Progress on the embroidered mystery quilt

I've made some progress on the embroidered mystery quilt. I finished sewing all the setting squares and put them up with the embroidered squares on my - rather clever I think - make shift design wall...I don't know what happened to the flannel I used to use (I think I cut it up for something) so I took a twin sized flannel flat sheet, folded it in half wrong side out and taped it to the wall. 

When I designed the mystery quilt, it was with this layout.

If you squint, can you see the stars? It was a great layout for a mystery quilt with the surprise secondary pattern and the Redwork club participants really liked how their quilts came out. I didn't finish mine because that was just when I got sick with the CMV virus...in fact, I missed the last session and had to e-mail Barbie the layout.

Well, I just couldn't resist moving squares around...

and I've decided that I'm actually going to use this layout instead. (Don't tell on me! :)

The Outline Stitch-- Hand Embroidery Tutorial

Months ago I said I would post an outline stitch embroidery tutorial...well, finally here it is. I can't believe how long it took me to get someone to take the photos-fortunately DS was up for New Year's week-end and he took the photos...but it was at night so please excuse the orangy color!

I'm starting with separating the floss strands and threading the needle so if you're good with that just skip on down.

I use six strand DMC floss (here its #310 black) and usually use two strands. Cut off an arms length of the floss and spread the floss out between your fingers.

Now - keeping the floss pressed between your fingers - pull on only one strand. Pull it out completely in one draw.
Since I'm using two strands I just pull out a second one the same way. Don't try to pull two at a time-they will only knot up and make a mess.
I next align the two strands together and hold them in my left hand (my non-dominant hand) pinched between my fingers. I hold the needle in my right hand and with the eye of needle visible to my eye- I just aim at the floss.

This works all the time...by pinching the floss or thread between my fingers the floss (or thread) can't wiggle away from the needle the way it can when you take the thread to the needle. This works as well for six strands of floss as two and for any size needle-including little size 10 or 12 quilting needles.

Now that my needle is threaded, I tie a knot at the end of the thread (yes, I use a knot!). And bring the needle up from the back of the marked fabric on the line I want to start on.

Pull the needle through...holding the thread up above the line, put the needle back in on the line.Bring the needle out on the line back towards the floss exiting the fabric...
Take small stitches...always with the thread held above the line and the needle always going in and coming out on the line. Instruction books always say to have the needle come out about half way back towards the thread but I usually work with smaller stitches and the needle comes out almost at the thread...really just a tiny bit in front.

That's the first stitch...
and the second....
and the third! You just keep going...its that simple!
The outline stitch is faster to sew than back stitch...it also gives a more raised appearance than back stitch.

Hope this has been helpful! I really love this style of embroidery and as you know, use it a lot.

You can download the free hand embroidery pattern Umbrella Girls/Bonnet Girls here and directions to complete a twin size quilt here. The Girls are all done in outline stitch although I did use some Lazy Daisy flowers and French Knots on some of the girls' dresses-just for extra decoration.

Progress on the Basket Embroidery Quilt

I've completed another two hand embroidery blocks for the Basket Embroidery Quilt...I just love this one!...
and the first set of setting blocks.
I've scheduled the outline embroidery tutorial that I said I'd post months ago for tomorrow...sorry it took so long!

I'm linking up to Finished for Friday at Lit and Laundry.

Embroidery Mystery Quilt

Have I mentioned that I lead the Redwork Club at our LQS? To start the Fall off right, we're working on a mystery quilt and I'm, of course, making it right along with everyone else. These are the fabrics that I've chosen...these would have been perfect for last year's Black and White Challenge. They're all from my stash though the one on the left is a recent addition.

The embroidery theme is baskets...
and flowers. How do you like my black embroidery? I love it...I wanted to work in one color floss embroidery-it is so much quicker-and I've been thinking about black embroidery ever since the B & W Challenge and a quilt that I didn't make! :)

The embroidered heart baby quilt: quilted and bound: Finished!

The embroidered heart baby quilt is all quilted, the binding is sewn on and it is ready to be given to little Shirli. (Isn't it funny how names come and go-here Shirli (yes, that's Shirley) is a very popular name for babies right now.) The quilt was finished just in time-DD comes on Sunday for a visit and Shirli's Mom is DD's good friend since eighth grade so she'll deliver it.

Its machine quilted with curvey lines 1 1/2" apart plus a meander in and around the hearts and
a small free vine with leaves in the asymmetric border. I do like the look of the hand embroidery with the machine quilting. In this photo you can kind of see all the quilting designs...
but I think it shows up best on the back.
Here's the little vine.
I'm linking to Finished for Friday at Lit and Laundry and Sew and Tell at Amylouwho so be sure to stop over there and see all the wonderful finishes for this week (and remember at Lit and Laundry they're not all sewing projects!)

