Update: Christmas UFO Projects

This is a not-so-quick update of my progress on the projects I identified for the Christmas 2007 UFO work plan, which I am attempting to finish in November 2008. I encountered a few challenges along the way . . .

The Christmas Tree Countdown Calendar:

It turns out that I had completely finished 9 mini ornaments last year, while 10 more were stitched together and waiting to be cut apart.

The numbers for the remaining 6 days were embroidered but the ornament fronts needed to be finished.

Here they are all done - this is the layout I'm hoping to use for attaching them to the tree:

I haven't decided yet how to attach them to the tree; the original instructions from Embroidery Library suggest eyes and hooks. If I can find some I like, I may use that method, but it will require hand sewing. And I still need to decide on fabrics for the borders and backing to turn this into a wall hanging. Or maybe it should be some sort of stuffed stand-up figure? Hmmmm.....

Snowman & Santa Ornaments:

I've completed all the embroidery for these little guys. It was my first really successful attempt at embroidering with metallic threads. I used Sulky metallic gold and silver embroidery thread, a Schmetz Metallic #80 needle, YLI cotton bobbin thread and medium tearaway stabilizer. I hooped the stabilizer and "floated" the felt on top for each embroidery design, and stitched them each on a slow setting - not the absolute slowest, but the speed I call "medium slow".


The only problem I ran into was that I ran out of gold thread with just about 100 stitches remaining on the snowman's hat piece (the one with the holly leaves and berries).

I didn't have another spool of gold thread, so I saved the embroidery design on my SE, noted the stitch number where I stopped stitching and removed the hoop from the machine, but left the felt in the hoop as-is. The same thing happened when I was working on the snowman's body pieces -- ran out of silver right at the very end.

The next day I visited my local JoAnn Fabrics and bought the larger size spools of gold and silver. Lucky me, the threads were all 50% off for the Veterans' Day sale, plus I had an extra 10% coupon to use, so I also picked up some Sulky green metallic and Coats & Clark ruby metallic ('cuz they were all out of the Sulky red).

Anyway, when I returned to the machine, I reloaded the original design and used the nifty 'go to stitch' feature on my machine. Instead of having to advance one stitch at a time through a design to get to my previous stopping point, one of the recent SE machine updates allows us to type in a stitch number and the machine advances right to that point. I'll bet they put that in for just this kind of situation. I backed up a few stitches just to be sure I didn't miss any and started up the embroidery on the slowest setting and watched it finish the last 100 stitches perfectly.

Now that all the embroidery is completed, I need to cut apart the pieces and start assembling and stuffing these ornaments.

In the Hoop Potholders:

I've finished one of the Christmas Potholders so far:

The top sections were cut out and salvaged from one of those old placemat rejects I showed in my previous blog entry. It turns out that I still have about a yard of the "fruity" Christmas fabric, so I used that for the lining of the "bottom" section of the potholder.

I followed the basic directions for In the Hoop Potholders from EmbroideryLibrary with a few modifications to make this one. I didn't hoop all the layers, just the tearaway stabilizer. I used the dieline files to stitch the outlines of the top and bottom pieces and cut exactly on the stitching to get the proper size pieces. When the embroidery design is stitched, the dielines are included as a step to show where to place the pieces.

One other change I made was to embroider through all the layers of the top pieces. The original instructions have a step where you put the lining fabric on the bottom of the hoop before sewing the inner borders so that the back of the embroidery (where you put your hand inside the potholder) is covered. When the borders are stitched, the stabilizer is captured inside which I thought was too stiff and uncomfortable on the potholder I made last year. So instead, all the fabric layers of the top pieces are on the top of my hooped stabilizer and the back of my embroidery is visible, if you really wanted to look inside. The potholder is more pliable, which I think is important if you want to be able to grab a hot handle easily.

It took me about 2.5 hours from start to finish, including cutting and measuring and reading all the instructions. I hope the next one will go faster.

