Beautiful Painted Wooden Buttons

I have just purchased some wonderful wooden buttons. They are about 1" wide and are painted with lovely designs such as butterflies and all sorts of floral designs in different colours.

These buttons are ideal to put on your wonderful handmade items such as sewing companions and sewing cushions etc.I will be selling them via my website for $AU4.00 for a packet of 4, the same or a mixed set. Click through to my website if you are interested.

Pictures below.

Muslin is different in different countries and other news.

Hello everyone,

Didnt update this blog in the last few days as I spent a few days in hospital with a suspected blood clot. Am home and feeling fine now, awaiting further tests.

Celebrating today as I have just finished 2 more Uni modules.Hope I passed ok... they are the
last of level 1. Now I am on to Painting and Textiles.Can't wait to get to the textiles part.
Spent the day sorting out my paints and painting boards and tidying the sewing area ready to go.
I have decided that in between the Uni textile units I will ONLY do ufo's till the end of the year.( Now, don't laugh- I know you are all  rolling on the floor laughing..........).

As part of the requirments for one of the painting modules I had to have 1 metre of hessian and 1 metre of muslin.The hardware stores I rang did not carry any, which surprised me.I spent ages ringing fabric shops who had no idea where I could get it. I found the hessian at a farm supplies store As for the muslin, when I first started patchwork an American magazine said to buy muslin. Of course I went out and bought 3 metres of it. Before I used it, luckily, I found out that what is called muslin in America is called homespun here. It is just a plain woven cotton but much thicker weave than the muslin. Well, I have had it in my "stash" for about 10 years, and it will finally get used....(The muslin and hessian will be glued on to 12mm plywood boards for texture before painting with an undercoat).

I have also found out that muslin is a good base to use for machine needle felting, and in wet felting, which I am dying to try. I purchased a matchstick blind today, on special at Lincraft, was $29.95, today $7.49, so of course I had to add it to the supplies stash at that price. I will definitely have to get to the wet felting one of these days.

I have been reading up on it, and it is much easier to do than I had thought. Basically, you lay out a matchstick blind or a piece of bubble wrap, woollen(you cannot use synthetics) or other natural fibre pieces are laid over the blind (sometimes tulle is placed as the bottom and top layers to seperate the blind from the wool etc ), the blind keeps it all together .It is soaked and rubbed a bit with a very soapy water mix (lux flakes or some other soft soap) and then the blind is rolled up and bashed around, trodden on, rolled etc. It is undone gently several times to check no parts have doubled up and also to rotate the direction of it. I have shortened all the instructions, but you will get the general idea.

I have an embellisher machine that I bought about 3 years ago. I havent actually even turned it on to see if it works and the warranty would have run out by now... Apparently, if you use an embellisher machine,( or one of the sets of needles you can buy now), then you can use synthetic products as well as the natural ones. I have been saving bits of ribbons, tulle,old woollen jumpers,wool etc for a number of years now,just waiting to use it for one of these projects.

I have just finished the 4th "sewing lap cushion",(yes I know they are not a ufo..lol) for friends birthday presents. The one shown in the blog has gone to a lovely lady in Burpengary on the north side of Brisbane.

Well, I think thats all the news for today, so I will sign off. Take care.
Jennine

Getting ready for Painting classes.

Been away for a few days in hospital but back home and raring to go again. Currently working hard on my final essay for my current Uni module. My next two units, starting on 1st June, are about Painting and then followed by textiles embellishment, adornment and then dyeing. I am hoping to learn a lot from these units, as they are my favourite subjects and right down my alley, so to speak. I would love to combine my quilting with fabric paints, dyes and other adornments, so cant wait for them.

Meanwhile, I have sourced a very large old aluminium saucepan and bought one of those cheap gas camping stoves that use aerosol gas canisters, and am now adding all sorts of things like wooden and plastic spoons, old cans, screw-top jars etc, to my "art stash". I have just found out that I need to buy a double boiler saucepan to make my own gesso.That sure sounds interesting.I will have to start checking around the op shops again......lol.

 Recently I sourced some "Inktense" pencils from Kim Bradley's website.They are fabulous, cant wait to try them out. Kim recently had a dvd released with the latest issue of Quilters Companion magazine, showing how she uses various pencils and ink sticks to paint and embellish her quilts, very interesting dvd, totally recommended. Her link is www.kimbradleycreations.com, if you are interested.

Well, back to my essays, bye for now.

Jennine

Free You Tube videos about quick cutting of patchwork pieces.

Tonight I wish to write about You Tube. There are some wonderful short videos available on this site that directly relate to patchwork, quilting and machine embroidery. I am very interested at the moment in something called Smart Piecing. This is a method of cutting patchwork shapes such as half square and quarter square triangles from strips of fabric using special acrylic rulers. This method ensures accurate cutting( and therefore accurate piecing) and also uses much less material than if you had cut the pieces from squares or from templates. Even large side setting triangles can be cut this way from strips. No more cutting large blocks and then cutting in diagonals twice, that is in the past.

