Keep Calm and Craft On

The past couple of weeks have seen plenty of creative activity over here in the fifth lamp house.

I was able to get a lot of progress made on my Rocky Coast Sweater while I was on my little getaway, and now I only have about half a sleeve left.

I have also been working long hard hours at the quilt and wall hanging and I was able to finish up the quilt yesterday

Here is a reminder of the mock-up that I made for my presentation to the teachers

and here is the finished product with squares embroidered by the 2nd graders.

Such beautiful work from these kids!

 The wall hanging is almost finished, I just have to add the last few leaves (I fused on the majority of the leaves, but I am adding in the last 20 or so by only sewing half of the leaf down so they give the project a little more dimension) and then some grass on the bottom to balance it all out.

I also taught a couple of classes this weekend at the yarn store and the fabric store.
The class at the fabric store was Fun Stuff with Felt, and since it is almost Valentines Day I whipped up some heart-themed crafts.
I saw this one on cruising Google for valentine-related felt crafts -

and there was more than one site which suggested making conversation hearts from felt, so I made up a bunch and strung them together on a garland 

No one in the class was interested in making these, but at least now I have a sweet Valentine's Day decoration for the house.
Joining Nicole for Keep Calm and Craft On today.

Friendship is a Sheltering Tree

Today I was able to get some concentrated stitching time in on the Tree project, and I thought I'd share the process here.

The goal for today was to embroider the words Friendship is a Sheltering Tree in the open space.

I am not the world's most competent free-hand artist, so I knew that I would have to use Word and find a font I liked.

I didn't want to risk writing directly on the fabric, so I traced the phrase onto cheesecloth and basted it into place on the hanging.

Once it was on the piece I did a simple running stitch along the words.

and when I was finished I trimmed the cheesecloth close to the words and pulled it away.

After the cheesecloth was removed I went over the running stitch with a wrap, filling in the spaces, and was left with this -

The last decisions are whether or not to add more leaves and whether to stitch just Coleridge or Samuel Taylor Coleridge below.
I think just Coleridge would be best, but I do get caught up in the what-ifs of designing...

Keep Calm and Craft On

Joining Nicole today for KCCO.
Here is the quilt top for the elementary school project I started in December.
The blue is the back, but I think I need to get a little more and use it as a border on the front.
I hope to finish up the quilting and binding by the end of the week.
What's on your work table today?

Applique Project

I posted a few weeks ago about a fun project teaching 2nd graders embroidery.
After finishing up some pre-Christmas stuff, I jumped back in to the assembly of our tree today.
Now, in a perfect world, when you want to applique something with felt you apply wonder under to the felt prior to cutting it out and then you can just iron it on.
With the kids, however, we just cut out the felt. We avoided having beautifully embroidered sticky sides this way.

So to apply the wonder under I arranged them face-down on parchment paper and laid the fusible webbing on top, then when I ironed the lot I didn't get sticky glue all over the ironing board.
Then I could cut out around the leaves and also catch the little hanging out threads away without having anything fray.
Now I just have to arrange the 105 leaves on the tree, and attach them. Should be lots of fun.
The hearts above will be a flower garden.
Can I just say that the kids did amazing work on this stuff? I am so impressed with everything they made.

Sewing With Kids Week, part 2

Another large part of the work I did at the school this week was these quilt squares.

I have 25 here, and there are still probably about 15 more to come.

My idea for this was flora and fauna of Saint Paul.

So we have a fox, a heron, a cardinal, squirrel, oak leaf, acorn, maple leaf and maple samara (which I recently learned is the real name of the helicopter seed).

You can see that they had some great attention to detail (these letters notwithstanding). They chose their own colors and stitches. Again, they could choose from a running stitch, a wrapped running stitch, a back stitch or stem.
Mostly they used back and wrapped running stitches.
These are so sweet, I love the expressions on the faces of the animals. Each one has a different personality.
For the transfers our helper mom printed out my images on parchment paper in an inkjet printer and simply ironed them on the muslin.
She got 4 transfers per sheet.
By far the most popular square was the cardinal, with the oak leaf pulling up dead last.
We got through the first 32 squares, and the kids wanted to do more, so I ended up tracing 10 or so more with pencil.
A couple of the kids were so excited about the stitching that after they finished their first square they took a plain square and drew their own image to stitch.
Now to get the rest of the squares (some were not quite finished, so I'll gather them at the end of next week) and pull the 25 nicest and stitch up a quilt.
I am so excited to share the finished projects with the kids. They have so much to be proud of here.