During the embroidery, I used the Sensor Q foot and I think I've finally figured out the trick to attaching this one without a struggle. I've used it before, and I do think that it makes the embroidery look a little bit better, but it was always such a bother to attach it correctly, I've just been using the R foot for most embroidery because it's easier. There's a tip for attaching the Q foot in the files section of the Designer SE Yahoo group, but I still had some trouble after studying the photos. I don't have problems with attaching any of the other accessory feet -- including the dual feed foot -- so this one has been bugging me.

This time, I removed the needle, removed the regular ankle, raised the foot height and lowered the needle position, THEN aligned the groove on the Sensor Q foot so that I could attach the screw on the left side of the presser foot bar while keeping the little arm on the right side above the needle screw. Before, the needle would always get in my way, and I couldn't get the little arm above the needle screw. I also remembered to change my machine settings for the Q foot this time. I stitched at the "medium slow" speed again, and the embroidery really does look great.

The larger In the Hoop Potholder fits my hand better than the smaller one I made last year. Here's a side by side view:

The smaller one measures about 5 x 6.75 inches and the larger one is about 5.75 x 8 inches. I don't remember which hoop I used for the smaller one (probably the 180x130); I used the 240x150 for the Christmas design.

Additional photos of these projects in process can be seen in this album:

Christmas 2008 - in progress

Knit One, Save One

In September, I wrote about my experience at Stitch 'n Pitch at Shea Stadium; prior to the game I had read this press release about Save The Children and Warm Up America's Knit One, Save One campaign and thought that yarn would be provided to work on these caps during the game. Unfortunately, that was not the case; the instruction kit was handed out, but no yarn, so I had to work on these at home.

The instruction booklet has directions for both knitting and crochet, for beginners and intermediate skill levels. I decided to crochet mine using yarns from my stash and I've been working on them on and off since October. They aren't as beautiful as some of the others on the web site, just simple solid color caps. But I'll bet they'll get the job done.

The instructions for making the caps are available for download as part of the Action Kit from the Knit One Save One web page. While you're at that page, you can also watch a video about the program, which is part of Save the Children's Survive to 5 program, play the Celebrity Caps Game, and get inspired by caps made by last year's participants.

If you'd like to participate, you've got until December 31 to make a cap and mail it in. If you can't make a cap, you can make a $10 donation online toward a Newborn Care Kit.

Christmas 2007 UFO Work Plan

Before I begin any new projects (and believe me, there's a looooonnnng list of to do's) I'm going through the sewing room and looking for unfinished Christmas projects from last year and putting together a plan to either complete them or otherwise dispose of them.

Remember this UFO from last year's Christmas Wrap-up blog entry? This is a Christmas Tree Countdown Calendar from Embroidery Library. The tree is actually embroidered from three separate embroidery files because it is so big. It took most of a Sunday afternoon, but it was so cool to watch the segments of each file line up to form one giant tree. The instructions from EmbroideryLibrary for this Christmas Tree Countdown Calendar are very good. I'll bet one of those newer embroidery machines with the gigantic hoops could stitch it in one hooping.

I simply ran out of time last year and did not complete the last six ornaments for the countdown. A few nights ago I was able to finish the embroidery for the last few ornaments. Next, I'll try to cut them out of the felt and then finish the wall hanging. I'm not sure yet if this will be a gift to give away or for us to keep. I'll post an update later.

There were a few other projects I wanted to make last year and, silly me, I thought I would try to work on one UFO each month to get them all done before this Christmas. Hah! I didn't even look at them once this year, and I'm not sure I even remember them all now, since I didn't bother to leave myself any notes. I did, however, pack up most of the supplies for a few projects, each in it's own sweater box, so making a list of UFOs shouldn't be too hard.

One of the projects I do remember wanting to make last year is this pair of stuffed ornaments from Designs in Machine Embroidery magazine's Sept/Oct 2007 issue (Volume 46). In fact, making the Santa and Snowman were the main reason I bought extra felt last year.

