wooden post he’s sitting on has a little bit of stitching, just some back-stitch to give a little detail. Round the bottom are some gorgeous seedheads with what I think is meant to be snow collecting in the cup of the seed head. They stand out beautifully on the dark green felt.

All that was left to do was to blanket stitch the front and back together. I really enjoyed stitching this piece and I’m already stitching another of Michelle’s Christmas stockings!

Posted in Christmas, embroidery, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Robin Redbreast

Posted on December 14, 2022 by craftycreeky

Last month I embroidered a robin, it was pretty easy to do as I used a heavier weight of cotton which has a very pretty design of robins. I used one as the base for the embroidery…

At the time I was still undecided what to do with it, I did ponder about including it in my garden book but I decided to make it into a mini cushion for a Christmas present.

I rummaged in my stash and found a fat quarter of duck egg blue with a subtle pattern on it, not too overpowering for the robin! I trimmed the robin to just over 4.5″ and cut 2″ strips, stitching a simple border round the embroidery. With hindsight I should have stitched the side ones first then the top and bottom would have the wider width, but it looks fine.

I stitched a square of the same fabric for the back and stuffed it, not too hard, just enough to hold it’s shape without distorting. I felt it needed a little extra, so I found two old DMC threads, one a darker duck egg and one lighter. I have a cord-maker which twists threads neatly into a cord so I measured a generous three times the perimeter so as to have sufficient and twisted the threads into a very pretty cord. The colours worked even better than I expected.

I was planning to just stitch it round the outer edge of the cushion, but when I tried it round the embroidery it really lifted it so I couched it round there to start with and then the outer edge. Talk about playing thread chicken, I had 5mm of cord left!!

All it needed now was a pretty button to cover the join…

I’m really pleased with him, the finished cushion is about 6″ square, now I need to wrap him up and post him on his way.

Posted in embroidery | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Stitching My Garden SAL

Posted on December 11, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’ve been busy trying to catch up with Christmas preparations over the last couple of weeks leaving me with little time to stitch my garden. Three weeks ago I’d made a start on my second big piece for my fabric book, this embroidery depicts the lawn and the summerhouse area….

Since then I’ve finished the gravel path, started to add a hint of paving stones in front of the summerhouse and back-stitched the roof of the summerhouse.

I have also finally started stitching some of the plants. I still need to add the small shrubs with applique, that will make a big difference to the piece as the borders do have quite a few shrubs as well as the shrub roses.

I’ve begun to embroider the plants round the pond, so there’s a couple of hostas, some irises and some solomon’s seal…

Hopefully once Christmas is out of the way I will start to make better progress!

This stitch-a-long is organised by Avis, please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, 

Heidi, Jackie, Sunny, Megan, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy, 

AJ, Cathie, Linda, Helen, Connie, Cindy, MaryMargaret

Posted in embroidery, Stitch-a-long, Stitching my Garden, Textile Books | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Young Master Rabbit

Posted on December 6, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’m making two rabbits for Christmas, Luna Lapin rabbits from Cool Crafting in Kendal. One is for my daughter Helen, one for my new grandson Hugo. Over the weekend I cracked on and made some clothes for Hugo’s.

The patterns for these clothes are all in the original Luna Lapin book (I think the author, Sarah Peel, is now on her forth or fifth book.) One thing I love about these clothes patterns is the amount of detail in them, they’re made just like a miniature version of adult clothing, within reason!

I made a shirt, complete with a lined yoke, collar, placket effect on the sleeve and working buttonholes…

… yes those buttons are just 6mm across so I just put my buttonhole foot on the smallest size and it worked! The buttons on the sleeve are even smaller but they’re just decorative. I thought the fabric was perfect, with ‘threaded with love’ all over it

Young Master Rabbit has now got a fluffy tail too, I think officially they’re called a scut.

His dapper little waistcoat is made from a scrap left from making my coat, so he’s a very posh rabbit having a waistcoat made from wool woven just down the road. Those buttons are just decorative!

His trousers are made from a fat quarter of quilting cotton I found in my stash, it’s got rabbits and hedgehogs on. I even managed to fussycut his back pockets so he has a motif on each one,

Although this young rabbit is for my grandson I haven’t made the clothes little child safe. The actual rabbit has safety eyes and no buttons where his arms are stitched on. When I looked at the clothes patterns it would have been difficult to make them without buttons. I have decided to tell his mum and dad that as soon as he shows any interest in actually playing with him I’ll make a new set of child friendly clothes.

That’s another present ticked off 🙂

Posted in Christmas, Luna Lapin, Sewing | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

An Exploding Heart

Posted on December 5, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’m finally starting to get a few finishes under my belt and one which I am very pleased to have finally finished is the Exploding Heart quilt, a design by Slice of Pi. This is a quilt for a happy young couple who finally got married in May after many delays due to covid. Yes I’m about six months late but I didn’t get the colour scheme until April…and I’m not very good without a deadline!

Last time I think I shared my progress on this particular project I had just finished piecing it, it was sandwiched and I was trying to decide how to quilt it…

I asked for suggestions on the UKQU facebook page and took on board a couple of comments and ideas, in particular that an all over meandering design might detract from the cream heart outline. I had found what I thought was a lovely free-motion quilting design of hearts and loops on Etsy, it was only about £2.50, but when I struggled to download it I found out that it was actually for computerised long arm machines! The shop owner kindly sent the design as a pdf so I could use it. Whilst I didn’t copy it it did give me a general pattern of hearts and loops.

