Last Stitch projects of 2011

I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus between the inevitable Christmas crush and some exciting work stuff that must remain under wraps for now, but since we’re ticking the final hours of 2011 away, I thought I’d best get around to posting my projects from the Winter and Gifts issues of Stitch—I think they’re still on newsstands, so I’m not totally out of date!

I was thrilled to see my Wool Petals Pillow on the cover. If you’ve got a stash of wool, it’s one of those deceptively simple projects that looks more luxe than it really deserves to. Unfortunately the pillow is now stashed in the closet to keep little claws from “inspecting” it…

Said claws thankfully don’t seem to be as interested in my other wool project for the Winter issue, the Silver Dollar Rug. The Other had a grey wool coat that was getting no use here in California, so I felted it and cut it into big circles as a larger-scale riff on penny rugs. We moved this summer into a house with wood floors, so we’re finally able to enjoy fun throw rugs.

I’ve long thought trapunto was ripe for a modern interpretation, and this Chain-Link Trapunto Pillow was the eventual result. The slight brown tinge in the image isn’t a misprint: the silk I used was cross-woven with teal in one direction and brown in the other, which is especially striking for dimensional techniques like this. I love how the pillow turned out and I’m itching to make some similar pillows with other designs.

It’s a little late to be showing a tree skirt—though I could certainly use with a head start for next Christmas! This Color-Wheel Tree Skirt is a fun way to use a large-scale holiday print.

Patterns for the previous projects are all in the Winter 2011 issue of Stitch; these Snowflake Table Linens are in the Gifts 2011 issue. There’re placemats, napkins, and napkin rings included, all made with English paper piecing using snowflake prints and some snowflake embroidery. I always say the best thing about snowflakes is that they’re festive for the holidays but still seasonal if the decorations don’t get put away on Boxing Day. (Which, needless to say, never happens around here.)

I hope you all had a lovely holiday and wish you happy sewing in the new year!

Charley Harper ladybugs

I made this felt picture based on Charley Harper’s ladybugs a while ago as a break from quilt-size appliqué projects, but I never got around to posting it. Then I caught wind of the Charley Harper Quilt Along and thought it’d be a good time to share.

Judging by the enthusiastic interpretations people have posted to the Quilt Along pool, Harper’s illustrations are ripe for reinterpretation in fabric. My fabric for these ladybugs, wool felt, is relatively boring, but it was a fun, manageable project to stitch up on a whim, and the felt gives it a little dimension.

The Quilt Along’s got me itching to work up some more small Harper-inspired pieces—I’m almost done with a goldfinch in needlepoint that I’ll have to get a photo of. We’re moving house in a few weeks, and I’m envisioning a beautifully composed wall of Charley Harper needlework in the new place: the fused fabric pictures the Mother made for me, a quilt from this pattern I found, maybe some cross-stitch, and whatever other fibrous experiments get my needle aflutter.

A Christmas Eve flurry

The big day is almost here, and there’s so much more I wanted to share with you! And more things I wanted to make for gifts, and gifts that haven’t even been shipped yet…but instead of lamenting what didn’t get done, I thought I’d celebrate something I did do with one last burst of snowflake ornament photos. Mostly felt with some cardstock ones mixed in this time, cut with a ballooning collection of Sizzix snowflake dies and glued together in the spare moments amid Christmas crisis control.

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas!

Flower flakes (snowflake ornaments 11–12)

Here’s a dilemma faced by the prolific maker of felt snowflake ornaments: typical felt, whether wool or acrylic, isn’t really stiff enough to maintain an intricate flake shape while dangling from the ceiling. I’ve tried spray-starching the living daylights out of wool-blend felt, but that wasn’t entirely satisfactory, so I’ve ended up making most of the felt ornaments out of acrylic felt, using components cut from sheets of stiffened acrylic felt (“Friendly Felt”?) to give the ornaments some structure. That’s all fine, but the colors of stiffened felt available are limited—white’s really the only useful color for my nefarious purposes, and yes, snow is white, but so are my ceilings and walls, so white flakes don’t really stand out.

For these flakes, I stacked more colorful snowflake shapes on top of a six-petal flower. The flowers were cut with an Ellison die that’s been discontinued. Why bring up a die you can’t even get anymore? Well, if you have a full-size Sizzix machine, keep an eye on the Ellison clearance page—their AllStar dies are the same size as a Sizzix Bigz die and work exactly the same in a BigKick or Big Shot die cutter, and recently discontinued dies usually run about $5 on clearance. The Ellison dies are aimed at the education market instead of papercrafters, so they often have a broader range of simple shapes, which I find more flexible for felt and quilting projects.

The Sizzix Snowflake #2 die fits nicely inside the flower petals, as you can see above. And actually, I lied: I use the stiffened felt in white and white with glitter, not that you can tell the difference when the flakes are hanging above eye level.

The Sizzix Snowflake #3 die, on the other hand, is bigger than the flower. I took advantage of this by only gluing the snowflakes to the flower in the center so the outer points could curl forward and give a little dimension.

These ornaments, of course, also feature the by-now usual suspects of felt stickers, sequins, rhinestones, and glitter glue—a simple arsenal that’s produced lots of variations.

