Slow Stitching - floral squares for a pink and green quilt

I worked on this slow stitching project over the holiday season.  I have been collecting pink and green fabrics - some florals - for making a quilt for our spare bed.  After checking out my collection I realized that I had some warm tones and some cooler tones which might not work so well together.  I want to include some of my Mom's embroider into the quilt so I needed warm tones.  I set those aside and then dug into my stash for more warm florals, pinks and greens.  I was in need of a new slow stitch project so I decided to embellish some of the squares in my quilt with some slow stitched flowers.  I cut 6.5" squares out of a very light green fabric and then trimmed out rough circles about 4" round from a pink fabric.  I did tea dye the fabric to tone it down just a bit and make it overall a little warmer.  Worked really well!!!  After getting my 23 flowers ready I trimmed 1" circles from a golden yellow fabric to create the flower centers.  I pinned them to the squares and the machine stitched the flowers to the squares.  Makes it easier when you are stitching to keep the layers together and flat.  I will be covering the machine stitching with hand stitching.  

Below you can see my first one!!  I used 2 ply embroidery thread in a coordinating pink and added a long row of chain stitches that ran from the outside to just under the edge of the yellow center.  I did add a light pencil mark to keep me on track.  After I finished the flower I decided to add some leaves which I drew with pencil and then embroidered with stem stitch.  I used Derwent Inktense watercolours to colour in the leaves.  These watercolours become permanent on fabric once they are heat set!!  What a wonderful tool to accent and embellish hand stitching.  As you can see from the photos this involves raw edge applique which I think will give the quilt a really home spun look which is just what I wanted!!!  

The quilt will be for a queen sized bed and will be put together with a QAYG technique with 12" squares which will also leave some raw edges which will echo the raw edges on the floral squares.  It will take a while to get it done but for now I will work on the hand stitching on these squares.  

Therese

 

Mug markers

After a recent family gathering DH indicated that it would be useful for our son to have some way to mark the mugs we had been using.  My sister who was visiting and I immediately got on online searching for some mug marker options.  We did some brainstorming and the next morning came up with these.  They consist of a length of black elastic (we cut hair elastics) with a coloured bead slipped on then an over hand knot near the ends.  These work very well.  You hold the bead on the mug handle, pass the knotted end under the handle and up and over the bead.  Done!!  These beads were glittery ones from a Christmas garland purchased a while back.  We had silver and gold.  After a bit of experimenting we settled on using Sharpies to colour the beads which was more permanent so the markers could be washed if needed.  We made a bakers dozen and packaged them in a little plastic box which I had in my stash collected from somewhere!!  We used them at Christmas and they worked really well to keep everyone using one cup over the course of the day!!  Therese

 

A quick sympathy card

One of our friends' father past away over the holidays and so I made up a quick sympathy card for them.  

The flower image is one of my doodles for a while back.  I watercoloured it to coordinate with the background which is decorative paper that was embossed and then rubbed with ink to highlight the script.  I added the background to a small white card, added the flowers and then the butterfly embellishment.    Therese