I have to apologize-I said I would put up the pattern for the Bonnet Girl quilt (done!) and a tutorial for outline embroidery (not done!) That was an Oops on my part-I didn't think ahead and realize I would need someone else to photograph the tutorial! Now that DD will be visiting, I will have her take the photos and the tutorial will be up very soon.

Vintage Thursday Thingie: Embroidered Bonnet Girl Coverlet

I'm reposting this from September 2009-Bonnet Girls are just grown up Sunbonnet Sues. I'm sure CC would have liked this coverlet.

I purchased this outline embroidered Bonnet Girl summer coverlet on E-bay a few years ago…yes, it was a bargain-it cost me all of $10.00! I’m not sure when its from but I would guess the 1960s, mainly because of the brown fabric…course the orange could mean the 1970s. Its technically not a quilt as there is no batting-a summer coverlet.

Bonnet Girl quilts became very popular in the 1920s and have lots of different names...there's Umbrella Girl (my girl has both an umbrella and a bonnet!), Southern Belle , and Crinoline Lady !

I wish I could have photographed it better but here's a close-up of one of the blocks from the center row. The center row of blocks are the lightest and were done with orange to yellow graduated floss. This row also shows the most wear and there is even one block with half the umbrella/parasol missing.

.

The outer rows are partially done with the graduated floss and then finished with brown.

( Wondering about what's peaking through? I'll get to that soon.)

This coverlet is tied-another one of the reasons that I love owning it! The ties were done with 100% wool so when the "quilt" was washed the yarn shrank up and formed these balls. The only quilty memory I have from childhood is sleeping at my Aunt Anne's and she had covers with these wonderful little balls on them!

This entire coverlet is made from sugar sacks! She used the best parts-with no printing-for the front.

The back is made up with sugar sacks turned so that the writing is inside the coverlet but it is still noticeable. Since there is no batting, it is quite easy to read. All of the sacks were 10 lbs. and were from two companies: The Amalgamated Sugar Company and the Utah Idaho Company.

With a little time spent with Google I discovered some fascinating things. These were both sugar beet companies. The Ogden, Utah plant was founded in 1898 and merged with other plants to become the Amalgamated Sugar Co. in 1915. A sugar beet processing plant was built in Garland in 1903 by the LDS Church and was merged with others from Idaho to form the Utah Idaho Sugar Company in 1907.

One of the bags says Chinook, Montana…a little research here informed me that there had been a large sugar beet processing plant serving the area, a large sugar beet growing center until “business collapsed among manipulations of the commodities market back in the early 1950’s”!
You can read here about sugar hoarding (over 5 million pounds!) in this NY Times article from 1919… I’m telling you the sugar business was not sweet!

I really love the back of this quilt-I love these sugar sacks! I love that they say “ A Product of American Farms” and “Pure Granulated” and “Fine Granulated Table and Preserving Sugar”.

I love this quilt…I love the woman who made it! She took sugar sacks and a bit of floss and made a summer spread-I like to think- to dress up her daughter’s bedroom.

I'm linking to VTT at Coloradolady...be sure to stop by and see all the wonderful vintage treasures.

More embroidered hearts

I've finished 3 more embroidered hearts...I really like this one with the sunflowers...but I think this one is my favorite! It is so sweet with the little light pink x's in the background.
This one has a really pretty lace like flouncy border.
All of these hearts are from a 2007 free BOM from Crabapple Hills Studio. There are actually 11 designs available (May doesn't seem to work-its empty). I'm planning on using 6.

I've had to rework the fabrics I'll be using...the cute 30s kids fabrics are not working out. I wanted to alternate the embroidered hearts with cut-outs from the kids fabrics but the size of the repeats just didn't work out...next baby quilt I'll start with the kids fabrics and plan from the repeat.

Embroidered hearts

I'm working on some sweet heart embroideries...here are two of them. The colors in the top are true-the hearts are done in hot pink, not red like it looks in the second photo.I've used outline stitch in the hearts and stems and backstitch for the flowers and the ribbon plus French knots, Lazy Daisy and straight stitches. I'm doing these for a baby quilt and love the idea of adding the baby's name in the ribbon.
I have two more hearts almost finished. These are the fabrics I'm thinking of using with the embroideries but I'll have to see if I like the repro 30s kiddy figurine fabrics once I start sewing things together.
I finished the piano border for the batik star quilt but I'm not sure about the corner squares so I'm still working on it.

Vintage Thursday Thingie: Embroidered Bonnet Girl Quilt

I purchased this outline embroidered Bonnet Girl summer coverlet on E-bay a few years ago…yes, it was a bargain-it cost me all of $10.00! I’m not sure when its from but I would guess the 1960s, mainly because of the brown fabric…course the orange could mean the 1970s. Its technically not a quilt as there is no batting.