Snowflake ornament 10

See, it’s not all hot glue and stickers over here! For this ornament I used the Purl Bee’s tutorial for Two-Sided Felt Snowflakes, and while they didn’t call for metallic thread, it seemed like a good opportunity to use a spool of silver thread I had sitting about—isn’t it nice how Christmas makes all bling excusable?

The finished back is a good feature, especially when you’re hanging it from the ceiling and letting it twirl in the breeze.

Tutorial: felt pinecone ornaments

The Other promptly named these ornaments “butt stingers,” as this is apparently what they call pinecones in the land from whence he came. He insists he didn’t make the term up; nevertheless I’m a little disturbed. Whatever you call them, the pinecone ornaments turned out rather snazzy, if I do say so myself, and they have the added bonus of looking trickier than they actually are.

This is the basic version, but you can glam it up with glitter reminiscent of snow:

Use white glitter if you really want it to look like snow. Or make mini versions with pinked edges:

So how do you make the stinkin’ stingers? Well, follow along…

Supplies

• Aluminum foil
• Felt (you’ll use long strips, so a small amount of yardage would be best; ⅛ yard is more than enough for one ornament)
• Scalloping shears or rotary cutter with scallop blade (or pinking shears/blade for mini version)
• Hot glue gun with glue
• Heavy thread and hand needle
• Glitter, white glue, and disposable plate (optional)

 

Instructions

1. Form a wad of aluminum foil into a shape vaguely resembling a pinecone. I made mine tall and fairly slender, but there of course are fatter cones out there, so do as you like. This foil blob became the large light aqua pinecone:
2. Cut a strip about ½" wide from the felt, as long as you can, using the scalloping shears or rotary cutter. (If you can find scalloping shears, let me know—I’m beginning to think their existence is a hoax.) You’ll probably need to cut more than one strip, and it’s OK to leave on the inverted-scallop edge from cutting the first strip (actually, it’s helpful; see step 7). Do as I say, not as I show: the strip pictured is wider than it needs to be; ½" is plenty.
3. Your strip probably won’t end with a neat scallop. Trim off any partial scallops to make it easier to overlap the ends.
4. If you want to make the glittered version, pour some white glue onto a plate. Drag the scalloped edge of the felt through the glue. Then sprinkle glitter over the glue on the felt and let dry. Shake off the excess glitter when dry and then proceed with the rest of the instructions.
5. Hot glue the end of the felt strip to the bottom tip of the foil blob, extending the scalloped edge a little bit beyond the foil. Wrap the strip tightly around the end to completely hide the foil tip. Wrap and glue in small sections so the glue doesn’t harden before you’ve stuck the felt to it.
6. Continue coiling the felt around the foil, overlapping the scallops so they look like individual scales. Add another strip if the first runs out, hiding the ends of the strips in the subsequent coils.
7. The top of the ornament can be dealt with a couple of ways. As you can see in the photo above, the edge of my strip opposite the scallops had inverted scallop notches cut into it from a previous strip, and these notches helped the felt ease around the curved top:
   Instead, you could cut a circle of felt with the same scallop edge and glue that on, as I did for the bright aqua pinecone:
   With the circle method, sew the hanging loop (next step) to the circle before gluing the circle in place.
8. Cut a length of thread a little longer than twice the desired finished length of the hanging loop. Thread the needle with both ends and sew the ends through the top of the ornament (if using the eased-top method, bring the needle out between tucks). Remove the needle and tie the ends of the thread together securely. Trim the thread tails. If using the eased-top method, pull the hanging loop to bury the knot between the tucks and scales of the ornament; if using the circle method, hot glue the knot side to the top of the ornament.

That’s it! Play with different shears or blades to change the look of the scales and make a whole treeful.

Snowflake ornaments 6–9

I was delighted to find cheap packs of felt snowflake ornaments at Target—they make great bases for embellishing with further snowflake paraphernalia. The one above is that felt base with a snowflake die-cut from Sizzix’s Snowflake Layered die, a felt snowflake sticker (details here), and self-stick rhinestones in silver and aqua. (By the way, please excuse the wonky lighting and shadows—using the flash was the only way to get the white flakes to show up against the white walls and ceiling.)

Same idea with this one, but the felt sticker is under a six-pointed star cut with the Sizzix Snowflake, Hanging 3-D #2 die (apparently discontinued). The star is then topped with a snowflake flat. The little bits of aqua felt where the punch-outs left over from the sticker in the middle.

Clearly I got a lot of mileage out of those felt stickers. I used glitter glue to detail this ornament, but I kind of think it looks a little primary-school-ish as a result. What do you think?

The base flake for this one is a bit different, and that’s because Michaels also had packs of felt snowflake blank with a different shape than the Target ones. I left the points of the flake alone since they were fairly beefy, and used the Snowflake Layered die again with yet another felt sticker and a rhinestone—this time one shaped like a snowflake.

With a few flake bases left and a fresh pack of felt stickies, I could whip up another batch before bed tonight…but perhaps I need to put the craft supplies away and just go to sleep already.