Sewing with kids week

This week I have been spending my afternoons working at a local elementary school teaching embroidery to some talented and delightful children.
The first project that the kids did was a Thanksgiving card, which I neglected to take any photos of.
It was a hand-turkey. They turned out pretty cute.
The next project was a felt leaf.
Each kid made a leaf or two for a tree wall hanging.
To make the wall hanging I took inspiration from this beautiful tree in my neighborhood.

I love the negative space in the center. 

I drew up a plan on the computer and then I cut out the trunk and branches, and appliqued it to the background fabric.

The leaves are each a little different. 

The kids used back, running, and whip stitches on them. 

I love the different colors and textures they used.

I found a quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the poem Youth and Age which seemed so appropriate to their project. I plan to embroider the words  "Friendship is a sheltering tree" in the open space below the branches.

I'm still in the experimental stages for this wall hanging, I think I need to add some length to the branches, and I the bark needs some definition.

The kids did such an amazing job this week.
We met every day for about an hour, and they were so diligent, creative and focused. They really accomplished a lot.
Besides the leaves, they also completed squares for a full-size quilt like the mock-up I did a couple of weeks ago, and a group of them made applique felt hearts which I think will make a beautiful garden of flowers for a second wall hanging.
It's very late, and I am suffering from a little sleep deprivation, so I'll sign off now.
Happy weekend

Keep Calm and Craft On

Time for Keeping Calm and Crafting On with Nicole!

I have been doing a lot of embroidering lately, this is the heron square for my 2nd grade embroidery project. I had planned to have a loon and maple leaf and samara for the quilt as well, hopefully I can finalize those tomorrow or Friday.

Yesterday was my first time in the classroom with the kids and it was so fun. They were all excited about the project that we did, which I'll share this afternoon.

This weekend I'll make the final plans for the projects that are on tap for next week -a couple of wall hangings and the bigger version of the quilt.

  

Now than I am in the swing of doing a little hand sewing every day I was super excited to see this book on another blog this week.

Those eyes are embroidered, and I just can't wait to try them out. I would justify making a bunch of dolls by saying that they were for The Youngest, but the truth is that she has two favorite things and they are green block and any block that is in her other hand 

Quilt mock-up for Artist Residency

Quilt mock-up for Artist Residency, a photo by fifthlampdown on Flickr.

I finished up this sample quilt  today for an interview this morning with the 2nd grade teachers at the school where I will do my artistic residency in sewing and embroidery.

I am really excited about this project, and there is another part to it which I will share next week, since I forgot to take a photo before I brought it to the school, and they kept the prototype.

For this quilt I did something a little unorthodox, I lined it with flannel instead of batting.
This summer when I was teaching a kids' sewing camp at Treadle we were making quilts and as we were using stash fabrics and there was not enough batting in the bins we tried using flannel instead.

It made for a light weight quilt, but he finished product wasn't any less warm than a light-weight batting might have been.
The big bonus for me is that flannel doesn't need to be contained the way cotton batting does, so the quilting can be minimal, if any, and since I am not a very proficient or speedy quilter, nor do I enjoy it at all, this seemed like the perfect technique to use with this little mock-up.
We may go for flannel lining for our finished product as well, since I don't want to quilt over the children's embroidery squares, but if we use cotton batting it usually needs to be quilted fairly densely so it doesn't come apart in the quilt (and I am a fabric snob, and would prefer to use natural fibers at all times).

I began sketching out forest animals and the four above were the most successful thus far.
To fit our theme I thought we could add turtle, loon, otter, bear, deer, and maple leaf and seed.

As an aside, we call maple seeds helicopters, but it turns out that the correct term is samara. Do you think anyone would know what I was talking about if I labeled it maple samara in the quilt block? or should I just go with maple seed?

Happy Thursday to you all, I hope you're enjoying as beautiful day where you are as we are!

Embroidery with kids

I have been quite lucky in my life to work with creative people doing creative things.

Whether sewing, knitting or making music, I can look forward to spending time with people who, for the most part, want to be where they are and want to do what they're doing.

In my newest endeavor, I am planning to teach embroidery to 2nd graders at a local elementary school.

I couldn't be more excited to plan the lessons and projects that we'll do together.

One of the ideas we had during the planning session was to do a quilt and have each child embroider their own square. 

I drew up a few animals and am putting needle to cloth for some examples to show the teachers.
We had thought of forest animals, but I think it might be fun to do animals we see in the neighborhood.
These are, admittedly, a little wrinkly, the Youngest was having her way with them, but I think they'll be sweet in a simple patchwork with solid shot-cotton squares.
What fires you up about your job?