The designs by Janet Brooks were on the cover of that issue and were available as a free download in 2007; the project instructions are still available for download from the magazine's website, but the embroidery designs don't seem to be available, at least I can't find a link for them on the re-designed site. Hopefully, I downloaded all the files needed last year.  UPDATE: The embroidery designs and instructions are available for download in the Designs Plus Newsletter - July 2010.

I found one other box with UFO holiday projects from 2007 - remember the Swirling Autumn Leaves In-the-hoop potholder from last year? I ended up buying a Christmas Potholder design pack, but didn't get around to making any of them in 2007. The plan was to use up the odds and ends of Christmas fabrics, pre-quilted remnants and batting from my stash to make these for gifts. If I don't get to them this year, I may not ever get around to making them.

In the same UFO project box, I found these old placemats -- or what I call my sorry attempt at making Christmas placemats from somewhere around 1995-ish. Here is a perfect example of why I've always said I'm not a quilter.

As I remember, the instructions were in one of the craft magazines I subscribed to at the time and they were supposed to be "sew easy" because the binding was attached by ironing a fusible tape to it before topstitching in place, almost a no-sew project. Well - the fusible I used back then was a Heat 'n Bond lite product and I remember having all kinds of trouble trying to wrap the binding around all the layers; it kept slipping and fusing to itself. It never occurred to me to quilt the fabric pieces before attaching the binding; for that matter it never occurred to me to buy wider binding or make my own or sew on the binding instead of fusing it because I always followed the instructions. Even if I had tried to quilt the pieces, I didn't have a walking foot for my old sewing machine.

I've always been disappointed with these things, but couldn't bring myself to just throw them away because that would be too wasteful, so I've been carrying them in the stash all this time. Actually, now that I think of it, it's kind of cool to compare them to projects I've completed recently and realize how much I've learned in the past few years.

Last year I thought I might cut them up and use the parts for the in-the-hoop potholders. I'll have to throw away the bindings now, they're covered with glue from the old fusible and are stiff and yucky. But the fabric and batting are in good shape.

Whatever I don't use for in-the-hoop potholders, I will use to practice quilting, both free motion and with machine embroidered designs. At least now I have the right tools and quilting experience (however limited) to make it work.

So -- the plan is to work on these projects as much as possible between now and the end of this year. Or at least for the next two weeks.

There's a good chance I'll work on totally different projects if the mood strikes me. I *do* still need to make raincoats for the Westies (I got the pink pleather in September as planned), and Penny has grown out of last year's fleece coat so she'll need a new one if it gets really cold soon. And, I have an idea for posing them for a Christmas photo that requires Santa and Elf coats.

And you know, there's always something . . . . . . .

Finished: Be Thankful & Winter Blessings Mini Quilts

Both of these mini wall quilts (see my previous entry) are complete.

Halloween was kind of a let-down; we don't usually get too many visitors, but this year our only trick-or-treaters showed up at 3:30 pm. One group was about a half dozen runners from Don Bosco Prep who happened to run a lap around our cul-de-sac around the same time I was out with the Westies, who were wearing their Halloween neck ruffles and barking greetings as the boys passed. I guess on their way back to campus they decided to try to score some candy. One of them had taken off his t-shirt and knotted it for a trick-or-treat bag. Silly boys. We hadn't even thought about getting the candy bowl ready yet, so I had to make them wait while I opened a bag, gave them each a pack of M&M's and sent them on their way. Just a few minutes later, a girl in her teens appeared at the door with two doggies in costume, so we treated them with M&M's too.

Since it was a Friday afternoon and they were already ringing the bell, I thought we might be in for a long night so got the Westies dressed up in their Peter Pan and Tinkerbell costumes, filled up the candy bowl and waited for the rest of the kids to show up. The bell didn't ring again all night and we finally turned off the front light at 10pm. It's a good thing we didn't buy too much extra candy.