Bonnet Girl quilts became very popular in the 1920s and have lots of different names...there's Umbrella Girl (my girl has both an umbrella and a bonnet!), Southern Belle , and Crinoline Lady !

I wish I could have photographed it better but here's a close-up of one of the blocks from the center row. The center row of blocks are the lightest and were done with orange to yellow graduated floss. This row also shows the most wear and there is even one block with half the umbrella/parasol missing.

.

The outer rows are partially done with the graduated floss and then finished with brown.

( Wondering about what's peaking through? I'll get to that soon.)

This coverlet is tied-another one of the reasons that I love owning it! The ties were done with 100% wool so when the "quilt" was washed the yarn shrank up and formed these balls. The only quilty memory I have from childhood is sleeping at my Aunt Anne's and she had covers with these wonderful little balls on them!

This entire coverlet is made from sugar sacks! She used the best parts-with no printing-for the front.

The back is made up with sugar sacks turned so that the writing is inside the coverlet but it is still noticeable. Since there is no batting, it is quite easy to read. All of the sacks were 10 lbs. and were from two companies: The Amalgamated Sugar Company and the Utah Idaho Company.

With a little time spent with Google I discovered some fascinating things. These were both sugar beet companies. The Ogden, Utah plant was founded in 1898 and merged with other plants to become the Amalgamated Sugar Co. in 1915. A sugar beet processing plant was built in Garland in 1903 by the LDS Church and was merged with others from Idaho to form the Utah Idaho Sugar Company in 1907.

One of the bags says Chinook, Montana…a little research here informed me that there had been a large sugar beet processing plant serving the area, a large sugar beet growing center until “business collapsed among manipulations of the commodities market back in the early 1950’s”!
You can read here about sugar hoarding (over 5 million pounds!) in this NY Times article from 1919… I’m telling you the sugar business was not sweet!

I really love the back of this quilt-I love these sugar sacks! I love that they say “ A Product of American Farms” and “Pure Granulated” and “Fine Granulated Table and Preserving Sugar”.

I love this quilt…I love the woman who made it! She took sugar sacks and a bit of floss and made a summer spread-I like to think- to dress up her daughter’s bedroom.

I like this Bonnet Girl so much that I have traced the design and started embroidering my own blocks-I’ll show you two later this week and I’ll share the tracing so if you like Bonnet Girls as much as me-stop back!

Be sure to hop on over to Coloradolady and see all the other vintage treasures being shared today on Vintage Thursday Thingie!!

B & W Log Cabin quilt and embroideries

I've finished sewing all the blocks for the log cabin quilt...now its time to think about the setting. I've had an idea in my head from the beginning to use sashing (like I did with the vintage log cabin quilt blocks). I like this-its bright, I can see a pattern formed by the log cabin blocks and yet each block stands out a little separately too.

Here are the same blocks without the sashing...just a bit duller and ...more ordinary, I think.

Here are two of the embroidery blocks from my embroidered summer spread which ended up being a duvet cover. These are from my vintage Aunt Martha's -I used the Pharaoh's daughter's maid and not the whole block. I love her "look". This is one of the first blocks I embroidered-at first I was going to use just one color floss but by the time I got to the grass on this block I changed my mind-so its blue with green and blue grass!

I've been thinking about it-I think she's a Pixie!

New England Quilt Museum and Lowelll Mills

We went to Lowell today, first to the New England Quilt Museum-where they were having a special exhibit of quilts recently donated to the museum...so up the stairs and there they were...beautifully familiar Pennsylvania quilts and not the new-to-me New England quilts I expected! Happily they did show some quilts from their permanent collection-an interesting group of Connecticut quilts. Wish I could show you some pix but no go-the main thing I noticed about the Connecticut quilts was that several were two color quilts (a blue and white single Irish chain) or three color quilts (a green and mustard sawtooth star with black plain blocks from 1800 and all the wool fabrics were home dyed with native plant dyes! ) and the blocks were fairly large-at least 12". I don't want to generalize too much here but these were my initial impressions...hope I get to see some more New England quilts while I'm here.

It was then on to the Bootts Mill-definitely worth a trip...a wonderful tour inside the mill with the roar of the looms and wonderful explanations by the US Park Rangers. No pix because my battery died :(

I bought some of the fabric made now in the mill (I chose the green stripe towelling because that is what we saw being made on the looms during the tour ) and two bobbins that went into the loom shuttles. I'm planning on using the bobbin thread for some outline embroidery on the towelling.

I got the camera battery recharged just in time for Holiday greetings from Lowell, Massachusetts.