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Friday, November 11, 2011

It's the time of year for secrets!

I've had a VERY productive bit of time off. I have spent almost the whole week in my sewing room working on a few projects. Even the weather cooperated to keep me inside....


The main project I have been working on is a big secret...it is that time of year. I'm allowed some secrets! And this one I am not telling anyone about. But I will give a hint...here is part of my cleanup!


While I was in my sewing room and looking for things I stumbled upon a bin and looked inside and discovered some half finished needle punched Christmas tree decorations I had forgotten about.



I got organized and made some tea dye, took a leap of faith and sprayed them down with my tea solution. And oh my, they seemed a little dark. But I left them to dry and now they are looking not too bad. Next time though I will make the tea solution a little weaker.

Now I have to find some backing and get them finished. Hopefully I will get them done by the end of the weekend!

My redwork Santa Christmas stocking is all traced and ready to go. For the tracing I used a red .01 Pigma pen. The line is quite fine and very easy to see.


I read a little online about redwork and embroidery and if I should be stabilizing my fabric or even if I would like the batting (a very thin batting...like thermore) under it when I stitched. I did a quick sample of all 3...


The interfaced sample...I used a very lightweight interfacing...


It was easy to stitch through but it was also easy to miss the hole to go back down. Another problem was that the fabric had lost most of it's natural stretch so you couldn't really pull to help the stitches lie flatter.

Next is the batting....


I found I had to be pretty careful to get my stitches back in the right hole with the batting as well. Even though the batting was very thin, it still added too much bulk. And it was too puffy looking.

Finally the fabric by itself...


Now that was more like it! Great stitches! I think I found my method!

And, just fyi, I used 2 strands of floss for all my samples.

I am planning on going quilting this week with a local group who meets on Mondays. I'll be bringing my stocking to work on. Hopefully I'll get a really good start on it.

And finally....

I have noticed a few bloggers getting excited about making knitted Christmas balls. Well, the excitement rubbed off on me...look what came in the mail yesterday!!!!


Now I am waiting for the wool I ordered to arrive. I hope it's soon. I can't wait to get started!

I have a few days left of sewing room bliss so off I go...

Happy Stitching!










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