Anyway -- On Saturday I was more than ready to get the Halloween decorations down and put away and to bring out the Thanksgiving pieces. And that put me in the mood to work on the Be Thankful wall hanging so that it would be finished in time for Thanksgiving.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I wanted to added some stitches around the words:

Also, the crow needed an eye; I hand stitched a white glass seed bead layered over a black sequin:

And then it was ready for binding and hanging:

The background fabric appears to be blue in these photos but it is actually charcoal gray; I enhanced the photos so that the details would be visible and that seems to have altered the color.

The hanger has been in my "collection" for well over 10 years. I don't remember which one of the many stitching festivals at which I might have purchased it, but there's a notation on the packaging that I paid $15 for it. I do remember thinking it would be perfect for hanging seasonal bellpulls or other samplers (as an inexpensive alternative to framing) if and when I ever got around to stitching them.

At one time, I had quite a collection of bellpull hardware, most of which I sold on eBay a while back. For some reason, I held on to this one. I never did get around to hand stitching those seasonal samplers, but, as it turns out, this hanger is the perfect width for these "backdoor" sized mini quilts, so at last I can use it!

Once the Be Thankful quilt was finished and on display, it felt like I should finish up the Winter Blessings quilt, too. Besides, my sewing machine is all set up for it with a quilting needle and dual feed foot.

There was very limited quilting done so far, but I couldn't think of anything more I should or could do since there was very little space in the background for extra stitching. I hand stitched the snowman's mouth, and attached a white seed bead for the cardinal's eye. Then I sewed the buttons for his chest and the dots of the i's through all the layers. The piece seemed pretty secure so I decided to go ahead and attach the binding without any additional quilting.

The hanger for this one is borrowed from another wall-hanging so that I could take photos, but it may become permanent, since it seems to suit this piece so well.

So what did I learn from these two projects?

• I free motion quilted for the first time, using my new Fabric Mover - and I liked it! Definitely need to do more!
  
• Appliqué using fusible is fun and not too difficult;
• Putting on a binding and mitering the corners can be done, it just takes a little time and patience and the right accessory foot;
  
• Simple outline designs, like the words on these quilts, can be digitized for machine embroidery, but starting off with a good scanned image is important;
• By being creative and using the accessories for my machine, almost any handwork technique can be duplicated or approximated.

Although two full months elapsed between the days I started and finished these projects, had I worked on them without interruption of other projects (like t-shirts and doggie costumes), I probably could have completed both in about two weeks. That's encouraging, 'cuz I have a feeling I'll be doing some more quilting in the next few months.

Be Thankful and Winter Blessings Photo Album, which has photos of all stages of progress for both projects, is embedded below:

Be Thankful & Winter Blessings Mini Quilts

In Progress: Be Thankful & Winter Blessings Mini Quilts

So I guess you could say I've decided to try my hand at quilting. On a whim, I purchased these two mini-quilt wall hanging kits at The Cozy Quilt Shop in July, using my birthday discount. The patterns for both kits are from Cottage Creek Quilts' "Backdoor Quilt Series". They didn't seem to be too complicated for a beginner like me.

Be Thankful (above, left) fused and free-motion quilted;
Winter Blessings (above, right) fused appliqué

Just before Labor Day this year, I couldn't resist the sale at the Viking Sewing Gallery for a Fab-U-Motion Fabric Mover. And after investing in this bit of hardware, I was anxious to get my feet wet and start experimenting right away. I ordered the Fabric Mover at the end of August, but I had to wait about a week for it to arrive, so I spent a few hours doing some prep work, tracing out appliqué shapes and fusing them with Steam-A-Seam Light to the base fabric. And yes, there was a small bit of piecing together of some border fabrics, too. Some of the fabrics in the kit were not exactly to my liking, but I decided these were learning pieces, so it didn't matter. I just needed the quilting practice right now.