Mini-tutorial: snowflake ornament 1

Let’s start with a super simple one. You could make this beaded snowflake ornament much more elaborate depending on your bead stash; I just messed about with the limited supply I had on hand.

What makes this a really brainless project is a “snowflake ornament form”—a six-spoked premade wire form. I found a pack of 7 for a couple bucks at a local craft store; you’re looking for something like this. No worries if you can’t find them, though; just use pliers to twist together 3 stiff wires about 4½" long.

The other big timesaver with this ornament (and many others in the veritable snowstorm hanging from our living room ceiling) is a sack of felt snowflake stickers, precut and prestickified in various shapes, colors, and sizes. The ones shown here came from Jo-Ann, but Michaels has slightly different ones. Again, just a couple bucks for about a hundred. This ornament also has a sneaky trick with the felt stickers—read on!

Supplies

• 4½" wire snowflake ornament form
• Two 1¾" and two ⅞" felt snowflake stickers
• 24 silver or clear bugle beads
• 6 round glass beads
• Twelve ½" felt circle stickers (see step 3)
• Twelve 8mm sequins
• Craft glue
• 2 self-stick rhinestones
• Thread or other hangy thingy

Instructions

1. Remove the paper backing and stick one of the larger snowflake stickers over the intersection of the wires on the ornament form, lining up the points of the sticker with the spokes of the form. Flip the form over and stick another matching snowflake sticker over the first, aligning the edges of the stickers and covering the wire. Yes folks, this ornament looks good from both sides. Squeeze the stickers together to adhere them to each other firmly.
2. Stick a smaller snowflake sticker in the center of each larger one. I rotated my small stickers so the space between the points would match up with the precut holes in the bigger sticker behind—might as well let them show rather than covering them up.
3. On one of the wire spokes, thread 2 bugle beads, a round bead, and 2 more bugle beads. To keep them from falling right back off, sandwich 2 felt circle stickers sticky sides together around the end of the wire. Some of the snowflakes in my bag o’ stickers had round holes in the middle, and the circles filling the holes hadn’t been removed, so I popped ’em out and used them on the ends of the spokes. (That’s the sneaky bit. Not really that sneaky.) If you’re sans snowflake doughtnut holes, cut or punch ½" circles from a sticker-backed felt sheet, or just from regular felt and use a bit of glue to stick them on the wires.
4. Repeat step 3 for each of the wire spokes.
5. Bling time. Use a dab of glue to stick a sequin to each of the felt circles on both sides of the ornament (let the glue dry between sides). When all the glue has dried, stick a rhinestone in the center of the ornament on both sides.
6. Tie a loop of thread to one of the spokes (below the felt circles) or attach the hanging implement of your choice. Fin!

By the way, “mini-tutorial” means I didn’t take step-by-step photos. But really, do you need a picture to tell you how to stick a sticker?

Tune in tomorrow for more…

Free Pattern: Snowmen for appliqué or embroidery

OK, OK; I know tomorrow is Thanksgiving. But I’ve been itching for Christmas since the Halloween accoutrements hit stores, and for once I’ve had no problem with Chrimbo being rolled out ridiculously early by the gods on Mount Retail. (But please, keep the effing holiday music away from me. Yech. This will forever be a playlist-free blog.) I’m dying to get the tree and ornaments put up, and I’ve actually already started covering our living room ceiling with snowflakes. Last Christmas was a bit of a non-starter, so I’m ready to put my Grinchy ways aside and spread some cheer, dammit.

What does this mean for you? Well, I’m planning to share all my crafty Christmas stuff (“crap” would’ve alliterated better, but I shan’t give you crap!) with you here—photos, tutorials, patterns, and other bits of fun. So to start with, a free pattern for appliqué (or embroidery, if you like)!



I made these tea towels for Middle Brother and his wife a couple years ago, fusing wool felt to the background to give the snowmen some dimension. A really narrow zigzag around the edge of the felt with matching or invisible thread rounds the edges rather splendidly.

Something was missing, though: how did snowman A, standing happily, become snowman B, melting into a sloppy pile of sludge? Snowman C, armed with a hairdryer, is the culprit:




Why is Snowman C so ill-spirited? You’ll have to supply your own motivation; I’m just supplying the pattern.
If you’re not feeling the appliqué, try a melting redwork snowman instead:



Two formats are available:

• Get the PDF to print out and transfer for your favorite appliqué or embroidery technique.
• Get the EQ7 project file to use the snowmen blocks (on the Motifs tab) in your own quilts or other EQ designs.

Designs are copyright © 2010 Feed Dog Designs, but you’re free to use them on Christmas gifts, decor, or whatever you like. Happy stitching, happy Thanksgiving, and look for more holiday goodies here soon!

Kitchen projects in Stitch

Check out the current issue of Quilting Arts Stitch for my pattern to make these nametag placemats, which of course double as placecards. I’ve been itching to make something like this for ages, so I was thrilled that Stitch liked them too.

Also from the spring 2010 Stitch, my felt Stepping Stones potholder makes a quick hostess gift or spot of wall decor. Try cutting some of the circles from felt in houndstooth or another pattern!

Make sure not to miss my baby quilt or the other great projects in the magazine!