Missouri Quilt Company is one you can look at, they have lots of different short videos showing some wonderful quick methods of cutting and piecing your patchwork, but of course there are many other companies showing their methods. This is a fabulous way to get ideas, particularly if you are just starting out with patchwork. The rulers are available from most quilt supply shops. Here in Australia I get mine from Judy Hall at www.punchwithjudy.com, but there are lots of other places and I notice my local patchwork shop is also starting to sell them.

I recommend having a look at these videos and will attach a link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOWSp0mTTqE&feature=fvsr

Bye for now

Jennine

Bowel Cancer and Breast Cancer Tests

I know this is a bit off topic, but I would like to comment about people getting regular bowel test kits. They are available from most chemists and in fact, our government is sending them out to some age groups. A very good friend of mine, did the kit and was called in for a colonoscopy, cancer was found and he was immediately operated on. All is ok now, thank goodness. His wife had such a shock, because he had no symptoms, so she went to the chemist and bought herself a kit ($30 here in Brisbane). Would you believe she was in the same hospital room as her husband for a major operation, within 2 weeks. She is now home and having chemo tablets. She had NO symptoms whatsoever.

Please Please, everyone should get a kit and if positive, see your Dr immediately.

This comes after I have recently lost my sister to advanced breast cancer. She did not tell anyone that she had a lump, till it was the size of an orange. By then, it had spread throughout her body.She put up a brave fight for 17months.We lost our mother from breast cancer, so she should have known better, but was terrified of finding out any results, so kept delaying telling anyone.

Every lady ( and men as well,as believe it or not,they have a chance of getting breast cancer, even though it is not publicised much) should have breast mammograms at least every 2 years.

Please dont delay seeing your medical professionals should you have any lumps,anywhere.
bye for now

Jennine

More Things I made

This is called a "Sewing Companion", its a small cloth book that has zipped pockets inside for sewing things and a centre pincushion. I made this for my friend Cheryl.

Finally, I made this from a photostitch design for a friends bible.It is very intense stitching and took a long time to sew out, but looks great.

Bye for now,
Jennine

Things I have made.

I love making gifts for my friends when their birthdays come around. The pictures above are from one of the pieces I have made. Firstly, a needle booklet( for sewing machine needles), I embroidered a lovely sewing machine design on the front.(I got it from www.emblibrary.com, they have lovely and reasonable designs).

Next, I found a long-lost sister (Hazel),on the right,in the UK last year and she came over to meet me and my other sister Juanita,on the left,(from NZ). Before she left we made her a quilt from squares of Australian themed fabric. She loved it. We also made her the bag from Japanese fabric.

Album I made for piecing quilt blocks.

I have just made this album for putting my pieced quilt blocks in before I sew them together. I got a 2nd hand photo album from an opportunity shop and removed the plastic sleeves. I then cut some pieces of wadding(batting) and covered pieces of plastic core board( $6 for a huge sheet from the hardware store). I then sewed the covered sheets onto the spine of the album and covered the outside in a pretty material. I then glued on some more wadding inside the front and back covers.I added a piece of ribbon to the inside cover to hide the join. I did make one mistake with it- I should have covered the outside album covers with more wadding and then glued the material all over it. I only glued around the edges and the centre is a little bit loose, not enough to bother me though. I added a ribbon loop on the back and a nice button on the top. Basically, when the pieces of material are placed on the wadding, they stick like on a design wall. This helps keep all the pieces in the right order as they are sewn together. I will show it again when I place some block pieces in it.

Machine embroidery Hoops-How to hold your fabrics taut.

Hello,

I thought today I would mention a good way to make your embroidery hoops hold your fabric more securely. I bought a roll of stretch sticky bandage and cut pieces to wrap around the inner part of my hoops. I find this works really well when I am hooping material.(I do not always hoop my materials).

You will find a photo above of one of my hoops and the bandage roll.

Thread Colours in your quilt, Backing fabrics and material types that affect the quilting.

I just wanted to follow on from my quilting comments yesterday. When choosing the threads for your quilt, remember that the very dark colours like black,navy,dark green etc, because of the dyes involved, do not show very good stitch definition when quilted. It is better to pick a lighter colour, but one that will blend in with the colours in the actual quilt. My favourite colours are gold which looks wonderful on nearly any colour quilt and cream which is suitable for a lot of quilts.

Also, the type of material in your quilt can affect the way the quilting stitch looks. Any materials containing polyester or rayon will lose a lot of stitch definition. The best fabrics are 100% cotton for both the front and the back of your quilt.

When quilting your quilt any loose areas can often be shrunk by using an intense stitch pattern, but if the baggyness is huge, then there might be wrinkles or pleats around that area. Most quilters will do their best to even out these areas but sometimes a pucker is unavoidable.

With your backings, a lot of people use sheets. If you are doing this be aware that the thread count of the sheet is important. A low thread count can cause colours to show through from the front of the quilt, even through the wadding. Do not use sheets with any polyester content as this material will not stay as nice as the 100% cotton-content ones. Also, your quilter will need to use more needles to sew with polyester as it blunts the needles and causes burrs on the needles more often. Besides seeing the difference, I always know if there is any polyester in a quilt or backing as I can actually hear the needle "punching" throught the material when sewing.

Happy Quilting,
Jennine