Within an hour of bringing home the Fabric Mover, I had it all plugged in and ready to go. I watched the instructional DVD with Sue Hausmann, set up my sewing machine with the included free motion foot and some thread and a practice piece of "quilting" - two layers of cotton fabric with some cotton batting in between. I played with the Fabric Mover for quite a while to get the feel of moving the table around and adjusting the thread tensions.

When I thought I was ready, I moved on to free motion quilting the appliqué pieces on the "Be Thankful" quilt. The project instructions said to do free motion outline stitching around the appliqué pieces a few times, stitching through all layers so that the project would be appliquéd and quilted at the same time. Fun and fast!

Well, I ran into a few snags -- needed to change needles a couple of times and it seemed as if the Steam-A-Seam was getting stuck and gumming up my needle (and I tried both topstitch and quilting needles, size 90). Maybe I didn't fuse long enough or maybe I should try a different fusing product (I've since bought a package of Misty Fuse to try for next time). I also did not pre-wash my fabrics, so maybe that was a factor.

It wasn't too bad for a first effort. But I decided to stitch the Winter Blessings appliqué pieces using a buttonhole stitch, before quilting anything. I didn't run into any problems with the Steam-A-Seam sticking to the needle this time. I experimented with different sizes of buttonhole stitch on the various areas of appliqué; for the cardinal's body and the snowman's carrot nose and eyes I used a narrow zigzag stitch, just for variety. I have not done a lot of appliqué (other than machine embroidery designs) but I have to admit that I like the buttonhole stitching the best.

For both quilt kits, the pattern calls for the words to be hand-stitched using embroidery floss or #8 pearl cotton, but even though I still have tons of floss and pearl cotton in my stash, I wanted to try digitizing the words; besides, if I was going to machine quilt the piece, there was no reason *not* to machine embroider the words, right?

I scanned both verses and used 4D Embroidery software to create the embroidery files. For the Be Thankful verse, I was able to use the ExpressDesign Wizard in the Embroidery Extra module to create a satisfactory embroidery design. I stitched out several samples to adjust the thread tension before hooping the quilt and stitching the words, using 40 wt. rayon embroidery thread (RA Espresso). The result almost has a hand-stitched quality:

I wasn't quite as successful in the beginning with the Winter Blessings verse - the first attempt with the design wizard left a lot of stitches out of place, most likely because my scanned image wasn't as clean as it should have been. Even cleaning up the stray pixels and using the outline expander in the Design Creator module didn't help much. So I ended up spending time using Stitch Editor to step through all the stitches and moving the stray stitch points back in line where they should have been. I also omitted trying to digitize the dots for the "i"'s; I think I'll use buttons instead.

Eventually, I had a design I was happy with and embroidered it on the top layer only, using 40wt rayon embroidery thread (RA Red Jubilee). This one also has a semi-handwork appearance:

Yes, I know I could have hand stitched both of these faster than the time it took me to digitize and embroider them, but as I've said before, I need the practice with the software.

After the verse was finished, I cut out some cotton batting and a backing for the Winter Blessings and pinned them together for quilting. In addition to stitching the words, the pattern suggests a running stitch framing the top and bottom of the verse. I tried to digitize that, too, but couldn't quite make it look right. Instead, I thought maybe one of the Heirloom stitches built into my sewing machine would work. After experimenting with herringbone and cross stitches, an elongated zigzag looked best, stitched through all layers:

I really like the way it turned out. I also stitched in the ditch through all layers at the top and bottom of the snowman section, where it meets the pieced strips, using black cotton quilting thread. I think this will need some other additional quilting, but I'm not sure yet what to do. I need to stitch the snowman's mouth and attach buttons to his chest. If I stitch through all the layers for these, maybe that will be enough?

So what's next to do on these two projects? The Be Thankful mini quilt could use the same zigzag stitches framing the verse and then it will be ready for binding, so I will probably attempt that while I'm thinking about what else to do on Winter Blessings.

I'll add an update when I have something of progress to share.

There is a slideshow with all the photos for both mini quilts embedded below: