Birthday Gift

 

I shuttle tatted this collar using the pattern in Learn Needle Tatting by Barbara Foster. I made it for Rebecka.

December Was Busy

At Crazy Quilt Club, I learned how to hand dye lace.  I enjoyed it very much and think the lace turned out very well.  Now to find cotton and silk laces to hand dye.  Here are the results of my first attempts --

Then I machine embroidered a picture for my violin teacher,  machine embroidered some Blue Willow for Rebecka, made several sets of ornaments

and hand embroidered a picture for Kerstin's office --

I also worked on a knitted intarsia Christmas stocking which is not done yet and started a pair of knitted socks which are also not done yet.  Both of these projects were top down.  The Christmas stocking has a forgotten heel and grafted toe and the socks are also top down.  I think I'll stick with my toe up socks but it's good to know the other technique for the 'just in case' I can't convert the pattern to toe up.

1st Machine Embroidery

A few weeks ago I purchased the Janome 9900 and the Floriani Total Control software.  Although I did some minor sewing on it, I hadn't done any embroidery.  I went for my official hand holding session yesterday at the Fabric Art Shop.  It turned out to be a good thing.  Even though I had the manual with me, I had forgotten some things from my training session a few weeks before and I had a small problem with the machine reading my USB stick.  After those minor issues were fixed, I spent the next two hours stitching a design that the machine said would take only 45 minutes.  It obviously doesn't take into account thread change time.

I thought it appropriate that my first design should be dachshunds happily making a Snow Doxie. 

Crazy Quilt Journal 2014 Challenge

I wasn't going to do another challenge for 2014 but this one seemed do-able especially since I can use  machine embroidery and the squares only need to be 6" minimum.

For this crazy quilt, I'm going to use all cotton fabric and not the silks, satins, & velvets that I'm using in Fabric Art Shop Crazy Quilt Club.

Earlier today, I ordered a set of stencils that will make my hand embroidery stitches all the same height but I can also design hundreds of different patterns.