I started in the middle with a heart and quilted the central heart in sage green with a meandering mix of hearts and loops. I then used cream to quilt just inside both edges of the cream heart. The rest of the quilt was then quilted in a very pale green. The colour changes worked well as the quilting doesn’t stand out too much, I used cream thread throughout underneath as the backing is a cream with tiny hearts on.

.During my visit to the Knitting and Stitching show I picked up some sage green fabric with tiny spots on which blended in nicely for the binding. I embroidered a label with the couples initials and the date and my initials at the bottom.

I’m really pleased with this quilt, it’s the biggest quilt I’ve quilted on a machine so far, it’s 72″ square. It’s also the first one I think I’ve quilted on this machine, it’s a memorycraft Janome with a wider stitching throat and it does make a huge difference when I’m trying to control 36″ quilt to the right of the machine needle.

I’m particularly pleased with the effect of the ‘scrappy’ background, the pattern was for a plain background but I used about five or six different fabrics in shades of cream and off white. Visually I think it’s a very effective pattern and the instructions are certainly easy to follow…it just took longer than I anticipated with all those half and quarter square tringles!

Hopefully the bride and groom will love it too.

Posted in Quilting, Serendipity | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

A Fluffle of Bunnies

Posted on December 2, 2022 by craftycreeky

I do like the traditional collective nouns, a charm of goldfinches, a peep of chickens, a parliament of owls…and a fluffle of bunnies. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been stitching my own fluffle of Luna Lapins.

Luna Lapin is a rabbit designed by Sara Peel of Cool Crafting in Kendal. I think she’s published about four books now, branching out to other animals such as deer, sheep, a mouse, otter to name but a few. They are all designed to be hand-stitched but can be machine stitched too. I tend to hand-stitch the rabbit and machine stitch the clothes

Over the last few years I think I’ve made three rabbits and one mouse…

This Christmas I decided to make one for my new grandson and also my daughter asked for one for Christmas, so two to make.

For Hugo, my grandson, I decided to make one in a creamy felt with the inside of the ears and the feet in a quilting cotton left over from a quilt which has hearts all over it. As Hugo is only a few months old I bought some safety eyes rather than use buttons and I’ve omitted the buttons at the top of the arms. I used blanket stitch for all the seams, the face didn’t shape quite as nicely with the safety eyes so I hand-stitched a little to pull them in.

Helen wanted a white Liberty rabbit and even sent up two fat quarters of tana lawn for me to use, both very flowery. I chose the pretty pink one for the ears and feet. I used buttons for the eyes and also ‘Handmade with love’ wooden buttons for the arm joint. She’s got little eye lashes too. They are both made with the 100% wool felt from Cool Crafting, it’s a lovely quality and doesn’t give way when you’re stuffing them!

‘All’ I’ve got to do now is make their clothes, a dress, coat and knickers for Helens and shirt, trousers and waistcoat for Hugo’s

Posted in Luna Lapin | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Robin Redbreast

Posted on November 30, 2022 by craftycreeky

I’ve a few projects on the go at the moment, various presents or Christmassy stitchings, I haven’t quite decided what this one will be yet…

I love seeing robins round the garden, they’re never very far away when I’m gardening, hoping for a tasty worm no doubt. There’s an old saying that when a robin appears, loved ones are near, so I often think of my mum when I see the robin bobbing about. I bought some heavier weight cotton with robins on a few years back and I decided to use one of the robins as basis for an embroidery. This was my ‘stitching on the go’ project which is kept in my handbag for those opportune moments for a little stitching.

I kept the stitching fairly simple, using chain stitch on the head, French knots, fly stitch and a few straight stitches for the red breast and light coloured feathers underneath. The back and wings are fly stitch again, blanket stitch and herringbone with a few sequins and beads added too.

Having the basic image underneath does help as I don’t have to think about dimensions and shape, just embellishing where I want to. I haven’t quite decided if this one is going to be made into a mini pillow as a present, kept as a Christmas decoration or even made into a card…

…I think I’ll see how I’m doing with other projects before I decide on the finish!

Posted in embroidery, Garden | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Staying Home HQAL

Posted on November 27, 2022 by craftycreeky

It’s three weeks since I last shared my progress with hand quilting my Staying Home quilt, this was made with fabric left from my Coming Home quilt and embroidered blocks from a QAL by Hugs and Kisses back in 2020 during the lockdowns, hence the title!

Three weeks ago I had finally got into the swing of my chosen pattern, hearts in the sashings and stitch in the ditch mainly for houses…

Well I’ve made steady progress and I’ve finished the row with a cat on it, blocks and sashings top and bottom. I’m now working on the row below, I’m just working on the second house, the central embroidered block is already quilted, so just two more embroidered blocks to do and then the sashing…

…as I said, steady progress, not huge but progress is progress and quilting has slowed down now with Christmas presents to make and party outfits to stitch. Christmas seems to be sneaking up rapidly!

Hand Quilt Along Links

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another.  If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.

Kathy, Margaret, Deb, Nanette, Sharon, Karrin, Daisy, and  Cathie 

I’m also linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, please follow the links for lots of hand-stitched inspiration.

Posted in embroidery, Quilt-a-long, Quilting | Tagged , , | 12 Comments